Forum Discussion
Metadata vs Folders
The answer is both! Folders are connected to channels in Teams - and they really aren't evil! They do help organize content and if you want to work with content offline, you often don't want to sync an entire library - so having folders really helps. The challenges I find with folder are when you have multiple levels of nested folders. That's where metadata often provides a much better organizing framework. Metadata is far from dead - in fact, it's just as important as ever - but for many simple collaboration scenarios, folders are a good way to organize information. So, it's not either/or - it's both, as long as you try to limit to 1-2 levels of folders. There may be some use cases for more levels, but it makes information discovery much more complicated so it's not a great approach from an information architecture perspective. That's where metadata can really help, especially when content really "belongs" in two contexts. One of my favorite announcements is that very soon, you will be able to see and interact with metadata in the context of Teams - bringing the rich metadata you get in SharePoint everywhere you interact with a file. I think that investment shows that metadata is still really important!
The answer is both! Folders are connected to channels in Teams - and they really aren't evil! They do help organize content and if you want to work with content offline, you often don't want to sync an entire library - so having folders really helps. The challenges I find with folder are when you have multiple levels of nested folders. That's where metadata often provides a much better organizing framework. Metadata is far from dead - in fact, it's just as important as ever - but for many simple collaboration scenarios, folders are a good way to organize information. So, it's not either/or - it's both, as long as you try to limit to 1-2 levels of folders. There may be some use cases for more levels, but it makes information discovery much more complicated so it's not a great approach from an information architecture perspective. That's where metadata can really help, especially when content really "belongs" in two contexts. One of my favorite announcements is that very soon, you will be able to see and interact with metadata in the context of Teams - bringing the rich metadata you get in SharePoint everywhere you interact with a file. I think that investment shows that metadata is still really important!
So how would you present this idea to users? They have used folders in the past on file servers and like to use them in SharePoint. When we talk Metadata (and we have a great way here to do that) they get it but they still like the folders as it is what they are used to. MS I see has curtailed the use of Metadata on OneDrive (harder to add columns) but they use Folders as well on Teams. I can see users pushing back and saying see Folders are good. Any thoughts on ways to get folders to assign Metadata as that would solve a lot of problems :)
- Look at Column Default Value settings in library settings. That feature has been around for a long time and automatically applies metadata when content is uploaded to a folder. It is not a perfect solution but it can help. You need a view with folders for uploading and a view without for display. I usually show a before and after metadata scenario to show how many “questions you can answer/discover” about your content with metadata vs. folders. But I think this is most helpful for intranet/communication sites. For team collaboration, I think the most important thing is that the team understands how they are organizing content. Search finds content in folders or not - but assumes you know what you are looking for. Metadata is great for discovery - when you don’t know what you don’t know and don’t have time to dig through folders.
Hmmmmm. Thank you Susan and Christopher gives me something to think about and digest now. We have had lots of talks on our team around the folder vs metadata thing. We really like the metadata but the users like their folders. I like a hybrid approach so both of us are happy. I knew about the default values but that only goes so far. I do like the modern libraries better for folder use since you can have it apply metadata when dragging and dropping onto the folder automatically - real slick.
Now to digest this conversation and keep bugging MS for when they are going to allow us to actually allow a way to use search to query inside a folder in OneDrive.....:)
Thanks again.
One other thing to consider speaking on OneDrive. You cannot use metadata with the OneDrive client so if offline capability is a requirement you’re sort of forced into folders for metadata.
I second Susan's response. Both are acceptable, I usually only use metadata on big file repositories. Not in the area's of collaboration. But at the same time some larger groups want metadata and you can always use folders but add optional metadata so that they can use that meta data and build views / search of that as well when / if needed.
