Tuesday, May 5, 2009
3 Minute Screencast: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly of Metadata
Yesterday on Twitter we had a discussion going on how to approach the topic of metadata with End Users. The discussion moved over to a post here called Folders in doc libraries are metadata cries for help.
When it came to the topic of moving documents in bulk into a library and attaching metadata, Sharon from Joining Dots suggested a way and I suggested another. In this screencast, you’ll see how to move large amounts of documents into a library while attaching the correct metadata to each document.
My initial trepidation was I knew in this circumstance, doing the right thing was not going to be the best thing for the group.
That is a good tip about creating a new metadata structure with the default values. The same should hold true with drop down list values I imagine.
This is brilliant! I tend to discourage power users from setting default values for columns unless 90+% of the time it is one over the others. I do this because end users can often ignore defaults and not realize what they have “selected.”
But this temporary approach for the sake of quickly adding the metadata you want…just brilliant! I usually just go ahead and use datasheet view for fast metadata updates, but you can’t use datasheet for picture libraries (which has always annoyed me). I’d assume you can, however, use this approach in a picture library. Hmm… I will have to try this out. Neato! Thanks! :)
I just love it when people call me “brilliant”. Makes my day. — Mark
Nice touch, but this (uploading multiple docs) gives you another “problem” – all the uploaded documents are checked out.
In all my libraries I’ve set the check out column as visible, so that you’ll know you’ve messed up by uploading multiple documents… In my opinion, it’s easier to upload one document at the time – that way you’ll still get the meta data (like shown in the screen cast) AND the documents are checked in.
I have not clocked the two processes, but if your libraries are set up with restricted reading permissions for draft docs, it is only a question of time before users can’t locate docs that actually are uploaded – but checked out.
J
Mark, I’ve used your method for sometime on multiple documents. It works great and there are usually no problems. The only time its ended up taking time for me is where there are a number of metadata fields. In this case it is often useful to use a combination of your method (to get a huge amount of data uploaded) and Kat’s method of editing in datasheet to fix records also. Either way both methods work great.
I believe uploading multiple documents in Explorer view avoids the “checked out” problem Jorgen described. Haven’t tried Explorer view and this tip, but I assume it works as well?
As far as docs being checked out when you do multiple uploads, I find that only to be true if you have forced checkout on the library OR you have one or more required columns (and you do NOT have a default value set for those required columns). If you need to do a bunch of docs at once (or one of your users does), you may just want to temporarily turn off the forced check out OR remove the requirement from the required columns (depending on what is causing your problem). This is just from my personal experience- I’m not sure of all possible scenarios that would make your docs appear as checked out after doing a multiple doc upload. Hope this is helpful!
FYI: Not that this is any surprise, but it does work on Picture Libraries. I think this is a big deal because you don’t have the datasheet view option in Picture Libraries. I tend to stay away from folders, but the other day a co-worker was hoping to set up a library w/ over 100 sample HTML Email templates she’s created for staff use. She wanted to organize it into a few categories, and while I normally encourage columns/filtered views over folders, I didn’t because of the very problem w/ pic libraries and metadata. I didn’t want her to go through the process up uploading or editing properties one-by-one. We just went ahead w/ a folder structure, much to my dismay. Now that I know about this trick, though, it will save lots of time in the future (and will allow me to continue to stay away from folders)!!
Thanks, again! This will certainly be a lifesaver for certain projects!
@Kat
Thanks for the tip – I didn’t know that the the forced check out on library triggers the doc to be checked out on multiple upload.
Thx,
J
@Jorgen
No problem! Yes- I learned this the hard way. Same thing happens if you have a required column and no default value for it. The library “helps” you by keeping those docs checked out to you until they are “complete” (i.e., they have their required metadata). :)
Also, if you use minor versions, the default when checking in is to check in a minor version. Most of our users didn’t realize this, and then they kept wondering why “read” users weren’t seeing the latest version of the doc. I wish there were a way to change the default to be a major version. I wonder if that’s possible…
If the users aren’t ready for minor versions, just remove the option and use major versions only.
I’ve given everybody access to read minor versions. When users are getting used to SP, maybe it’s time to only publish major versions for the people (!) and keep minor versions for owner of the doc.
J