If we use industry best practice for our information taxonomy we need to make metadata a focal point of the design and then add labels/tags of meta data based on information specific to that document. I have posted in another blog how metadata can be used to develop an information infrastructure for improved findability, in terms of the user’s experience navigating the menu system we have adopted the FASC approach. That is,
top level: Function
second level: Activity
document level: Subject
Detail Level: Project/Case
This will help us to structure the high level information pages in a way that visitors to our site will find easy to navigate. We can then attrribute tags or labels to content so that we can easily search and associate information across our site (e.g. if you are reading an interesting document under one portfolio and would like to see if a similar document exists for another you can click on the appropriate tag in the tag cloud and see what other related documents are available (assuming that other parts of the business subscibe to the same meta data taxonomy)). The most popular metadata labels will need to be consistently used across our portfolios. This will be achieved by using meta lists from within SharePoint.
How might this look?
Consider this early draft of the collaboration site. Information is founded on FOUR functional areas as the image shows:
If the model is representative of the business’ activity then we can actually use a simple filtered table to see how the lower level containers of information are described. By adding a notes field we are able to find a valuable starting point for havesting othe meta lists. Then Subject Mtter experts (legal, comms if necessary) to identify the business rules and exceptions to the compnies data and map it to Scorecard/dashboard reports and opeations projects for improvement.
To see a published example of the draft document taxonomy as of the time of writing. Click here (you will likely require permission so drop me an e). What you will see from the filtered information is that our notes fields are rich in meta data that directly corresponds to the work we do and connections in our taxonomy are immediately clear. And with the benefit of enterprise architecture we can link into databases creating significant opportunities for system integration (a long way down the line but useful food for thought for the purposes of our review).
