Category Archives for managed metadata

Barcodes, SharePoint and the Term Store

Just finished a really cool implementation for a large commercial property management company.  Their SharePoint developer built a barcode generation app that creates a cover sheet for paper documents.  The sheet runs lookups to their Term Store, and auto-builds the managed metadata columns as 2D barcode elements.  Here is a sample sheet:

Barcode for Managed Metadata

Managed Metadata in a Barcode

So, using PSI:Capture, you can then auto-extract the barcode elements and map them to columns.  It even supports multi-level term sets.  Below is the end result in SharePoint:

Scan Barcodes with Sharepoint

Barcoded Document in SharePoint

I will get a video demo posted of this Scanning, Barcodes and SharePoint demo soon.

 

Scanning, Capture and Managed Metadata

So, really what part does managed metadata play in the whole SharePoint Scanning and Capture scene? If you are unfamiliar with Managed Metadata and the Term Store, there is a great post here: SharePoint Managed Metadata.   In SharePoint 2010, you have the ability to build a Taxonomy, or tiered classification structure for all content within the repository.  So for example, you could build a level called Accounting Document Types, with sub-levels of AP, AR and Contracts.  They could have lower strata that included each of the types of documents that could exist in that department.  In SharePoint, this taxonomy is housed within the Term Store, and individual terms are stored within term sets.

So how do I use all of this in scanning and capture?  Many capture applications are read only to the Term Store (If they even have the feature set), requiring you to build the taxonomy prior to deploying the solution.  I would definitely recommend a capture app that allows dynamic building of the term store based on document characteristics.  This allows you to “build as you go”, populating managed metadata columns with key information as you capture documents.  PSIGEN just released this in their latest enhanced feature set for SharePoint.