Property inheritance

Automatically setting workspace properties on documents

The Property inheritance feature allows you to automatically apply workspace properties to any documents created, uploaded or moved into workspaces. This helps to ensure consistency in document properties without requiring users to manually set values each time.

How It Works

When Property inheritance is enabled for a workspace configuration:

• The custom field values set on a workspace will be set as default values on documents added or moved into that workspace for any field that has been added to both the content type for workspace properties and the document content type.
• These default values are set in the SharePoint document library settings, specifically in the root folder of the library. This ensures that properties will be inherited even if the file did not get any properties set with MetaShare’s properties form.
• When a document is created, uploaded or moved into a workspace in MetaShare and the properties form is opened, the workspace properties will be prefilled in the corresponding fields. However, if there is a filter selected for that field, the filter’s value will take precedence over the workspace property value.
• If a field is hidden in document content type, or set to be hidden in properties form, documents will still inherit workspace properties, even if the user doesn’t see the field in the form.

Enabling Property inheritance

To enable Property inheritance for a workspace configuration:

1. Navigate to MetaShare -> Settings
2. Navigate to Workspace configurations and select your configuration from the list.
3. Locate the Property inheritance setting and check the box to enable the feature.
4. Save your changes.

If you enable Property inheritance in a workspace configuration that already has existing workspaces, the default values on the configuration’s existing workspaces will be set automatically within a few minutes and thereafter documents will inherit metadata from their workspaces. Note that existing documents in these workspaces will not inherit any metadata. If you want to force metadata inheritance to these existing documents you can contact MetaShare support.

Disabling Property inheritance

If you have enabled Property inheritance in a workspace configuration and later disable this setting, the default values on the configuration’s existing workspaces will not be removed. New workspaces will however not get any default values set. If you want to clear these default values you need to:

1. Open the workspace in SharePoint and navigate to the workspace’s document library.
2. Click Settings -> Library settings -> More library settings
3. Click the link Column default value settings under General Settings.
4. For each of the default values you want to clear:
   • Click on name of the column you want to remove the value for
   • Select Do not specify a default value for this location.
   • Click OK