Metadata & SharePoint

We spoke to our SharePoint trainer, Nikki Peters and asked what the most challenging aspect of SharePoint migration tends to be for newcomers. Her answer? Making full use of metadata!

Metadata is basically data about your data, as Nikki explains, “Imagine shopping on Amazon. You type 'TV,' and you're swamped with choices. What do you do? You filter by the brand, size, and features you want - that’s metadata in action helping you to narrow your choices down".

When it comes to business documents on SharePoint, you can add custom metadata tags to indicate important info, for example which team they belong to, what project they are associated with, or approval status. Then, just like on Amazon, users can find the documents they need by filtering using these tags.

Nikki has noticed that when people switch to SharePoint, they stick to the comfort of traditional folder and file systems, however these can turn into mazes when team members need to find documents. Additionally, because SharePoint is online, there is actually a limit to the URL length, and you may run into this - making you unable to save documents without restructuring.

There are clear business benefits to using metadata as intended. You can organise files into custom views and lists, and also create Power Automate workflows to automatically do something with a file based on its metadata. Lastly, you can use it to classify content for compliance purposes, ensuring that documents are retained, archived, or disposed of accordingly.

We offer three levels of SharePoint training to help you and your company master the many features and tools it offers. Visit our website to read the course outlines and find out more!