SharePoint User Group UK

Hi,

If I have a folder content type with five bits of metadata, for example

Unique HR reference: 1234567
Unique client reference: ABC123
Unique SAP code: A/123/567
Start of Award: 01/01/12
End of Award: 31/12/12

How much work is it to get any document created within this folder to inherit this metadata?

So for instance, I scan a passport and upload the PDF of it to the folder and call the file "passport scan.pdf" and it will inherit all the metadata from the folder.

The end result I need is to be able to move the content in dribs and drabs and maintain the context and findability.

I’m aware of SP2010 document sets but I don’t like that I can’t create a folder within them, additional metadata navigation, now download all, no explorer view, set limited to 50Mb.

Thanks for any pointers. I might be missing something really obvious here but out of the box with a non-coded solution it looks like I’m limited to document sets? Is that correct.

I came across an article on MSDN about location based metadata earlier when I was looking up some info on the scanning problem you raised.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee557925.aspx

I haven't tested this yet, but it may act the way you want. I'm just firing up a VM to test it now.

##EDIT##

Ok, that's spot on what you need to apply metadata quickly! Basically, create your document library and add the columns that you need. (This won't work with lookups though it does appear to work with MMS according to blogs, basically anything with a default value..)

Assign a default value to the columns at the top level, then create the folder structure that you want to use.

Now go into the library settings and click on "Column default value settings". You'll be presented with your folder structure and you can set the default values for individual folders. This metadata will then be applied when you drop files in using explorer view. (I really wish we'd had this in SP2007!)

Paul.

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www.myfatblog.co.uk
twitter.com/@cimares

I dug a bit deeper on this yesterday even and built a mockup in my lab. If you want to see an example of it working, take a look at the blog post I put up last night.

Cheers

Paul.

http://www.myfatblog.co.uk/?p=443

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www.myfatblog.co.uk
twitter.com/@cimares

I really appreciate your time in doing this. After your first pointer I sat down and managed to get it to do most of what I wanted and meant to return and thank you at that point.

I was a little disappointed that the default values, if you want to use them have to be typed in, even if it's just the once and repetition of what you've previous done in setting up the level above it where it inherits from. Such as a folder type where the country of Brunei Darussalam is picked from a list, yet in the inheritance settings for the documents that will go in the folder I have to choose the country column and then type in its name, albeit once. It's a tricky spelling but you'd soon learn it, worse if you are using long numeric codes where transposing a figure will be an initial annoyance.

Either way it has moved me on greatly and given me something to demo as a first pass.

There's another curious thing about this and I don't know enough about SharePoint and Search to say how useful it is.

Following your example. Having uploaded content to say the Adobe folder, my document will autotag it with Adobe.

If I then open explorer view and move it from its original library to a new location without metadata inheritance it will as expected not display. However, in opening the document, a word doc for instance, if I look at its custom properties tab I will see it has retained the Adobe piece of metadata.

Is that useful? I don't know.

If you're doing something like cities, then I'd really seriously think about using the Managed metadata service.The type ahead and search options that then appear when setting the column values are priceless when it comes to saving time later on. Makes it worth the pain of setting up your term sets in the first place.

MS do supply an excel format that you can use to rapidly create the term sets too which Wictor Wieln uses to good effect in his blog post. http://www.wictorwilen.se/Post/Create-SharePoint-2010-Managed-Metadata-with-Excel-2010.aspx

On the point about moving the documents once tagged, Yes you'll need to make sure any library that you move the document to has the same column name/data type configured if you want to keep the tags. Using site columns for this works well. As you've found, some office docs will keep the tags but that's unreliable I've found..

Good luck with the rest of your import!

Paul.

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www.myfatblog.co.uk
twitter.com/@cimares