Managed metadata was described from a high level in Chapter 18, “SharePoint Foundation Versus SharePoint Server 2010,” in the section titled “Service Applications Available in the Different Versions of SharePoint 2010.” This section builds on the basic concepts presented in that section and gives an example of creating managed metadata and how it can be used to make centrally managed metadata available to multiple site collections.
Managed Metadata Service is a service application managed and accessed from the Central Administration site. For testing purposes, it is generally a good idea to create a new service application, by completing the following steps. The first step is to set a content type, then create the service application, and then define the term sets.
Test Managed Metadata Service App
).
TestManagedMetadataServiceApp
).
Figure 22.24. Creating a new Managed Metadata Service.
Company ABC Terms
, and press Return.
Enterprise keywords can also be added to the Managed Metadata Service application, as shown in Figure 22.25. After added, these words or phrases that can then be used by tagging tools in SharePoint 2010 site collections. Enterprise keywords are part of a single, nonhierarchical term set called the keyword set.
Figure 22.25. Creating a new term set.
Client Codes
and press Return.Company DEF Codes
and press Return.Company DEF USA
, which would correspond to a division of Company DEF with offices in the United States, and then press Enter.
When creating a term, the option exists to provide other labels to the term, which are also called synonyms. For example, when the term Company DEF USA is defined, a synonym might be DEFCo New York, which is another way to refer to Company DEF USA branch. Another might be DEFCo LA (if there is also an office in Los Angeles). The farm administrator did not want to create individual terms underneath the Company DEF USA term because that is “too granular,” and for the organization’s requirements, having end users differentiate between the different international branches of Company DEF is sufficient.
Figure 22.26. Adding additional terms to the Company ABC term set.
These terms will now be available to use from SharePoint lists and libraries. As briefly reviewed earlier, a number of configuration options are available for each term. In the following section, this managed metadata will be accessed from a list to show the power of the tool.
A term is a word or a phrase that can be associated with an item in SharePoint Server 2010. A term set is a collection of related terms. Local term sets are created within the context of a site collection. For example, if you add a column to a list in a document library, and create a new term set to bind the column to, the new term set is local to the site collection that contains the document library. Global term sets are created outside the context of a site collection.