SharePoint 2010 Managed Metadata

SharePoint 2010 Managed Metadata - What is it?

In this post I'll simply explain what Managed Metadata is in my own words. The other posts in this series are as follows (I'll update this list as they are published):

First, metadata is simply using data to describe some other data or content. Man, I really hate that definition. Basically you're describing something else. These descriptors can be used to better categorize & classify the content for future search operations.

SharePoint has always had metadata on content. Columns in lists and libraries describe their own content. So what's new in SharePoint 2010?

Microsoft added this new service application called the Managed Metadata Service application (MMS). This service application essentially has three offerings:

Taxonomies
Folksonomies
Syndicated content types

Unfortunately you won't see the first two terms in the product while they are generally accepted industry terms. Let me quickly explain each of these. By the way, when I say "spaka" below what I mean is "in SharePoint, this is also known as" to translate what these things really are into what they are called in SharePoint.

Managed Metadata Service application instance (spaka: term store)

When you see the phrase "term store" that is referring to a specific MMS instance. This is what provides the three things that follow in this post (taxonomies, folksonomies & syndicated content types).

Taxonomies (spaka: Term Sets)

A taxonomy is a bunch of words or phrases (spaka: terms) that are organized in a hierarchical structure. SharePoint does this using Term Sets. These term have a submission policy that is set to Open or Closed. An open term set is one where not only the librarians/admins can manage the terms in the set, but users can also contribute. Conversely a closed term set is one where users can not contribute terms to the hierarchy. Each term set contains Terms which can contain child terms as well as the following:

Synonyms / aliases - You can have a term "New York" and then aliases "JFK", "LGA", "ERW" for the local airports. Then users can type any of the four things and it will resolve to New York in selection & search.
Multilingual - If you have language packs installed, you can create translations of the term which essentially acts like an alias.

So how can you use term sets? You can use them with Managed Metadata columns in lists and libraries where users can pick a term for a column in the list item/document. These columns can then be used in the metadata navigation, filtering and search solutions.

Folksonomies (spaka: Keywords)

Similar to terms in a taxonomy, terms in a folksonomy can be used to tag content in libraries. However what is very different is that these lack any organization (no hierarchy, just a bucket of terms). They also lack the capability to have translations or synonyms. Anyone can add terms. Each web application has one of the MMS' it's linked to flagged as the default MMS instance for that web app and it's site collections. This default MMS instance is where all keywords will be stored for that web application. Think of these as something similar to hashtags on Twitter: anyone can create them, you don't have to use an existing one and anyone else can use what you create.

Syndicated Content Types (spaka: Enterprise Content Types)

SharePoint 2007 introduced the concept of a content type which allows you to define the schema of a type of content & use it throughout a site collection. A common complaint was to be able to reuse these across site collections. To address this Microsoft added to the MMS a process that simply replicates content types from one site collection to other site collections that subscribe to it. Microsoft & SharePoint call these enterprise content types but I call them syndicated types because they are just like regular old content types, there's just a service that copies & updates them.

When you create a MMS you can specify the URL of a site collection that acts as the hub for the content type publication service. All site collections in web applications connected to the MMS instance can subscribe to those published content types. When one is published it is created as a read only copy in the subscription site collection. This is to ensure they are always the same when they are updated in the future. If you want to customize one, you simply create a new content type that inherits from it and make changes to the child content type.

So that's basically a wrap up of what Managed Metadata, what the MMS is and what it offers. More to come in this series!

posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 7:25 AM

Feedback

# re: SharePoint 2010 Managed Metadata - What is it? 6/17/2011 5:32 PM Nik Patel

If you already have a site collection with site content types, can you provision new instance of MMS and have site collection publish existing site content types and have it consumed/replicated in the new consumer site collections.

Does Syndicated Content Types requires MMS first provisioned before creating publishing content types in publishing site collection to consume in other site collection?

Nik

# re: SharePoint 2010 Managed Metadata - What is it? 6/21/2011 8:00 AM AC [MVP SharePoint]

@Nik - Not sure... you'll have to test that (but I don't think you have to have one done before the other).

# re: SharePoint 2010 Managed Metadata - What is it? 6/29/2011 11:53 AM Pat Miller

@Nik - if you already have a site collection set up with your primary content types that you want to share across the enterprise, when you create your metadata service, you can choose that site collection as the content type hub.

# re: SharePoint 2010 Managed Metadata - What is it? 7/6/2011 12:02 AM Jac White

Thanks for the explanation for Managed Metadata with a Info/Records background the description of the terms in SP is ambigious. So the Term Set is a "blend" of a taxo/thesaurus - broad terms, narrow terms can the Synonyms/Alias be tweaked to be used as associated and NP's (non-preferred terms).

Still unclear about Content Type does this have any hierarchical relationship with the Taxo's broad/narrow term or can be used independently from the Taxo? Would like to understand the relationship to determine if it could be used for assign retention periods and auto queuing to dashboards, update intranet reference material e.g. governance info.

Ta

# re: SharePoint 2010 Managed Metadata - What is it? 7/6/2011 7:26 AM AC [MVP SharePoint]

@Jac - That's correct (how you understand term sets). As for content types, there is zero relationship to term sets. Think like this: taxonomies are used to describe content. A content type is used to define the schema of a type of content (what fields of metadata each item can/must contain).

# Retention and Taxonomy/Metadata 7/28/2011 3:48 AM Jac White

Ok the more I try to understand this space the harder it seems I guess coming from IM and not IT programming. The terms used in SP are very misleading as they dont use industry terms or use the term with a different meaning/use. In standard EDM apps we create a classification in the RM component (RM Centre) as it assigns retention and contains critical functionality to manage records. The classification also assists in hierarical searching and management of the "records" thoughout its lifecycle even when classification terms change. We also tag the classified document for search, retrieval, virtual library functionality.

Can you tell explain why the MM/taxo does not have retention? Why would you assign retention to a Content Type. What am I missing about a Content type?

# re: SharePoint 2010 Managed Metadata - What is it? 7/29/2011 11:49 AM AC [MVP SharePoint]

@Jac - I think you want to look at this a different way. MM is there to help you tag & classify content. You can create a retention policy that states how long content would stay around... this can have rules applied to it that use the classification of the content as a type of criteria.

As for content types, they define all the different types of metadata that can exist on a piece of content.

In a sense, this is much more flexible than a typical ECM scenario.

# re: SharePoint 2010 Managed Metadata - What is it? 10/5/2011 4:57 PM tdog

Could i use a column that points to managed metadata that is a replication of my folder structure which is effectively a fileplan.
This approach would negate the need for lots of content types as the managed metadata effectively would be covering this off.

Any thoughts/limitations/besta practise guoidance.

Has the sharepoint world recognised that if the fileplan is right and reflected in managed metadata and added as a metadata column to a content type, then if there are no templates in use and no specifc business processes to be applied to the content then this could allow an organisation to take the pain out of identifying content types?

Any thoughts gladly accepted.

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