Guest Author: Jeff Carr

SharePoint 2010 offers centralized taxonomy and metadata management as part of the Term Store Management Tool. What it does is enable you to organize your vocabularies into Groups which are then comprised of one or more Term Sets. Vocabularies within a Term Set can be either a flat list or hierarchy of individual Terms. Term Sets, or subsets thereof, can then be bound to Managed Metadata columns and surfaced to users as part of the tagging process. These columns can be associated with a content type or an individual library/list itself.

What this means on the taxonomy and metadata management side in terms of site columns is that unlike in SharePoint 2007, you no longer have to create lists of values and associated (lookup) site columns to implement managed lists of terms. Managed Metadata columns are able to be bound from anywhere in any site collection to a controlled vocabulary as long as it has been created as part of the Term Store.

Managed Metadata can then be leveraged as navigation in a document library/list through display in the quick launch allowing users to browse bound Term Sets to select values from which to filter the view of that library/list (also available as part of the column headers). You can select between Navigation Hierarchies, which offer an expandable and collapsible hierarchy based on taxonomic value or Key Filters, which allow users to enter keywords into a text field and search against the taxonomy to find terms to apply as filters. Managed Metadata can also be surfaced through the Refinement Panel in search to offer the ability to easily refine a result set based on metadata property such as File Type, Site, Author or Modified Date.

There’s also the Managed Keywords column which enables users to apply terminology to content as metadata in a folksonomic way that make sense to them, rather than being forced to select from a list of more controlled taxonomic terms. Managed Keywords are stored as a flat list and can be surfaced as navigation through the Tag Cloud web part or again as part of the search UI in the Refinement Panel.

Hope this helps!
Jeff

Guest Author: Jeff Carr

Jeff Carr is an Information Architect and Search Consultant with Earley & Associates specializing in user centered information design. Working with SharePoint since 2003, he has been involved in the design, development and integration of web-based solutions from intranets and extranets to public facing websites for a variety of large enterprises across a wide range of industries.