Forum Discussion
What are your best ideas to automate metadata management
Erik,
I do not believe there is a silver bullet to achieve this. You may have to resort to combining various solutions. The below list provides some ideas, the list is not exhaustive.
- when the source content contains metadata (e.g. subject in an email, title in a Word file, keyword in a PDF file or GPS coordinates in a jpg file) it will be useful if that metadata becomes available in SharePoint columns. So having a solution that can extract metadata from different file types during uploading will help.
- make use of the context. For example, if a user is working in finance and uploading a document then setting the default metadata value for function to finance will reduce effort for the user.
- remember previously entered metadata (on a per user basis).
- deploy tools to convert folder structures into metadata (i.e. flatten folder structures)
Paul | SLIM Applications
SharePoint is great at ingesting content but uploading content without metadata effectively means you are using SharePoint as a web-based file share. One area where there is room for improvement is in the area of metadata.
Caching of previously entered metadata is not supported out-of-the-box eventhough it will greatly simplify the user' task. 3rd party solutions are emerging with the capability. See https://directory.collab365.community/office365-sharepoint/best-document-management-tools-for-sharepoint/
For example, my company has developed a browser-based tool named SLIM Companion Explorer that enhances metadata support (e.g. caches content-types used, map source properties, ...). Being able to re-use metadata in SharePoint whether it is retaining the original modify date, extracting a property from a PDF file, capturing the email subject, .. is going to be key.- thanks for the link - some interesting options there.