Document Management in SharePoint without folders - Introduction to Metadata
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Transcript of Document Management in SharePoint without folders - Introduction to Metadata
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DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT IN SHAREPOINT WITHOUT FOLDERS
INTRODUCTION TO METADATASTEP BY STEP GUIDE
GREGORY ZELFOND
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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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About SharePoint Maven
I HELP ORGANIZATIONS TO UNLOCK THE POWER OF SHAREPOINT
MIGRATION CONSULTING TRAINING
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Super Easy…
A guide so easy to understand...
…You’ll feel like a king at the end
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1. What’s wrong with Folders?
2. Intro to Metadata
3. Step-by-Step on how to setup SharePoint Metadata
This presentation will cover…
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What’s wrong with Folders?
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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 Task…
It’s 4:45 PM and you have to leave work at 5 PMto pickup your kids from school. Your boss hasasked you to pull ALL Project Proposals forCustomer B ever completed. Good luck!
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Your problem…
Each customer folder (i.e. Microsoft), containstens of projects. Each of the project folderscontains 1 to 3 versions of proposals. Oh yeah,and you have folders from 1999 to 2014…
3 Proposals3 Proposals1 Proposal2 Proposals
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Your reaction…
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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 posthttp://sharepointmaven.com/12-reasons-folders-sharepoint-bad-idea/
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Intro to Metadata
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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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Surprise! You are using Metadata every day!
Check out 3 examples on the following slides
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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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Metadata Example # 2 – Facebook
Have you ever Tagged people on Facebook?
Ever wondered how Facebook manages to pull your friends’ photos from various albums?
Imagine if Facebook used hierarchical folders to organize photos of your friends?
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Metadata Example # 3 – your computer
Thanks to metadata - you can sort by file size, document type and file name on your PC1. Right-click on any file name
2. Choose Properties
This is all metadata!!!
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Let’s switch to SharePoint now
Screenshots and instructions captured on following slides are based on Office 365 SharePoint
Same exact functionality exists in SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010 andSharePoint 2013
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Solving the mystery of SharePoint Metadata
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Default SharePoint Metadata
Recognize this? They are default columns you get with any
SharePoint Document Library
Data in columns is actually… Metadata!!!
That’s right, simply put, Column info = Metadata
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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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Time to get intimate with Metadata!
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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 1 – Settings & Permissions
Worthwhile to browse through and get familiar, but don’t worry about this section for now, we don’t need it to create columns (metadata)
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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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It takes TWO to TANGO!!!
Metadata success depends on two components:
Columns & Views
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Creating Columns
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Let’s create a Column called “Year”
From Library Settings Page, click Create Column
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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 repeat for Customers, Projects and Document Types
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Success!
We got our new columns appearing on Settings page now!
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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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Customized Document Library
This is how document library looks like after tagging the docs
4 new columns with metadata now appear By the way, you can always change
tags easily by clicking“Edit properties” on the file
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Let’s upload few more docs
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Some Quick Wins with Metadata
1. Click on Drop-down next to column name to filter based on metadata
2. Click on any of the Column names to sort by that column
Try that with folders!
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Creating Views
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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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Give your View a Name
Give it a name and specify whether view is for yourself only (personal) or everyone to enjoy (public)
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Which columns to display in a View?
This is where you control which columns to display and also in which order (from left)
Let’s uncheck Year and Customer and only display Project Name Column
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View sorting options…
This is where you can choose how to sort things Let’s sort it by Project Name and then by Created
By
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View filtering options…
You can then specify if you want to filter for certain data
You can “build” sorting and filtering into the View, so you do not have to manually do it all the time
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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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Success! Our data is now organized by Year! Let’s expand the Year’s group – we also see roll-up by
the Customer (remember on previous slide we told to group by year and then by customer?) It did just that!
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Success – cont’d
Let’s now expand the customer group as well
We now have all our files organized neatly in groups (bonus - it even tells you # of files in each group in parenthesis)
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Important!
SharePoint only allows Maximum of 2 levels of groups in a view (i.e. Year & Customers, Customers & Projects)
However, You can easily create as many additional views as you want to slice and dice the data the way you want
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Remember that “Get all proposals” Task from Slide 5?
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Creating a view in under 1 minute…
Create a view called By Customer
Filter on: Document type is equal to Project Proposal
Group by Customer, then group by Project
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And here we go…
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What’s in it for me?
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So, which scenario do you prefer?
OR
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Cool stuff you can do with Metadata
Lots of Views
Sorting
Grouping
–2 levels max
Filtering
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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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Example: Datasheet (Quick Edit) View
You can edit metadata right in this Excel-like Table. Saves lots of clicks and time!
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Frequently Asked Questions, cont’d
Q: So, are folders a big NO in SharePoint?
A: Not necessarily. Under certain circumstances they work
– Flat structure (i.e. Photo Albums)
– Very structured document environment that whole organization follows
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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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Convinced that Metadata is the way to go?
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Need help with SharePoint?
SharePoint Site Configuration and Customization
Document Migration to SharePoint
SharePoint Implementation Strategy
SharePoint Training
SharePoint User Adoption
SharePoint Governance
SharePoint Project Management
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THANK YOU!
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Email: [email protected]
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View: www.slideshare.net/gzelfond
Get in touch if you have questions