Looking Under the Hood: How Your Metadata Strategy Impacts Everything You Do

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cbuck@axceler.com 425.246.2823 @buckleyplanet http://buckleyplanet.com

Looking Under the Hood:How Your Metadata Strategy Impacts

Everything You DoChristian Buckley

cbuck@axceler.com@buckleyPLANET

SharePoint Saturday Los Angeles

April 2nd, 2011

My Background

Christian Buckley, Director of Product Evangelism at Axceler

• Most recently at Microsoft

• Microsoft Managed Services (now BPOS-Dedicated)

• Advertising Operations, ad platform API program

• Prior to Microsoft, was a senior consultant, working in the software, supply chain, and grid technology spaces focusing on collaboration

• Co-founded and sold a collaboration software company to Rational Software. Also co-authored 3 books on software configuration management and defect tracking for Rational and IBM

• At another startup (E2open), helped design, build, and deploy a SharePoint-like collaboration platform (Collaboration Manager), managing deployment teams to onboard numerous high-tech manufacturing companies, including Hitachi, Matsushita, Seagate, Nortel, Sony, and Cisco

• I live in a small town just east of Seattle, have a daughter in college and 3 boys at home, and I just celebrated my 20th wedding anniversary

Axceler Overview

• Improving Collaboration for 16+ Years– Mission: To enable enterprises to simplify, optimize, and

secure their collaborative platforms– Delivered award-winning administration and migration

software since 1994– Over 2,000 global customers

• Dramatically improve the management of SharePoint

– Innovative products that improve security, scalability, reliability, “deployability”

– Making IT more effective and efficient and lower the total cost of ownership

• Focus on solving specific SharePoint problems (Administration & Migration)

– Coach enterprises on SharePoint best practices– Give administrators the most innovative tools available– Anticipate customers’ needs– Deliver best of breed offerings– Stay in lock step with SharePoint development and market trends

The #1 reason why your 2010 deployment will fail

What are you trying to accomplish with SharePoint?

Some questions for you…

What was missing from your previous attempts?

What is your metadata Strategy for 2010?

What is metadata, anyway?

Where’s the metadata?

cbuck@echotechnology.com 425.246.2823 @buckleyplanet http://buckleyplanet.net

• Book title• Author• ISBN• Publisher

• Name• Account Number• Credit Card• Social Security #• Billing Address

• Device ID• Email• Software version

Metadata enables you to flag, tag, and avoid

• Travel dates• City visiting• Flight number• GPS position

• Friend’s Name• City visiting• GPS position• Distance to friend• Avoidance Flag = Yes

• Name• Account Number• Mileage to date• Home town

• Status• Approval• Check in / check out• Version

• User name• Department• Title• Role• Project

• Document name• File type• Author• Description• Page number• Retention rules

Metadata 101

Location

Author Title

ISBN PublisherTopics

Asset TypeCompany

Asset Number

Barcode Tracking Number

Color code

(by department)

• Metadata is the lifeblood of SharePoint

• Taxonomy and metadata drive the tools and processes that make the world go round

• Metadata powers search,

it powers social media,

and it powers SharePoint

The role of metadata

Why aren’t my end users using SharePoint?

Metadata

Taxonomy Ad Hoc

Social Media

Search

End Users

• Ad-hoc content migration leads to junk in portal• Legacy content gets migrated slowly, if at all • Inconsistent taxonomy across farms and site collections• People author locally - multiplies problems globally• Authors don’t apply metadata= “shotgun” approach to search OR

Authors apply metadata without common classification = better search, but worse authoring experience

• Portal lacks high fidelity search• User can’t find the right content• As a result, poor portal adoption and low user satisfaction

What Happens Without Strategy

• The islands of information have been moved to SharePoint. And?

• You can’t find anything

• You can’t tell who owns what

• You can’t tell what’s new, what’s old, or what has changed

• It’s all disconnected

Why SharePoint Needs Metadata Strategy

Taxonomy

In Biology, taxonomy is the science dealing with the description, identification, naming, and classification of organisms. “however, the term is now applied in a wider, more general sense and now may refer to a classification of things, as well as to the principles underlying such a classification.”

~Wikipedia.org

Your Current Taxonomy

Site architecture is centrally controlled

Metadata is always applied to content

Site Columns and Content Types are created at site collection root

Lists get “bundles” of columns

PROSImproves consistency

Reduces metadata duplication

Easy to update

Easy to support and train on

Allows document-level DIP, Workflow, Information Policies, and document templates

CONSRequires planning

Requires upfront work

Hard to manage across site collections and portals

Site architecture is ad-hoc

Metadata may not be applied to content

Columns are created on lists

Columns are combined in an ad-hoc basis on each list

PROSRequires no planning

Requires little upfront effort

Works across site collections and portals

CONSDecreases consistency

Increases metadata duplication

Hard to update

Hard to support and train on

Only allows list-level Workflow, Information Policies and document templates

Difficult to reverse

CENTRALIZED DECENTRALIZED

Managing Metadata

• What is your broader strategy for tagging, metadata and taxonomy?

• Map out your high level taxonomy (web applications and site collections) and schemas (Content Types)

• Understand your current-state and future-state plans, and how they relate to your metadata

Managed Metadata Service

Term Stores

Improved Governance

How is metadata managed inside of SharePoint?

Tier 1 site collections based on business units or product areas

Top level portal

Tier 2 sites that follow specific structure

• SharePoint 2010 offers many services OOTB– Search– Excel Services– BCS– Project Server– Web Analytics– Access– Performance Point– Visio– Word– Office Web Apps– People

• These centrally managed services allow for greater control across the enterprise– Have your cake and eat it through centrally managed services

The Role of Services

• It is a service application created by a Farm Administrator• It is added to a farm’s default list• You can also create a content type hub, which is a URL

to a site collection

What is Behind Managed Metadata

• It’s basically a definition of an artifact that can be stored in a SharePoint site. For example:– A project document, including

• File type• Date created• Author• Last modified

– It is part of a workflow, including• Who needs to approve• Date of approval

– It includes information management policies that• Cannot be edited once approved

Content Type

Content types may be applied for each site collection

…or for certain sites

• Content types can be shared• Create a content type hub, which is an blank site

collection used to publish content types• Publish the content types• Consume them• Content types become visible in subscriber’s

content type galleries

Syndication

Managing Terms

Service Application Instance

Term Group

Term Set

• Create a term set and terms• Use the managed metadata• Pick the terms

• Understand the term group properties– Group name– Description– Contributors– Group Managers

• Understand the term store properties– Term store administrators– Default and working languages

Managing Your Term Groups and Stores

• Enterprise keywords• Folksonomy• Social tagging

Keywords

• Term Set = Taxonomy– Includes related terms– Managed through governance policies

• Managed Metadata Column– Can be in a list, a library, or a content type– Associated with a term set– Found through Managed Metadata term set

• Keywords set = Folksonomy– User generated tags– Anyone can add them– Requires ongoing governance

What is the role of governance?

1. Have a plan

2. Create an internal SharePoint user group

3. Clearly define roles and responsibilities

4. Outline your taxonomy, communicate it, and iterate

5. Create a governance site

6. Learn and evolve

Jumpstart your governance

• Map out your high level taxonomy

• Web applications

• Site collections

• Content Types

• Understand the current-state and future-state of your environment, any gaps, and how it relates to your metadata

• With Managed Metadata Service in 2010, it is critical that you set up a governance model to guide this process, or it will quickly get out of hand

Getting started

Lessons Learned

1. Understand your metadata and taxonomy model

2. Have a strategy for Managed Metadata

3. Involve your end users

4. Make governance a priority

5. Create a governance site

6. Iterate

Lessons learned

• Christian Buckleycbuck@axceler.com+1 425-246-2823@buckleyPLANETwww.buckleyPLANET.com and http://info.axceler.com

• Additional Resources – Enabling Social Media through Metadata http://slidesha.re/gdjoaz– Managed Metadata in SharePoint 2010, Scott Singleton http://

slidesha.re/hNPeAQ– The Battle for Metadata in SharePoint 2010, Michal Pisarek http://

bit.ly/g7vFWN

Contact me

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Looking Under the Hood: How Your Metadata Strategy Impacts Everything You Do

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