Modern SharePoint metadata

Metadata – What is it?

Metadata is compromised of meta tags which are short snippets of text that describe the page’s content. With accurate metadata, search engines locate and find pages of content that are relevant to the search criteria that was inputted by reading the metadata on the pages. Metadata is key in search engine optimization (SEO), a term which you may or may or may not be familiar with. With SharePoint and Office 365, metadata is now used to bring accurate, relevant, and targeted pages to its audience.

Why use Metadata in SharePoint and Office 365?

SharePoint and Office 365 are all about collaboration and keeping your teams informed of the latest news. By applying the concept of SEO with metadata in the internet world to the world of collaborative intranets, SharePoint and Office 365 can curate and provide accurate and relative content to targeted audiences.

In addition to the metadata, the ability to custom Pages library columns to filter information and to target the pages results in more accurate, specific, and powerful information to the right audience.

How to Define and Decide the Metadata

It is easy to go overboard with metadata but by following 4 simple steps, this can be avoided. To begin defining the metadata, review the naming convention that is followed for the folders as the logic of sorting and organizing begins here for the data. The top-level folders indicate the first custom column in your Pages library. The second level folders may indicate the second customized column. You now have the first two metadata columns. For the next step, review and analyze the naming convention for the document files. Users will name their documents with built-in search criteria that make it easy for them to find it. Perhaps, the naming convention would include the year, month, date, project name, and version control. By reviewing the naming convention carefully, you can determine the hierarchy of terms which become searchable. For example, the metadata that can be defined is the year or the project name. An important step is to think like your users: how will they search for that information? The words or phrases (the criteria) that you arrive at can be also defined and added as another customized column.  Finally, reach out to your users and ask them what their criteria for searching would be. By doing this, you will arrive at enterprise keywords.  The responses elicited maybe extremely varied but by filtering, one could arrive at the most common phrases/search criteria to develop and define the metadata.

 

How to Add Custom Meta Tags to SharePoint Pages

By using the Page details edit pane, you can create custom columns which contain your metadata information. Located within the Pages library of your site, these custom columns can be used to filter, organize, and target pages when the metadata is used with web parts like Highlighted Content and News.

Adding Custom Metadata to SharePoint Pages

In the Pages library, add a new custom property to a page. Then create a column for that property. This column contains the metadata or searchable properties of that Page. This is now available on the Pages detail edit pane for each page of that site. In edit mode on a page, open the edit pane by clicking Page details. If you are an author, then you will have the permissions to edit or add values to any of the metadata columns in that corresponding pages library.

Viewing, Editing, and Adding Page Properties

Page properties can be viewed and edited. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Click Page Details at the top of the page;

2. Under the property name, click the value of the property that is to be edited. Type in the new vale and press Enter. To edit multiple properties at a time, click Edit All. Edit the properties that are to be revised. When done, click Save.

At the bottom of the pane, click More Details to view additional information about the page.

Adding Page Properties

Adding a property to the page can be done by creating a customized column in the pages library. The customized column contains the metadata, the searchable properties, that the search engines use to locate and curate the content. Not only can the metadata be seen and edited in the pages library, it is also available in the Page details pane for each page.

1. In the Pages library, click Pages on the left navigation pane. If you do not see Pages, then click Settings which is located on the top right. Next, choose Site Contents and then from Site Contents, choose Site Pages;

2. Click Add Column+ to the right of the last column name at the top of the library or list;

3. Choose the type of column you want from the dropdown list. The dropdown list includes Single Line of Text, Multiple Lines of Text, Number, Yes/No, Person, Date, Choice, Hyperlink, Picture, Currency, and More…;

4.  In the Name field that comes up in the dialogue box, type in the title or the column heading;

5. Click Create.

Adding More Column Types

1. Click Pages on the left navigation pane in the pages library. If you do not see Pages, click Settings located on the top right and then choose Site Contents. From Site Contents, choose Site Pages;

2. In the library that you want to add a column, from the All Items or All Documents view of the list, select Add Column+ at the end of the heading row. Then, select More….

3. In the Name and Type section, key in the name that you want for the column in the Column Name box;

4. From the dialogue box titled The Type of information in this column is, select the type of information that you want to appear;

5. There is a Description Box in the Additional Column Settings which provides the opportunity to add a description. Though optional, it is highly recommended to provide the descriptor to assist users in understanding the purpose of the customized column. Depending upon the type of column that was selected, additional options may appear in the Additional Column Settings section.

Filtering, Targeting, and Organizing SharePoint Pages

Organizing and grouping individual pages can be achieved by using the properties (metadata) set for each page. Web parts and pages dynamically display if the source in the Highlighted Content or News web part is changed to “The page library on this site” along with setting the filter option to “Page properties”. 

Display Page Metadata for Your Audience

Greater context can be provided to your readers by exposing some of the metadata on the page with the use of the Page Properties web part. First, add the Page Properties web part to the page. Next, add the page properties that are to be displayed. Then, choose different information to be displayed across different pages. The Page Properties web part supports managed metadata columns, which can be entered in manually or by choosing the icon from the available terms.

By determining, deciding and implementing metadata into your pages, the most relevant and current information can be delivered to your readers based on their search criteria and on the parameters/filters that you set.

Rollout to Targeted Release customers will be completed shortly with a worldwide rollout beginning at the end of July 2018.

SharePoint 2013 vs. 2010 – Part 2 – ECM

Enterprise Content Management in 2013 My second has to be about Enterprise Content Management in SharePoint 2013. The records management and compliance features in SharePoint 2013 provide improved ways to help you to protect the business. The records archive and in-place record retention from previous versions of SharePoint Server are still supported. SharePoint 2013 adds:

New features

Enhanced features

  1. Site Retention: Retention policies that are applied at the level of a site.
  2. eDiscovery: A site collection from which you can perform eDiscovery queries across multiple SharePoint farms and Exchange servers and preserve items.
  3. Mail as a record: In-place preservation of Exchange mailboxes and SharePoint sites — including list items and pages — while still allowing users to work with site content.
  4. File shares: Support for searching and exporting content from file shares.
  5. Export: A tool to export discovered content from Exchange and SharePoint.

Site-based compliance Compliance features of SharePoint 2013 have been extended to sites. You can create and manage retention policies in SharePoint 2013, and the policies will apply to SharePoint sites and any Exchange team mailboxes that are associated with the sites. Compliance officers create policies, which define:

  • The retention policy for the entire site and the team mailbox, if one is associated with the site.
  • What causes a project to be closed
  • When a project should expire.

When a project begins, the project owner creates a SharePoint site and an Exchange team mailbox. The project owner selects the appropriate policy template, and invites team members to join the project. As the team adds documents to the site, sends email messages, and creates other artifacts such as lists, these items automatically receive the correct retention policies. When the work has been completed, the project owner closes the project, which removes the project's folders from the team members' user interface in Microsoft Outlook®. After a certain period of time, as specified by the policy, the project expires, and the artifacts associated with the project are deleted. Discovery Center SharePoint 2013 introduces a new site for managing discovery cases and holds. The Discovery Center site template creates a portal through which you can access discovery cases to conduct searches, place content on hold, and export content. For each case, you create a new site that uses the Discovery Case site template. Each case is a collaboration site that includes a document library which you can use to store documents related to the management of the case. In addition, you can associate the following things with each case:

  • Sources: Exchange mailboxes, SharePoint sites, or file shares from which content can be discovered.
  • Queries: The search criteria, such as author, date range, and free-text terms, as well as the scope of the search. Queries are used to identify content to export.
  • Discovery sets: Combinations of sources, queries, and whether or not to preserve content. Discovery sets are used to identify and preserve content.
  • Exports: A list of all of the exports that have been produced relating to the case.

When there is a new need for discovery — for example, a legal case or an audit — a user with the appropriate permission can create a new case, add sources of information to be searched, create queries to identify the specific material to be located, and then execute the queries. The user can then preserve the sites and mailboxes in which content was discovered, retain the items that matched the queries, and export the items. When the case is closed, all of the holds associated with the case are released. In-place preservation In SharePoint 2013, content that is placed on hold is preserved, but users can still modify it. The state of the content at the time of preservation is recorded. If a user modifies the content or even deletes it, the original, preserved version is still available. Regular users see the current version of the content; compliance officers who have permission to use the eDiscovery features of SharePoint 2013 are able to access the original, preserved version. Preserving content is similar to placing it on hold, with the following enhancements:

  • Documents, list items, pages, and Exchange Server 15 mailboxes can be preserved.
  • Preservation is done at the level of a site. Preserving a site preserves the contents of the site.
  • Users can continue to work with content that is preserved. The content remains in the same location, and users can edit, delete, and add new content.
  • A user with the permission to perform eDiscovery can access the original version of preserved content.
  • You do not have to preserve an entire site or mailbox. You can specify a query to define the preservation scope, and preserve only the content that matches the query.

Discovery export SharePoint 2013 includes the Discovery Download Manager, a Windows 7 application that you can use to export the results of an eDiscovery search for later import into a review tool. The Discovery Download Manager can export all of the content that is associated with a discovery case, including:

  • Documents: Documents are exported from file shares. Documents and their versions are exported from SharePoint 2013.
  • Lists: If a list item was included in the eDiscovery query results, the entire list is exported as a comma-separated values (.csv) file.
  • Pages: SharePoint 2013 pages, such as wiki pages or blogs, are exported as MIME HTML (.mht) files.
  • Exchange objects: Items in an Exchange Server 15 mailbox, such as tasks, calendar entries, contacts, email messages, and attachments, are exported as a personal storage (.pst) file.

An XML manifest that conforms to the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) specification provides an overview of the exported information. Enterprise-wide eDiscovery With SharePoint 2013, you can centrally manage eDiscovery across multiple SharePoint farms, Exchange servers, and file shares. From one discovery center you can:

  • Create a case, define a query, and search SharePoint 2013, Exchange Server 15, and file shares throughout the enterprise for content that matches the query.
  • Export all of the content that was identified.
  • Preserve items in place in SharePoint 2013 or Exchange Server 15.
  • Track statistics related to the case.

To implement eDiscovery across the enterprise, you first select one farm to host the discovery center. The Search Service application that is associated with this farm becomes the central Search Service application, for eDiscovery purposes. You create a proxy to the central Search Service application in each SharePoint Server farm that contains discoverable content, and configure the central Search Service application to crawl file shares that contain discoverable content. SharePoint 2013 automatically discovers the connection to Exchange Server 15. Any content from SharePoint 2013, Exchange Server 15, or a file share that is indexed by the central Search Service application or by Exchange Server 15 can be discovered from the discovery center.