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MetaVis Technologies Newsletter - July
Don't Let SharePoint Become Your Digital Landfill
Have you seen the latest SharePoint report from the Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM)? According to AIIM many SharePoint implementations lack clear goals, policies and governance.  AIIM found that little thought is given to e-discovery, retention policies and most of all classification schemes and metadata standards.  One article had Doug Miles, UK managing director at AIIM Europe saying that without planning and governance, SharePoint becomes a digital landfill.  
 
At MetaVis, we don't want this to happen to your organization. To get the most out of SharePoint you need careful planning across all groups - IT, records management, business users and corporate. The key to SharePoint is effective organization. By designing SharePoint sites to incorporate metadata and taxonomy structures you can organize your content for improved search, documentation and governance.  Most importantly you avoid creating your own content landfill.
 
Check out the recent AIIM survey (free with registration) to read more and see AIIM's tips on creating a governance policies.
 
-The MetaVis Team
Managing SharePoint 2010 Taxonomies with Managed Metadata Service
One of the most powerful features in SharePoint 2010 is Managed Metadata Columns. These columns allow users to pick values for a custom field from a large list of values using an easy and efficient GUI with hierarchical selections, filtering and type-ahead capabilities.  Allowing users to add metadata makes SharePoint content more searchable and useful within an organization.
 
For the best utilization of the managed metadata columns feature users should rely on the hierarchical lists of values known as taxonomies. Taxonomies can be created by administrators or power users, librarians or taxonomists. Taxonomies can also be created by the content authors tagging content with new metadata. In this latter case managed metadata columns may be configured to accept new values from the users. These values will be inserted into taxonomies at the time the content gets tagged. 
 
Taxonomy 101
 
SharePoint Taxonomies are defined in Term Stores. Term Store is one of the objects managed by SharePoint 2010's new Managed Metadata Service feature. Term stores as well as terms inside them are shared between multiple site collections on the same server farm. This feature allows managed metadata columns from different site collections to refer to the same terms. Term stores contain taxonomy groups. Groups allow administrators to set up term set security governing permissions for managers and contributors for all terms in the group. Each group may contain several Term Sets. Each Term Set may define a certain topic and contain a hierarchy of terms. A term is a basic building block of SharePoint 2010 taxonomies. A term defines a value that can be selected by a user with managed metadata column. Terms may also contain hierarchies of other terms. 
 
Managing Taxonomies
 
SharePoint 2010 provides administration for taxonomies in the Central Administration site. The taxonomy management screen is also accessible from the site properties panel. Taxonomy management in SharePoint 2010 even includes approval workflow for terms with delayed publishing or certain term hierarchies at the given time. However there is no easy way to re-organize different branches of the taxonomy hierarchy, merge several branches in one or copy term trees between term sets. The need to do this often arises when taxonomies get collected by the power users using editable managed metadata columns and then need to be re-organized by administrators to present best selection hierarchies for the regular authors or content taggers to use. The other need that often arises when managing taxonomies is to copy term sets or parts of the term set tree to completely different SharePoint server farm.
 
As SharePoint users and taxonomists, we know the value in having basic copy operations with terms available to the SharePoint 2010 community.  As a result, MetaVis recently added Term Store Manager to MetaVis Migrator for SharePoint . It allows you to copy any object from the term group and down the hierarchy and paste it to any other object inside the same hierarchy, to the other server or in the middle of the taxonomy tree of the other server farm. 
 
MetaVis Migrator is available as part of the MetaVis Architect Suite or as a standalone product.  Check out the new functionality with a free trial download at http://www.metavistech.com/downloads
SharePoint Tip: Maintaining Created / Modified Properties While Copying Or Tagging Documents
Each SharePoint item and document has special Created By, Created At, Modified By and Modified At properties that can be seen on the item's View Properties screen. These properties are not editable with SharePoint GUI but sometimes it is desirable to keep these properties while copying a document from one location to the other one, uploading a file from file system or re-classifying the document with new content type or field values.
 
Below are some typical cases that would benefit from maintaining original values for these "core" properties at the time of moving, copying or uploading an item:
 
  • Created At property could be used to enforce document retention policy. During its life-cycle document may travel from file system to a list in SharePoint and to another SharePoint site. In this case it would be benefitial to keep the created date of the original document instead of the date of  moving to a new location. 
  • Created By property could be used in a navigational list view with a grouping that includes the original document author. Unless this property will be preserved during document copy, the document would not be found in the author category it belongs in.
  • Modified At property could be an indicator of items that have been recently changed. The change would trigger a special workflow for an item or cause a notification. In case of maintenance (not business related) changes such business related activities should be waved. These maintenance changes may include mass enhancement of metadata of simple copying items to another location.
 
Both MetaVis Classifier and MetaVis Migrator optionally allow user to maintain Created By, Created At, Modified By and Modified At properties during item tag, copy or file upload to SharePoint. To enable this functionality a special product called MetaVis Core Properties Service has to be installed on the destination SharePoint server - the one where these properties values should be maintained.
 
After MetaVis Core Properties Service has been installed on the destination SharePoint server, MetaVis Classifier and Migrator products detect it automatically during items copy. In this case MetaVis displays all four created / modified properties on the Copy Wizard Properties screen. By default these properties are set up to keep original value they had on the source item but there are several other possibilities listed below for defining their values during items copy or tag. Note that any of these cases could be applied to any of four core properties independently. 
 
  • Copy value to the property from the same property of the source item (Create At to Create At, Modified By to Modified By, etc). This is the default choice on the Properties screen of the Copy Wizard. This choice maintains the original created / modified property value as it was in the source item whether it was located in other SharePoint site or on file system.
  • Copy value to the property from the other property of the source item. This option allows to set Modified At field to the value of the Created At field of the original item or to copy a value from a custom Person or Group column to a Created By field.
  • Let SharePoint set this property. This option does not copy any values. After the item copy, Created At and Modified At properties of a newly copied items will be set to the current time, Created By and Modified By fields will be set to the current user. After tag or copy to the new version only Modified properties would be set to current time and user.
  • Set certain value for this property. A user for Created By or Modified By fields could be selected from the list of users. Date and time for Created At or Modified At fields could be selected using calendar control. 

When bulk list or site copy is performed instead of item level copy MetaVis Migrator will preserve all four created / modified properties from the original source item. MetaVis Migrator will also preserve all four created / modified properties if "Keep Original Content Type" option is selected on the Properties screen of the Copy / Tag Wizard during item level copy.
 
These flexible choices allow SharePoint users to plan each copy or tag process with respect to the intended use of a document or an item during its life-cycle.
MetaVis Technologies is a provider of software that extends the value of Microsoft SharePoint by enhancing search, findability and e-discovery. MetaVis products allow information architects and administrators to develop and maintain reusable taxonomies and better organize SharePoint content.

MetaVis Technologies                           MetaVis Technologies
In This Issue
Filter Based Content Migration
Copy SharePoint List
 
New:  
SharePoint 2010
Team Site Poster
 
SharePoint 2010 Team Site Poster
Free Download 
 
 
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www.metavistech.com
 
Email: info@metavistech.com 
 

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