Document Management in SharePoint without folders - Introduction to Metadata

sharepointmaven.com @gregoryzelfond
DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT IN
SHAREPOINT WITHOUT FOLDERS
INTRODUCTION TO METADATA
STEP BY STEP GUIDE
GREGORY ZELFOND

sharepointmaven.com @gregoryzelfondsharepointmaven.com @gregoryzelfond
About Me
 Gregory Zelfond
 10+ years of experience with SharePoint
 SharePoint advocate, blogger
 Love to solve business problems using code-free, out of
the box SharePoint configurations
 Owner of SharePoint Maven (sharepointmaven.com)

About SharePoint Maven
I HELP ORGANIZATIONS TO UNLOCK
THE POWER OF SHAREPOINT
MIGRATION CONSULTING TRAINING

Super Easy…
A guide so easy to understand...
…You’ll feel like a king at the end

1. What’s wrong with Folders?
2. Intro to Metadata
3. Step-by-Step on how to setup SharePoint Metadata
This presentation will cover…

What’s wrong with Folders?

Real-life scenario
 You are in an organization that runs hundreds of projects
annually
 The files are organized by Year on shared drive. Each Year has a
folder (2014, 2013… all the way to 1999)
 Each Year Folder has sub-folders with Names of Customers
served during that year (Customer A, Customer B, etc.)
 Each Customer Folder has sub-folders with Names of Projects
executed for that customer (Project A, Project B, etc.)
 Each Project Folder contains Documents that are part of certain
project (Project Charter, Project Proposal, etc.)

Your Task…
It’s 4:45 PM and you have to leave work at 5 PM
to pickup your kids from school. Your boss has
asked you to pull ALL Project Proposals for
Customer B ever completed. Good luck!

Your problem…
Each customer folder (i.e. Microsoft), contains
tens of projects. Each of the project folders
contains 1 to 3 versions of proposals. Oh yeah,
and you have folders from 1999 to 2014…
3 Proposals
3 Proposals
1 Proposal
2 Proposals

Your reaction…

Business Case Against Folders
1. Usability
2. URL length limitation
3. Moving File URL
4. Security
5. User experience
6. File duplication
7. 1 Lonely View
8. Can’t Sort & Filter
9. Change is hard
10. Lost documents
11. Navigation
12. Cost
For more info and detailed description on above
reasons, check out this blog post
http://sharepointmaven.com/12-reasons-folders-sharepoint-bad-idea/

Intro to Metadata

What is Metadata?
 Metadata is data that describes additional
information about a file or a document
 Example: Word Document “Project
Proposal.doc” might have the following
metadata that further describes what the file
is about:
– Customer Name
– Project Name

Surprise! You are using Metadata every day!
Check out 3 examples on the following slides

Metadata Example # 1 – Amazon.com
This is all metadata!!!
 Ever done online shopping?
 Metadata allows you to easily
filter by shoe size, style, brand,
etc.
 Imagine if Amazon organized
shoes in Folders by Brand – how
would you find all the available
shoes for your size?

Metadata Example # 2 – Facebook
Have you ever Tagged
people on Facebook?
 Ever wondered how
Facebook manages to pull
your friends’ photos from
various albums?
 Imagine if Facebook used
hierarchical folders to
organize photos of your
friends?

Metadata Example # 3 – your computer
Thanks to
metadata - you
can sort by file
size, document
type and file
name on your PC1. Right-click on any file name
2. Choose Properties
This is all metadata!!!

Let’s switch to SharePoint now
 Screenshots and
instructions captured on
following slides are based
on Office 365 SharePoint
 Same exact functionality
exists in SharePoint 2007,
SharePoint 2010 and
SharePoint 2013

Solving the mystery of SharePoint Metadata

Default SharePoint Metadata
Recognize this?
 They are default columns you get with any
SharePoint Document Library
 Data in columns is actually… Metadata!!!
 That’s right, simply put, Column info =
Metadata

Default SharePoint Metadata – cont’d
 Previous example showed a single document
uploaded to Document Library
 No customization was done to the Document
Library whatsoever
 So, to create your own Metadata, you
basically need to create new columns with
properties (metadata)!

Solving the folder problem with Metadata
 To make it relevant, let’s use the example from
few slides ago on project documents stored in
Folders (Years) and Sub-Folders (Customer Name
and Project Name)
 Let’s solve this problem by using SharePoint
Metadata! (sorry, columns) 

Time to get intimate with Metadata!

Access Document Library Settings page
 Click on Document Library name
 From Ribbon that appears up top, click on Library
Settings
 Settings page will appear – this is the main
control panel for your document library
 Settings page has 3 sections – let’s get to know it
little better

Section 1 – Settings & Permissions
Worthwhile to browse through and get
familiar, but don’t worry about this section
for now, we don’t need it to create
columns (metadata)

Section 2 – Columns
 These are default (out of the box) columns (metadata) you
get with SharePoint Document Library
 This section is where you can control your columns
(metadata) by creating new ones, editing or deleting
existing. This is where we’ll spend most of the time

Section 3 - Views
 Views help you slice and dice your information
 This is where you can organize your documents
according to metadata created
 Remember the shopping site example where you
could filter by shoe type, brand, price or size?
This is where we will tell SharePoint how to
organize data for us in the context of the
documents

It takes TWO to TANGO!!!
Metadata success depends
on two components:
Columns & Views

Creating Columns

Let’s create a Column called “Year”
 From Library Settings Page, click Create
Column

Create Column Screen
 Enter Column Name
– In our case “Year”
 Different types of Data
– We want to choose from menu
 Optional, skip for now
 Let’s make this field mandatory
 This is where we specify all choices
for the column
 And that’s how we want to choose
the data (from drop-down)

Let’s repeat for Customers, Projects and Document Types

Success!
 We got our new columns appearing on
Settings page now!

Let’s Test Drive what we created so far…
 Go ahead and upload a new document to the document library.
See anything different?
 Yes! You are now presented with additional screen prompting
you to choose the metadata we just created. Choose it from
drop-downs, hit Save

Customized Document Library
 This is how document library looks like after tagging
the docs
 4 new columns with metadata now appear
 By the way, you can always change
tags easily by clicking
“Edit properties” on the file

Let’s upload few more docs

Some Quick Wins with Metadata
1. Click on Drop-down next to column name to filter based on metadata
2. Click on any of the Column names to sort by that column
Try that with folders!

Creating Views

Create a custom view
 By Default, you get only 1 view called All Documents
 Let’s now create alternate views to make use of the metadata
 Once again, you will need to go to Library Settings
 All the way at the bottom of the page, click Create View
 On next screen that comes up, choose Standard View (most frequent type)

Give your View a Name
 Give it a name and specify whether view is for
yourself only (personal) or everyone to enjoy
(public)

Which columns to display in a View?
 This is where you control which columns to
display and also in which order (from left)
 Let’s uncheck Year and Customer and only
display Project Name Column

View sorting options…
 This is where you can choose how to sort things
 Let’s sort it by Project Name and then by Created
By

View filtering options…
 You can then specify if you want to filter for
certain data
 You can “build” sorting and filtering into the View,
so you do not have to manually do it all the time

Grouping – As close to folders as it gets!
 Grouping allows to group (roll up) files by common/identical
metadata (columns)
 Click the + Sign next to Group By
 That’s where we can specify how to group data
 In our case we want to group by Year in descending order
(2014, 2013, 2012, etc.) and by Customer in ascending
(alphabetical) order

Success!
 Our data is now organized by Year!
 Let’s expand the Year’s group – we also see roll-up by
the Customer (remember on previous slide we told to
group by year and then by customer?) It did just that!

Success – cont’d
 Let’s now expand
the customer group
as well
 We now have all
our files organized
neatly in groups
(bonus - it even tells
you # of files in each
group in parenthesis)

Important!
 SharePoint only allows Maximum of 2 levels of groups
in a view (i.e. Year & Customers, Customers &
Projects)
 However, You can easily create as many additional
views as you want to slice and dice the data the way
you want

Remember that “Get all proposals” Task from Slide 5?

Creating a view in under 1 minute…
 Create a view called
By Customer
 Filter on: Document
type is equal to
Project Proposal
 Group by Customer,
then group by
Project

And here we go…

What’s in it for me?

So, which scenario do you prefer?
OR

Cool stuff you can do with Metadata
 Lots of Views
 Sorting
 Grouping
–2 levels max
 Filtering

Frequently Asked Questions
 Q: What if I need to upload multiple
documents at once? Do I need to tag each one
separately?
 A: For most users, you are better off uploading
one by one. However, you can also use
Datasheet View (called Quick Edit View in
SharePoint 2013/Office 365)
– NOTE: you have to use Internet Explorer Browser for
this feature in SharePoint 2007, 2010.

Example: Datasheet (Quick Edit) View
You can edit metadata right in this Excel-
like Table. Saves lots of clicks and time!

Frequently Asked Questions, cont’d
 Q: So, are folders a big NO in SharePoint?
 A: Not necessarily. Under certain circumstances they
work
– Flat structure (i.e. Photo Albums)
– Very structured document environment that whole
organization follows

Frequently Asked Questions, cont’d
 Q: I used to set permissions (security group
access) at a folder level. How would I do it
with meta-data if there are no more folders?
 A: The best practice is to control security at a
site level. Managing security at a folder, or
worse – document level, is a nightmare.
Determine different levels of security you
need and organize data in corresponding sites
and document libraries

Convinced that Metadata is the way to go?

Need help with SharePoint?
 SharePoint Site Configuration and Customization
 Document Migration to SharePoint
 SharePoint Implementation Strategy
 SharePoint Training
 SharePoint User Adoption
 SharePoint Governance
 SharePoint Project Management

THANK YOU!
Visit: sharepointmaven.com
Email: greg@sharepointmaven.com
Follow: @gregoryzelfond
Connect: linkedin.com/company/sharepoint-maven
View: www.slideshare.net/gzelfond
Get in touch if you have questions

Document Management in SharePoint without folders - Introduction to Metadata

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