One of the benefits that SharePoint provides is the ability to ‘tag’ information using metadata. This can greatly reduce the structure you use, especially when it comes to documents. Thus, instead of creating a deep and complex folder structure you use metadata to tag the files into the same categories as you would typically use for folders. Doing so make navigation and searching much easier.

The easiest way to achieve this to simply add a column to the location in a SharePoint site as the above video of mine demonstrates.

The draw back to this is that column is only available in that SharePoint item, it can’t be used in other lists and libraries.

The next option is to create a Site Column, which is exactly the same as an individual list column EXCEPT it can be used anywhere throughout the whole SharePoint site. I’ll cover that in another blog because I want to focus on a solution that is even more available and powerful than Site Columns.

The Term Store provides you the ability to have nested metadata fields across every SharePoint Site you are using. As you can see from the above screen shot, the Term Store is not just a one dimensional list like an added column is, it is hierarchical.

You get to the Term Store but logging into the Office 365 web portal as an administrator and then navigating to the SharePoint admin center. Then, from the menu on the left, you should see a option term store. When you select that, you should see the screen shown above.

Like many things in Office 365 no user has the ability to edit the Term Store, so the first thing you need to do is add your user details to the Term Store Administrators box in the lower right of the screen and save the changes.

If you don’t do that then you won’t be able to edit or add to the Term Store. You know you are able to do this when you hover over an entry and a small down arrow appears to the right. Selecting that arrow will then reveal a menu like that shown above.

The example that I’ll user here is creating a standard taxonomy (i.e. metadata structure) to cover locations (i.e. countries, states, cities, etc).

At the very top level of your Term Store, select the down arrow and from the menu that appears select New Group.

That will create a folder at the bottom of your. In this case give it the name, Locations.

Select the arrow to the right of this and then New Term Set from the menu that is displayed as shown above.

In this case I will call the New Term Store Country.

Keep repeating this process to build out the taxonomy (i.e. tagging structure you desire).

Now go into a item in SharePoint, in this case a Document Library. Add a column and when asked for the Column type select Managed Metadata at the bottom of the list of options, as shown above.

 

Scroll down the page and locate the Term Set Settings area. You should now see the hierarchy you saw in the SharePoint admin center.

You can now expand the structure and locate the term to select the place to start the selections for that field from. Here I have selected Australia so I get all the states below this only.

Now if you edit the properties of an item in that list you will see the new field and a tag icon to the right indicating that it is using managed metadata.

This is where it gets cool. If I type n.s.w. in it gets rejected. Although n.s.w. is ‘correct’ as value for the state it isn’t in the format we defined in our taxonomy, so it is unacceptable. This can ensure that the data that is entered into SharePoint is consistent.

If I however start typing the name of a state I am automatically prompted with the correct value. I just need to click on the suggested entry to complete.

Alternatively, if I select the two tags to the right of the selection field I am given a view of my hierarchy from the initial location I selected previously when creating the column.

Again, all I need to is select the option I want from the list.

Now you’ll see the file has been tagged appropriately for with a location as shown above. I can sort and filter as I normally would on this field inside the SharePoint list.

If I now for example change the term from NSW to N.S.W.

I see the term has also changed for that document.

Hopefully this article gives you some idea of the power of the SharePoint Term Store and managed metadata. There is so much more you can do with the Term Store than I have been able to show here, so I encourage you to go and do some exploring and see how the Term Store can be used to create flatter and more organised structures in your SharePoint Online environment.

A while back I wrote a post about migrating from Companyweb (SharePoint on SBS) to Office 365. You can review that post at:

Migrating from Companyweb to Office 365 SharePoint

which concluded that using third party tools to do the migration to SharePoint Online is a much easier process that any other option. The drawback with most third party tools is that they are quite expensive, especially for smaller businesses (generally talking thousands).

I have always been on the hunt for a suitably priced SMB SharePoint migration tool and recently was contacted by Ajit from Lepide who kindly provided me with a copy of the LepideMigrator  for documents software.

You basically set up your source locations.

Then your SharePoint destinations, which can include SharePoint Online.

You can then migrate or copy from source to destination. What you might also notice here is that there is a Migration Analyser option.

SharePoint does have some limitations around certain file names, file lengths, etc. This can prove frustrating if you are trying to a bulk move of files and one of these conditions causes your traditional file copy via a mapped drive to bomb.

The built in migration analyser will test your source for all these known condition and alter you if problems exist. That way you can identify and take action on problem files BEFORE you migrate.

If you need to do SharePoint to SharePoint migrations, say from previous versions of SharePoint to SharePoint Online it will do this as well. It can also read and display things like the permissions of your destination as well as match securities during SharePoint to SharePoint migrations which is really handy.

Now for the best part. The cost of this tool is only USD $349 for a one year subscription of a single seat license. You can add additional seats for USD $175 and each subscription includes free support and maintenance. That is outstanding value for what the tool does, especially when compared to other offerings.

I think the LepideMigrator for documents software is an excellent choice for small and more cost conscious businesses looking to move data into SharePoint online, whether from a file system or from something like Companyweb. They also have a reseller program that provides further benefits.

With the LepideMigrator  for documents software I successfully migrated files from a local hard disk to a SharePoint Online Document Library, a complete site from a SharePoint 2010 hosted environment to SharePoint Online and finally across different SharePoint Online tenants. That probably covers the majority of what most smaller business need when they move their files to Office 365.

Lepide also have a number of other products that, based on what I have seen with the SharePoint tool, I also suggest you go and check out.

Once again, thanks to Ajit from Lepide for reaching out and letting me test a full version of their software so I could report to you.

So, if you have a need to migrate information to SharePoint Online I really suggest you check out the LepideMigrator  for documents. It is the most cost effective tool I have currently found, especially for smaller, and more budget constrained, businesses.