six ways to simplify metadata management

© Enterprise Knowledge, LLC

Six ways to Simplify Metadata Management

Presentation for 2014 KM World Conference


The Importance of Metadata

• Makes content/information findable

• Explains structure or provides context

• Informs document retention policies

• Aids in the securing of content

• Drives workflow

• Allows for reporting on trends in unstructured data

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met·a·da·taˈmedəˌdādə,ˈmedəˌdadə/nounnoun: metadata; noun: meta-dataa set of data that describes and gives information about other data.


Content without Metadata Leads to Chaos

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6 Ways to Simplify Metadata Management

1. Implied Metadata

2. Linked Metadata

3. Entity Extraction

4. Auto-categorization

5. Pattern Matching

6. Batch Metadata Management

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Implied Metadata

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Definition: Metadata that is derived from a pre-existing attribute of the content.

Examples include:

• Information based on the folder in which a file resides.

• Information based on the author of the file.

• Information based on the file name or document type.

Success story:

• A large government agency needed to track building and project plans for buildings across the country.

• They setup a folder hierarchy that organized content by state, building number and project number.

• The location of the content could then be used for the metadata.


Linked Metadata

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Definition: Data or information that is related to, but not directly associated with a piece of content.

Examples include:

• A topic based on the author of a piece of content.

• The business owner of a piece of content based on the location where it is stored.

• The state of a business based on the city it resides in.

Success story:

• A publisher wanted to improve their article search. Authors on their staff were responsible for specific topics.

• The topic that the author wrote about was added as metadata for each piece of content so that it could be offered as a search facet.


Entity Enrichment

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Definition: The automatic identification of people, places, and things in a textual document. The entities are typically tagged in-line.

Examples include:

• The name of a famous person in an article.

• The location described in an article or report.

• A business listed in a financial report.

• Identify an industry mentioned in a report.

Success story:

• A large rating agency needed new products.

• The agency used entity enrichment to identify locations and industries in financial reports.

• They used this information to develop a product that allowed registered users to select and group sections of financial reports based on industry or company location.


Auto-categorization

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Definition: Systems that automatically group related pieces of content to general categories typically defined by a taxonomy.

Examples include:

• Tools that assign content to folders based on predefined queries or rules.

• Tools that assign content to folders based on concepts based on statistical analysis.

• Tools that assign content to folders based on entity enrichment.

Success story:

• A large financial institution needed to improve their workflow management.

• They used auto-categorization of the incoming forms to route them to the appropriate team.

• This increased the speed with which forms could be processed.


Pattern Matching

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Definition: Automatically extracting information based on a consistent structure or pattern of text within a file. Typically used on forms.

Examples include:

• Extracting company names out of contracts.

• Extracting names out of forms.• Identifying attendees of a

meeting from standard meeting minutes.

Success story:

• A large government agency wanted to find better ways to share their content with the public.

• We identified patterns in the way hearings were stored. We used the patterns to identify Senators that did not attend hearings and provide reports on attendance by topic.


Batch Metadata Management

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Definition: A tool for managing topical metadata on large sets of related content based on search.

Examples include:

• Manually adding topics to news items in batch.

• Adding metadata to prioritize content for audit purposes.

• Identifying and grouping related content.

Success story:

• A news site wanted to group similar content together under subject pages. The process of tagging each piece of content individually was too time consuming.

• They implemented batch metadata management and were able to tag the content in 20% of the time it used to take.


Summary Best Practices

• Do not accept a poor search because it is too hard to manage metadata or you lack budget.

• Consider automated metadata management to improved findability and increase adoption of content management tools.

• Work with experts to identify a business taxonomy for your content and ways to automate the management of the metadata.

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For More Information Please Contact:

Joe Hilger

(c) 571.436.0271

[email protected]

@EKConsulting

Questions?

Comments?

Thank you!

six ways to simplify metadata management

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