Step-by-Step Guide to Document Management
in SharePoint. Part I – Introduction to Metadata
What’s wrong with Folders?
Intro to Metadata
Step-by-Step on how to setup SharePoint Metadata
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About Me
Gregory Zelfond
10+ years of experience with SharePoint
SharePoint advocate, blogger
Love to solve business problems using code-free, out of
the box SharePoint configurations
Owner of SharePoint Maven (sharepointmaven.com)
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Real-life scenario
You are in an organization that runs hundreds of projects
annually
The files are organized by Year on shared drive. Each Year has a
folder (2014, 2013… all the way to 1999)
Each Year Folder has sub-folders with Names of Customers
served during that year (Customer A, Customer B, etc.)
Each Customer Folder has sub-folders with Names of Projects
executed for that customer (Project A, Project B, etc.)
Each Project Folder contains Documents that are part of certain
project (Project Charter, Project Proposal, etc.)
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Your problem…
Each customer folder (i.e. Microsoft), contains
tens of projects. Each of the project folders
contains 1 to 3 versions of proposals. Oh yeah,
and you have folders from 1999 to 2014…
3 Proposals
3 Proposals
1 Proposal
2 Proposals
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Business Case Against Folders
1. Usability
2. URL length limitation
3. Moving File URL
4. Security
5. User experience
6. File duplication
7. 1 Lonely View
8. Can’t Sort & Filter
9. Change is hard
10. Lost documents
11. Navigation
12. Cost
For more info and detailed description on above
reasons, check out this blog post
http://sharepointmaven.com/12-reasons-folders-sharepoint-bad-idea/
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What is Metadata?
Metadata is data that describes additional
information about a file or a document
Example: Word Document “Project
Proposal.doc” might have the following
metadata that further describes what the file
is about:
– Customer Name
– Project Name
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Metadata Example # 1 – Amazon.com
This is all metadata!!!
Ever done online shopping?
Metadata allows you to easily
filter by shoe size, style, brand,
etc.
Imagine if Amazon organized
shoes in Folders by Brand – how
would you find all the available
shoes for your size?
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Default SharePoint Metadata – cont’d
Previous example showed a single document
uploaded to Document Library
No customization was done to the Document
Library whatsoever
So, to create your own Metadata, you
basically need to create new columns with
properties (metadata)!
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Solving the folder problem with Metadata
To make it relevant, let’s use the example from
few slides ago on project documents stored in
Folders (Years) and Sub-Folders (Customer Name
and Project Name)
Let’s solve this problem by using SharePoint
Metadata! (sorry, columns)
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Access Document Library Settings page
Click on Document Library name
From Ribbon that appears up top, click on Library
Settings
Settings page will appear – this is the main
control panel for your document library
Settings page has 3 sections – let’s get to know it
little better
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Section 2 – Columns
These are default (out of the box) columns (metadata) you
get with SharePoint Document Library
This section is where you can control your columns
(metadata) by creating new ones, editing or deleting
existing. This is where we’ll spend most of the time
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Section 3 - Views
Views help you slice and dice your information
This is where you can organize your documents
according to metadata created
Remember the shopping site example where you
could filter by shoe type, brand, price or size?
This is where we will tell SharePoint how to
organize data for us in the context of the
documents
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Create Column Screen
Enter Column Name
– In our case “Year”
Different types of Data
– We want to choose from menu
Optional, skip for now
Let’s make this field mandatory
This is where we specify all choices
for the column
And that’s how we want to choose
the data (from drop-down)
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Let’s Test Drive what we created so far…
Go ahead and upload a new document to the document library.
See anything different?
Yes! You are now presented with additional screen prompting
you to choose the metadata we just created. Choose it from
drop-downs, hit Save
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Create a custom view
By Default, you get only 1 view called All Documents
Let’s now create alternate views to make use of the metadata
Once again, you will need to go to Library Settings
All the way at the bottom of the page, click Create View
On next screen that comes up, choose Standard View (most frequent type)
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Grouping – As close to folders as it gets!
Grouping allows to group (roll up) files by common/identical
metadata (columns)
Click the + Sign next to Group By
That’s where we can specify how to group data
In our case we want to group by Year in descending order
(2014, 2013, 2012, etc.) and by Customer in ascending
(alphabetical) order
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Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What if I need to upload multiple
documents at once? Do I need to tag each one
separately?
A: For most users, you are better off uploading
one by one. However, you can also use
Datasheet View (called Quick Edit View in
SharePoint 2013/Office 365)
– NOTE: you have to use Internet Explorer Browser for
this feature in SharePoint 2007, 2010.
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Frequently Asked Questions, cont’d
Q: I used to set permissions (security group
access) at a folder level. How would I do it
with meta-data if there are no more folders?
A: The best practice is to control security at a
site level. Managing security at a folder, or
worse – document level, is a nightmare.
Determine different levels of security you
need and organize data in corresponding sites
and document libraries
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