Taming Information Chaos

Eric Shupps

SharePoint Server MVP

About Me

• SharePoint Server MVP

• President, BinaryWave

• Microsoft Patterns & Practices (spg.codeplex.com)

• CKS:DEV (cksdev.codeplex.com)

• Web: www.binarywave.com

• Blog: www.sharepointcowboy.com

• Twitter: @eshupps

• Facebook: www.facebook.com/sharepointcowboy

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/sharepoint/hh126808

Agenda

• Information Architecture

• Metadata

– Demo: Using Managed Metadata

• Taxonomy

– Demo: Creating Custom Solutions with

Managed Metadata

What Is Information Architecture?

• An organizational structure for specific formats, categories, and relationship of data

• Organization of the various SharePoint entities and objects: – Planning for the type and number of entities

– Scalability and performance considerations

• Navigation structure

• Information architecture continues beyond container structure into content types and metadata planning.

Why Does it Matter?

• Increases the chances that the solution design will be usable, reliable, and secure

• It’s often neglected during SharePoint projects, but is critical for success!

• Risks for not planning information architecture: – Decreased usability and findability

– Performance and reliability issues

– Lack of user adoption

– Costly future enhancements

Usability and Findability

• How easily can the consumer either locate or discover information through navigation?

• How reliably can the consumer find information through the search interface?

• Consistency is key for discovery.

• SharePoint metadata is key for search:

– Site columns

– Content types: • Enterprise content types

• Local

– Managed metadata

Manageability

• How efficient is the authoring experience?

• How distributed is the content?

• How distributed are the managers?

• Minimize the “places” that authors and managers have to “visit” to do their job.

• Maximize the visibility and control of content in each user’s area of responsibility.

Security

• SharePoint provides the capability to manage security broadly or on a granular level down to the item.

• Typically, security is managed at the site collection and inherited down to all objects unless broken manually. – When pages are loaded, SharePoint needs to check the

security on all the objects being rendered.

– Breaking security inheritance puts a greater burden on the server, thus hurting performance.

• Consider security and organizational boundaries when planning information architecture.

Definition of Metadata

• Data that provides additional information about a specific object or collection of objects – Structured

– Descriptive

– Administrative

• Facilitates identification, organization, discovery, and interoperability of information

Author

Creation Date

File Size

File Extension

Title

Keywords

Status

Revision

Benefits of Metadata

• Provides organizational structure for disparate types of data

• Supports rapid location of information

• Enhances navigation

• Enables advanced sorting, filtering, and grouping capabilities

• Allows for differentiation of similar objects

• Contributes to ranking and categorization within search results

• Supports data portability (content without context)

Metadata in SharePoint 2010

• Intrinsic – File Size

– Item Type

• Derived – Created By

– Created Date

– Modified By

– Modified Date

• Declared – List/Library Fields

– Terms

– Document Properties

Metadata Components Fa

rm

• Managed Metadata Services

• Global Term Sets

• Managed Properties

• Enterprise Keywords

Site

Co

llect

ion

• Site

Columns

• Content Types

• Policies

• Local Term Sets

List

•List Columns

•Metadata Navigation

•Key Filters

•Views

•Grouping

•Sorting

•Filtering

Ite

m

•Document Properties

•File Properties

•User Properties

Metadata and Search

• Quality and quantity of metadata influence result precision and fidelity.

• Custom ranking models permit fine-grained control over search result elevation.

• Managed properties permit custom fields to be included in search indexes, scopes ,and queries.

• Refiners allow users to drill into result sets based on metadata values.

• Authoritative pages, keywords, best bets, synonyms, and other parameters improve quality of search results.

Metadata Planning

• Identify common information types and required properties.

• Determine which data elements should be immutable (closed) and which can be left to the user’s discretion (open).

• Identify syndication requirements and managed metadata service application needs.

• Define term store roles and memberships.

• Specify language requirements.

• Group terms into a logical hierarchy.

• Create term sets and terms.

Term Stores

• Database that contains information relating to taxonomies.

• Each Managed Metadata Service Application is a single instance of a term store.

• Includes groups, term sets, terms, and keywords.

• Web applications can have associations to multiple term stores.

Group

Term Set

Terms

Groups and Term Sets

• Groups – Contain one or more

term sets

– Provide a security boundary for term set administration (managers, contributors)

• Term Sets – Containers used to

organize terms

– May assign stakeholders

– Configurable submission policy and tagging options

Term Store

Terms

Terms

• Predefined values that represent taxonomy objects.

• Can be nested up to seven levels deep.

• Terms can be associated with other terms as synonyms.

• Ability to define custom sort order.

• Organizational terms can be included that are not used in data selection.

Group

Term Set

Term Store

Managed Properties

• Metadata can be used in search scopes and

queries.

• Custom fields must be defined as a managed

property in Search Administration.

• Multiple fields can be assigned to a single

managed property.

Metadata Navigation

• Expands the capabilities of list views to make locating information easier.

• Navigational hierarchies display items with matching values. Descendent terms are included by default.

• Key filters permit expanding filtering for multiple terms.

• Column indexing allows queries that return result sets larger than defined thresholds.

Syndication

Managed Metadata Service Application

Content Type Subscriber

Web Application A

Content Type Hub

Web Application B

DEMO Using Managed

Metadata Creating a term store, defining terms, and using terms in list fields

Multilingual Considerations

• Each term store can have one default language and multiple working languages. – Requires language pack to be installed for each

language

• Each term can have multiple labels defined for each working language. – One default label per language

• Custom sort orders are applied to all languages in a term set.

• Terms are presented in the user’s preferred language.

DEMO Content Type

Syndication

Publishing and consuming

enterprise content types

Taxonomy Definition

• Classification of data.

• Structured taxonomies organize data according to pre-defined relationships.

• Unstructured taxonomies (Folksonomy) allow users to tag content and create ad-hoc organizational structures.

Structured Taxonomy

• Metadata is defined administratively and utilized by content authors.

• Term sets are created in the term store.

• Content types are created and published.

• Site collections subscribe to one or more term stores.

• Terms are available in list fields for content tagging.

Term Store

Term Term Term

Field

Field

Field

Unstructured Taxonomy

• Users tag content with applicable terms

• Content can be rated on a defined scale

• Classification occurs collaboratively, with content consumers contributing to the hierarchy

• Notes allow users to comment on sites, pages or documents for others to view

Field

Field

Field

Term

Term

Term

Taxonomy Benefits

Structured

Enforces content organization according to established guidelines

Ensures proper use of accepted industry-specific terminology

Aids compliance with regulatory requirements

Provides a familiar navigational hierarchy

Unstructured

Exposes information on how content is valued by contributors

and consumers

Allows users to participate in content classification

Defines ad-hoc relationships that might not have been anticipated or

envisioned

Publishing and Updates

• Identify which site collections will serve as content type hubs and which will act as subscribers.

• Identify stakeholders and create a taxonomy maintenance plan.

• Set schedules for a content type hub and subscriber updates.

Hub

Term Store

Subscriber

Importing Metadata

• Managed metadata can be imported from external

sources into the term store.

• Organize into logical groups, term sets, and terms prior to

import.

• Format data into a comma-delimited .csv file.

• Synonyms and translations must be specified within the

term store management interface.

"Term Set Name","Term Set Description","LCID","Available for Tagging","Term Description","Level 1 Term","Level 2 Term","Level 3 Term","Level 4 Term","Level 5 Term","Level 6 Term","Level 7 Term" "Sites","Locations where the organization has offices",,TRUE,,,,,,,, ,,1033,TRUE,,"North America",,,,,, ,,1033,TRUE,,"North America","Washington",,,,, ,,1033,TRUE,,"North America","Washington","Redmond",,,, ,,1033,TRUE,,"North America","Washington","Seattle",,,, ,,1033,TRUE,,"North America","Washington","Tacoma",,,, ,,1033,TRUE,,"North America","Massachusetts","Cambridge",,,,

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