Document ID service in SharePoint 2010

SharePoint 2010 includes a new Site Collection scoped Feature called the Document ID Service.  As most of you might be aware that in a traditional ECM [Enterprise Content Management] application each content object has its own unique ID, which is used by that object throughout its lifetime in the ECM system, no matter where the file was placed in the system. Once enabled all your documents within a Site Collection will have a unique ID and can be located using the ID no matter where the file is located in your Site Collection.

To enable the Document ID Feature

1. Go to Site Settings > Site Collection Features and Activate the Document ID Service.

2. Or you can use the following SharePoint 2010 Management Shell cmdlet to Activate the Document ID Service.

Enable-SPFeature -id docid -url <site collection url>

After Activating the Feature you can find the “Document ID settings” under Site Collection Administration

3. To customize the Document ID and apply Document ID to all existing Documents in the Site Collection. Go to Site Settings > Document ID Settings and provide the String with which the Document ID will begin. I have provided SP2010 for this example. Click Ok.

You might see this message, "Configuration of the Document ID feature is scheduled to be completed by an automated process." as highlighted in the image:

This message is shown because the timer job called Document ID enable/disable job has been activated. 

Run the Document ID assignment job under Central Administration > Monitoring > Review Job Definitions Once the job completes at the scheduled time, the message will go away or else you may run the timer job and put it to completion forcibly by clicking "Run Now". Or you can run the following SharePoint 2010 Management Shell cmdlet to trigger the same.

Start-SPTimerJob -Identity DocIdAssignment

Now if you go to your document properties you should see, it has a new property called Document ID followed by a Unique ID for that document

4. The above document now has a unique ID and we can use the following link to locate the document no matter where the document is in the Site Collection

http://SP2010:1234/_layouts/DocIdRedir.aspx?ID=SP2010-1-1