© copyright 2009 dow jones and company taxonomy and sharepoint: a powerful combination laura antos...

© Copyright 2009 Dow Jones and Company

Taxonomy and SharePoint:A Powerful Combination

Laura AntosDan SegalDow Jones Client Solutions

SLA 2009 Tech ZoneJune 15-16, 2009Washington, DC

|© Copyright 2009 Dow Jones and Company 2

Agenda

Introduction to SharePoint Applying taxonomy principles to SharePoint Guided demonstration

Building a taxonomy Applying metadata Creating a custom view

Overview of third-party add-ons


SharePoint: What is it, and what does it do?

Portal Internet / Intranet Document repository Content management system Workflow management system Expertise location system Collaboration suite Enterprise search Application delivery …any or all of the above


SharePoint adoption: An I&KM priority

Call to Action #1 for I&KM Professionals in 2008:“Come to grips with your company’s SharePoint usage.”

“

”Source: Connie Moore and Rob Karel. The Five Top Challenges Information and Knowledge Managers Must Master In 2008. Forrester Research, Inc. 2008.

SharePoint created a tipping point for content management for

the masses in 2007. Two drivers propelled its growth:

•Viral adoption (affordability, deployability, usability)

•Desktop integration (lightweight content management and collaboration)

I&KM pros ignore SharePoint (and competing products

in the space) at their peril.


A Powerful Combination

SharePoint• Many content types and formats

•Documents

•Images / media

•Wikis / blogs / discussions

•People records

•Business data

•Events

• Residing in a single system

• Created and managed through a common process

• Searchable through one search engine

Taxonomy

• Methodical classification and categorization

• Controlled tagging vocabulary

• Faceted; multiple points of access

• Systematically governed

• Maps organizational knowledge

• Contextualizes content

• Improves search precision and recall

• Facilitates information discovery

Findability Actionability Business value


Taxonomy and SharePoint: Landscape

Out-of-the box SharePoint, vs. customized Search system, vs. search engine Taxonomy vs. metadata Thesaurus vs. list


SharePoint: Terminology

Sites Libraries Lists Columns Values


SharePoint: Sample site

A site can contain many Web Parts

Each Web Part delivers different content or functionality

Our focus: the Document Library Web Part


SharePoint: Document Library

A Library is a location where content is stored The stored items are displayed as a List The List is arranged in Columns Each Column contains Values


SharePoint: Document Properties Card


Building and applying a taxonomy in SharePoint

Example 1: Creating Lists Example 2: Defining Columns Example 3: Uploading Documents to a

Library Example 4: Creating a Custom View


Power Tool: Site Columns

Reusable Columns that can be assigned to multiple Lists and sites

Useful for maintaining consistent metadata Available to all sites within a hierarchy Combine Site Columns with Custom Columns

to permit both enterprise and locally-managed metadata


Power Tool: Site Columns

EnterpriseHome Page

Department ASite

“Sales”

Department BSite“R&D”

Department CSite

“Manufacturing”

Team 1Site

Team 2Site

Define Site Columns (metadata) at the Enterprise or Department level; e.g.,

•Document types

•Products and services

•Regions

Metadata definitions and values from the Enterprise Site Columns are propagated through the site hierarchy.


Power Tool: Content Types

Create content templates

By audience or originator (e.g., Finance Documents, HR Documents)

By function or format (e.g., Analyst Report, Status Report)

Pre-assign subsets of the taxonomy to specific Content Types

Benefits:

Consistency and relevance of metadata

Enforcement of metadata policy

Reduced burden on users to tag documents when uploading

Improved findability and actionability


Limitations of List-based metadata

Lists are mutually exclusive for a given Property

List: Beverages

•Coffee

•Orange juice

•Tea

List: Coffee

•Decaffeinated coffee

•Espresso

•Instant coffee

•In the example above, Coffee can be a List value, or Coffee can be a List name, but there is no inherent association between the two.

•There is no easy way out-of-the-box to relate Coffee (beverage) with coffee varieties semantically.


SharePoint out-of-the-box:The bottom line for taxonomists

Vocabularies are flat Hierarchies are structural, not topical The site hierarchy defines the taxonomy Classical taxonomic relationships are essentially

non-existent (BT, NT, RT)

SharePoint out-of-the-box:The bottom line for taxonomists

Synonyms and Preferred Terms can be defined in the Thesaurus XML

<thesaurus xmlns=“x-schema:ts:Schema.xml><expansion>

developercode writerprogrammer

</expansion><replacement>

<pat>NT5</pat><pat>W2K</pat>Windows 2000

</replacement></thesaurus>

•Expansion: similar to Boolean OR

•Replacement: similar to USE

Source: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/289652


Options for complex metadata management

Parallel systems with dual tagging Custom programming Third-party metadata management tool External search engine


SharePoint connects to Synaptica using Synaptica Web Services

Synaptica vocabularies can be imported as SharePoint Lists

SharePoint content can be linked to the imported terms

Synaptica connector for SharePoint


SharePoint administrators may import complete vocabularies from Synaptica using an integrated feature found under the Site Actions drop-down window.

Import controlled vocabularies


The import feature may also be used to update existing vocabularies that have already been imported to SharePoint.

Update imported lists


Importing a vocabulary will create a new list in SharePoint, which may be associated with documents stored in a document library.

Create detailed lists


A custom Application Page can be used to perform a real-time browse of Synaptica vocabularies to then apply to documents in the library.

Tag documents using Synaptica


Or, if the user prefers, he/she may search the Synaptica vocabulary to apply terms.

Tag documents using Synaptica


A custom Web Part can be used to perform a search using terms derived in real-time from Synaptica.

Search for documents using Synaptica


SharePoint users are able to apply tags and search for documents from the same set of controlled vocabularies being managed in Synaptica, allowing for standardization across SharePoint and other knowledge management applications being used throughout the enterprise.

Standardize your tagging and searches


Also consider: Third-party Search add-ons

Coveo FAST

http://www.coveo.com/


Summary

SharePoint delivers a powerful, integrated suite of collaboration and productivity tools.

SharePoint adoption is a high priority in many organizations.

Taxonomy adds value to content that is generated and/or managed in SharePoint.

SharePoint’s native taxonomy capabilities are limited but can be enhanced with add-on metadata management and search tools.

Plan, plan, plan your SharePoint architecture!


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