This post is a follow-up to Part 1 of the series and will be (http://blogs.rbaconsulting.com/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=25) discussing the basic concepts and terms relating to the term store. In this post, we will specifically cover the best practices and creation of Term Sets and Terms – which ultimately become Managed Term. Now let’s get right in to how to build these terms and term sets in to SharePoint! At any site (as long as the user has permissions to the Term Store), a user can access the Term Store. There are two ways of getting to the Term Store, one is through Central Administration (lengthy and a lot more links…) and the other is simply through the Site Actions tab on any site.
Step 1: Go to Site Actions, and select “Site Settings”
Step 2: Under the Site Administration section, click on the “Term store management” link
That’s it and you’re in! Now you have access to all of the Managed and Un-Managed terms throughout your SharePoint environment. Note: The Term Store crosses ALL site collections within your web application. No longer, as in MOSS 2007, do you have to set these up at every site collection. This is the central repository that is the brain of your environment.
As mentioned in previous posts, we now need to create our Term Sets, and the underlying Terms that should follow. Remember, this is your “managed metadata” and is NOT associated with any tagging that is occurring. (Tags will appear at the bottom in the “System” section under “keywords” and “orphaned terms” – we will cover this later). We need to keep in mind that we are creating a Taxonomy here, and that our Term Set is the over-arching word or phrase that demonstrates similar traits to the underlying terms within the set. Just like as you would create a folder on your hard drive, you name that folder with a term or phrase that represents the contents within it.
In this example, let’s keep consistent with the previous post relating to our dog theme. Last post, we used the Term Set of “Retriever”, and the corresponding Terms of “Labrador, Golden”. Let’s go ahead and set this up.
Step 1: Create the Term Set by clicking on the drop down arrow to the right of the “TechEd 2010”link. Now select “New Term Set” (Note: When first establishing the Term Store, best practice should be to create a single group with the name of your environment- in this case TechEd 2010. Now you have a single “group” to which ALL of your Term Sets can reside. There can be a total of 1,000 Term Sets and 30,000 Terms per Set (total 1M) overall in the store. This portion is created through Central Administration)
Step 2: Simply type in the name of the Term Set you wish to use, in this case “Retrievers” and hit Enter.
You will notice that after hitting Enter, the right side of your screen changes. This now becomes the “administration-like” section for this Term Set. Every Term Set in your environment can be individually managed. This is highly important to remember as now you do not have to be reliant solely on one individual to manage and update the terms. From my experience working with SharePoint, it would be best practice to name your Term Sets after each Site Collection within your environment, and subsequently name your Site Collection Administrator as the owner of that Term Set. By doing so, now you can discreetly and efficiently manage and organize terms across your environment.
You will also notice a “stakeholders” section where you can add other individuals. Your Term Set owner can choose to create a team of people to help manage this as well. It would also be best practice here, at a minimum, to have your Site Collection Administrator backup listed here.
Step 3: Creating the Term – Now we want to create the underlying Terms that are associated to this Term Set. Simply click on the arrow to the right of your Term Set, and click “Create Term”.
Repeat this as many times as necessary to complete your term set. Note: you can create “sub-terms” as well, depending on the level of granularity you prefer.
You will note that after we create the Term, a new “administration” section appears. You will want to ensure that the “Available for Tagging” is checked. This will allow users in your environment to easily tag terms that are “managed” and can help create a more structured approach. You will also notice that you can create “other labels”. This is important because there may be multiple terms that can be that same as the term you created. This way, if an end user tries to type in “Gold” for example, it will auto-associate that term to “Golden” for them.
So, to demonstrate how this applies to an End User, when they are on a site and click on the button “Tags and Notes”, a pop-up box will appear and the user will be asked to input a tag. When they start typing, “suggestions” will appear below. These “suggestions” are directly taken from your Term Store and thus help the End User facilitate a more structured approach and better user experience. As you see below, I started to type the word “golden” as my tag and it automatically gave me the suggestion box for Golden Retrievers.
So what happens when End Users do not use one of the suggestions, or there were no suggestions? Well, now we are talking about managing “Orphaned Terms” and “Keywords”. Please stay tuned for my next post in which we will cover the ability to convert un-managed terms to managed terms.