Category Archives for term store

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.

 

The Term Store and Invoice Scanning

How would you setup a taxonomy for document classification of vendor invoices?  The goal here is to identify key terms within the document that would map that invoice to a particular vendor.  Working with PSIGEN PSI:Capture and trying to use the term store functionality to auto-populate key vendor criteria and build a classification taxonomy within SharePoint.  The capture software can auto-extract data from scanned documents, like a phone number, or an email address, and then add terms based on its findings.  I want to make sure i design this right the first time.

My first swag would be:

Vendor Name

  • Phone or Fax
  • Email Address
  • Address
Once I populate this once, i can then run lookups and look for matches to pre-existing terms.   Please provide feedback on how you would proceed.

 

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.