We started this week discussing the blog post, or repost by Jeff Carr, on the Early Site regarding myths about taxonomies and SharePoint. You can see my original argument here. Today, let’s talk about the final Myth, #5 – Taxonomies managed in the in the term store can be used everywhere in the SharePoint application.

Nope and I think that is as it should be. Folks, there are repositories and there are indexes and there are hybrids. One has to tailor the solution to the organization, not come up with some off the wall rule that won’t work in a “real” world.

One term store support one SharePoint project. One taxonomy is NOT shared across all instances of SharePoint projects. Nor should it be. New SharePoint project, new content, new concepts, create or implement a new term store project. I’m okay with that.  Folks, there are repositories and there are indexes and there are hybrids. One has to tailor the solution to the organization, not come up with some off the wall rule that won’t work in a “real” world.

There may be a need to create an overarching enterprise wide taxonomy for an organization. I like the idea of a common vernacular for the firm. But each instance of the SharePoint may have a different subject area. It does not need the full bore of the enterprise taxonomy but only a subset or a branch may serve its needs. This is another excellent reason to manage the taxonomy outside of SharePoint. Why would you want to manage the taxonomy for a single project and try to tie it back to the corporate whole when you could use the corporate whole and only apply the pieces you need for a specific project? Call out to the main taxonomy to index (tag) the documents. Deposit them in your SharePoint instance and leverage the taxonomy modules throughout the SharePoint instance based on the main taxonomy but automatically tailored to your own set of documents.

Summary:

I think the real challenge here and for all people looking to manage a taxonomy and apply it to the records held in a SharePoint repository is that the Term Store is a rotten way to manage the taxonomy. It is a great way to leverage the functionality of 2010. So leave to SharePoint the things it does well and manage the taxonomy in a tool made to manage an apply taxonomies to information like the Data Harmony MAIstro tool and its SharePoint connection.

Marjorie M.K. Hlava

President, Access Innovations

Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in taxonomies, metadata, and semantic enrichment to make your content findable.