Forum Discussion
Metadata vs Folders
Attending Microsoft Ignite 2018 which Rocks! But I noticed all presentations with SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive were using Folders and not metadata. No one spoke of metadata and constantly referred t...
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!
I avoid folders whenever and wherever I can. There's nothing worse than trying to find something buried in a folder. Oh wait... which folder ? … That folder :-) . The issue I have with people using libraries this way, is that they are not thinking about the end user. If you spend the time up-front and put more effort in the design and containment of content, your users who have to eventually "Consume" it will love you.
- As long as you have a consume type scenario, most people especially project Teams have an archive mentality so they don't see the fruits of their labor as much. But still try and show them that searching is so much easier when setup with metadata properly.
I've been going the hybrid approach. Metadata with folders, and the reason is lots of external collaboration and borders around security, and using folder structure allows for that segmentation and then metadata and views that don't use folders for lookups / searching for documents for org employee's. Works well so far.
