Microsoft provides some recommendations as to how best undertake the task of metadata tagging for SharePoint 2013 in an article on TechNet entitled Overview of managed metadata in SharePoint Server 2013 in this TechNet article. It is worth simply noting that Microsoft demonstrates how the task of metadata tagging is integrated within an implementation of natural hierarchies of information for optimum search for SharePoint 2013. We discussed the term natural hierarchies in the previous post to this blog.

The definition provided in this article of the term “Managed Metadata” defines how metadata tagging works with a hierarchical design for information in SharePoint 2013. The definition states that “Managed metadata is a hierarchical collection of centrally managed terms that you can define, and then use as attributes for items in SharePoint Server 2013.” (quoted from an atricle on TechNet, for which a link has been provided earlier in this post). The reader should note Microsoft’s use of the term “hierarchical collection of centrally managed terms”, which not only demonstrates the method of hierarchical organization of data, but also identifies the role of the Term Store, (which is the container provided for “centrally managed terms”) for SharePoint 2013.

In fact the best practices for metadata tagging for SharePoint 2013 as presented in this TechNet article are entirely consistent with this same topic for SharePoint 2010. The actual working example provided for the reader is, in fact, different, but nevertheless follows the same structure as the example given in a similar article that was provided for SharePiont 2010, but on MSDN rather than TechNet: Managing Enterprise Metadata in SharePoint Server 2010 (ECM).

Nevertheless, the dynamic attribute values component appears to us to be new to SharePoint Server 2013. The benefit of implementing this component is a reduction in the amount of effort required to provide metadata tags for information in SharePoint 2013 columns. Microsoft presents the differences as follows: “In earlier versions of SharePoint Server, to restrict the value of an attribute to being one of a set of values, you would have created a column whose type is “choice,” and then provided a list of valid values. When you needed to add a new value to set of choices, you would have to change every column that used the same set of values.” (ibid) In contrast, with SharePoint Server 2013 “[b]y using managed metadata, you can separate the set of valid values from the columns whose value must be one of the set of valid values. When you have to add a new value, you add a term to the term set, and all columns that map to that term set would use the updated set of choices.” (ibid).

In the next post to this blog we will look at best practices for structuring terms and term sets for SharePoint 2013.

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