1 Metadata Navigation Settings in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 In this short paper I am going to step you through setting up a list to use the new Metadata Navigation Settings in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 (SP2010). Managed Metadata is a hierarchical collection of centrally managed terms that you can define, and then use as attributes for items in SP 2010. The Metadata Navigation uses Managed Terms that can be created in SP2010. In SP2010 there is a new site column called Managed Metadata for this purpose. Using this Site Column you can create your own custom Term Set or you can use an existing one that can be created on a specific Site Collection or Farm level (This means you can create global taxonomies and use them across many sites). In this scenario I will showcase how to create your own custom Term Set. Note: The Term Set will be stored in the Taxonomy Term Store so that it can be reused. Step 1: Creating the List So to get started lets create a Custom List in SP2010. This scenario uses SP2010 Beta and is used to show the capabilities of the new version. Go to the All Site Content view of your site. (Usually at the top level) This will open the new SP2010 create interface. The new UI is improved with larger text and contextual settings to highlight the task that you are doing. Select Custom List and enter in the name of our list “Client Locations”. Then click the Create button to create our list.
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Metadata Navigation Settings in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
In this short paper I am going to step you through setting up a list to use the new Metadata Navigation
Settings in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 (SP2010).
Managed Metadata is a hierarchical collection of centrally managed terms that you can define, and
then use as attributes for items in SP 2010.
The Metadata Navigation uses Managed Terms that can be created in SP2010. In SP2010 there is a new
site column called Managed Metadata for this purpose. Using this Site Column you can create your own
custom Term Set or you can use an existing one that can be created on a specific Site Collection or Farm
level (This means you can create global taxonomies and use them across many sites). In this scenario I
will showcase how to create your own custom Term Set.
Note: The Term Set will be stored in the Taxonomy Term Store so that it can be reused.
Step 1: Creating the List
So to get started lets create a Custom List in SP2010. This scenario uses SP2010 Beta and is used to show
the capabilities of the new version. Go to the All Site Content view of your site. (Usually at the top level)
This will open the new SP2010 create interface. The new UI is improved with larger text and contextual
settings to highlight the task that you are doing.
Select Custom List and enter in the name of our list “Client Locations”. Then click the Create button to
create our list.
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Step 2: Create a content type and add a Managed Metadata site column to it
Once the “Client Locations” list has been created create a Content Type called Client Location. This
Content Type will contain our Site Columns so we can associate it to our list.
(Note: Typically you would create the Content Type before creating the List for better development
flow, but for the purposes of this scenario I am doing it in a different order).
So create a new Site Column in our Content Type called Locations and select Managed Metadata as the
type, see screenshot below.
(You don’t need to worry about the other site columns as we are just focusing on the Managed
Metadata column).
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Select Allow Multiple Values. Note that when you select Allow Multiple Values the description help
warns you that doing so will make the column un-sortable using the list view. We will ignore this for this
scenario and select Allow Multiple Values.
Next I have chosen to Display the entire path to the term in the field, this is purely a visual setting as it
does not affect the navigation.
Step 3: Creating a Term Set
You have the option to use existing managed term sets that have been previously setup. However we
are going to create a new term set. You can see in the screenshot below it has started our Term Set
using the name of the column we are creating.
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To create a new Term click the Locations node and select Create Term
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Or alternatively you can click Edit Using Term Set Manager link, which opens the window below. This
gives you more advanced settings like setting Submission Policies against Terms. Submission Policies
provide an effective way to manage terms. Coupled with the new ‘tagging’ feature which allows a
folksonomy to be created by users this becomes a powerful taxonomy management tool in SP2010.
You can add new terms by clicking on the Locations Term, as shown in the previous screen, or you can
use the form on the right hand side which provides the advance features.
Below are the terms that have just been created.
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Now that we have created our Term Set we can go back to the Site Column create view which shows our
terms we just created and gives use a couple more options before clicking OK.
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Since we created the site column from within the content type view after clicking ok you should now see
our Content Type with our Managed Metadata column.
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Step 4: Associating our content type to our custom list
Now let’s associate our content type to our list. Click on the Client Locations list and using the new
ribbon in SP2010 click on List in List Tools tab to get all the list actions we can do. Click List Settings to
add our Content Type and remove the Item Content Type.
Below shows our Content Type has been added to the list and is the only Content Type used in this list.
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Step 5: Add items to our new list
Now we can start adding items to our list. You will notice the tags at the end of our “Locations”
Managed Metadata site column, click on this to open the add terms window.
Select the terms we want to associate with this item and click OK. We have selected Sydney and
Auckland.
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Then click Save to save our item.
Below you can see I have created a few more items with different Metadata to our “Client Locations”
list.
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Step 6: Enable and configure Metadata Navigation
To enable the Metadata Navigation we need to go back into the List Settings as shown in a few steps
above.
Click on Metadata navigation settings within List Settings
Select our Locations Site Column for the Navigation Hierarchy.
As you can see in the description you can only use Content Types, Single Value Choice fields or Managed
Metadata fields.
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Select Created Site Column for the Key Filters.
The Key Filters only allows Content Types, Choice Fields, Managed Metadata Fields, Person or Group
Fields, Date and Time Fields or Number Fields.
Click OK
Now our “Client Locations” list has been setup to use the Metadata Navigation.
You can see below by clicking through the navigation our list will filter using the Metadata field values
we applied for each item.
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And last but not least is the Key Filtering we setup to use the Created field. You can use this like a search
box to filter your list by date created. In this scenario we only specified one Key Filter but you can have
multiple filters to suit your requirements.
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This gives a very powerful filtering straight out of the box using just the SharePoint UI!
More Resources about Managed Metadata are available on the following web site.
