One of the issues faced by organisations that employ an unstructured content management environment is that the staff members need to rely on their own systems for finding files.
While some of them may be able to perform basic search functions for the document title, real problems can arise when a piece of mission-critical information goes missing.
To this end, savvy IT executives are able to use SharePoint to structure their data environment.
However, the issue still remains of labelling files with relevant information to make them more searchable, as well as being able to make use of other important functions.
Most department heads will recognise the need to apply metadata related to document creation date and authorship - content can be easily collated with these factors - but may also find that they can enable several other options.
If a file is hardly ever accessed, a content management system (CMS) can be made to store it on low-cost archiving technologies - saving valuable space for other, high-demand uses.
Another helpful piece to be considered with metadata is the application of keywords based on subject, titles or internal headlines.
With the correct setup, SharePoint is able to help determine the most relevant set of searchable terms and suggest them to the end user before they are applied.
From there, the document is made more searchable on queries which would otherwise be invisible to regular search techniques - and on terms which may not have occurred to the file's author.
The tags applied through the metadata can now also be used to help regulate access, with certain topics or research pieces being restricted to high-level staff members or workers from a certain department.
In these cases it is usually a good idea to make use of a closed set of terms for labelling - phrases or words that are previously defined by managers and can have protocols applied selectively based on department policies.
The terms used in a closed set still need to be recognisable to the end user - there is no point in defining a list of words for use in a structured data environment if the labels themselves are not easy to use.
By allowing an intelligent CMS to help propagate a list of keywords for metadata application, organisations will find that the difficulties experienced in managing file environment structuring will soon be resolved with the use of intuitive tag clouds.