This document discusses information architecture and metadata in SharePoint. It defines information architecture as the organizational structure for data formats, categories and relationships. Good information architecture increases usability, reliability and security. Metadata provides additional information about objects to facilitate organization and discovery. The document discusses managed metadata in SharePoint and how it can be used to enhance search, navigation and content management. It provides demonstrations of creating term stores and content type syndication.

1. Taming Information Chaos
Eric Shupps
SharePoint Server MVP

2. 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

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

4. Agenda
• Information Architecture
• Metadata
– Demo: Using Managed Metadata
• Taxonomy
– Demo: Creating Custom Solutions with
Managed Metadata

6. 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.

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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.

10. 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.

12. Definition of Metadata
• Data that provides
additional information
about a specific object
or collection of objects Author
Creation Date
– Structured
– Descriptive File Size
– Administrative File Extension
• Facilitates identification, Title
Keywords
organization, discovery,
and interoperability of Status
information Revision

13. 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)

14. 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

15. Metadata Components
Site Collection
List
Farm
Item
• Managed • Site • List Columns • Document
Metadata Columns • Metadata Properties
Services • Content Navigation • File
• Global Types • Key Filters Properties
Term Sets • Policies • Views • User
• Managed • Grouping Properties
• Local Term
Properties Sets • Sorting
• Enterprise • Filtering
Keywords

16. 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.

17. 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.

18. Term Stores
• Database that contains
information relating to
taxonomies.
• Each Managed
Metadata Service Group
Application is a single
instance of a term store.
• Includes groups, term Term Set
sets, terms, and
keywords.
• Web applications can Terms
have associations to
multiple term stores.

19. Groups and Term Sets
• Groups Term Store
– 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 Terms
– Configurable submission
policy and tagging
options

20. Terms
• Predefined values that
represent taxonomy Term Store
objects.
• Can be nested up to seven
levels deep. Group
• Terms can be associated
with other terms as
synonyms. Term Set
• Ability to define custom
sort order.
• Organizational terms can
be included that are not
used in data selection.

21. 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.

22. 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.

23. Syndication
Managed Metadata
Service Application
Web Application A Web Application B
Content Type Hub Content Type Subscriber

24. DEMO
Using Managed
Metadata
Creating a term store, defining
terms, and using terms in list
fields

25. 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.

26. DEMO
Content Type
Syndication
Publishing and consuming
enterprise content types

28. 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.

29. Structured Taxonomy
• Metadata is defined
administratively and
utilized by content authors. Term Store
• Term sets are created in
the term store. Term Term Term
• Content types are created
and published.
• Site collections subscribe
to one or more term Field
stores.
• Terms are available in list Field
fields for content tagging. Field

30. Unstructured Taxonomy
• Users tag content with
applicable terms Term
• Content can be rated on
Term Term
a defined scale
• Classification occurs
collaboratively, with
content consumers Field
contributing to the Field
hierarchy
• Notes allow users to Field
comment on sites,
pages or documents for
others to view

31. Taxonomy Benefits
Structured Unstructured
Enforces content organization Exposes information on how
according to established guidelines content is valued by contributors
and consumers
Ensures proper use of accepted
industry-specific terminology
Allows users to participate in
content classification
Aids compliance with regulatory
requirements
Defines ad-hoc relationships that
Provides a familiar navigational might not have been anticipated or
hierarchy envisioned

32. Publishing and Updates
• Identify which site
collections will serve
as content type hubs Hub
and which will act as
subscribers.
• Identify stakeholders Term
and create a Store
taxonomy
maintenance plan.
Subscriber
• Set schedules for a
content type hub and
subscriber updates.

33. 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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