Creating the term store example with the term store management tool

This post continues the journey of our post series “SharePoint 2010: exploring the managed metadata service application”. We are going to see how to work with the term store management tool and create the example term store that was shown in the last posts of this series. In the next posts we are going to see how to manage these terms and make taxonomy and folksonomy modifications.

Overview

This post guides you in creating a sample taxonomy with the term store management tool. The requirements for this post are a created managed metadata service application (see my post if you need help in doing this).

First of all, we are going to grant us the necessary permissions for working with the term store management tool. We are going to grant us the term store administrator role (see my post if you don’t know the available managed metadata roles). Second, we are able to create our taxonomy shown in the next figure in the term store management tool.

To sum up the steps are as follows:

• Step 1: grant the term store administration permissions to a user
• Step 2: create the taxonomy with the term store administrator

Step 1: grant the term store administration permissions to a user

The last post of this series described the different roles that are available for managing the term store with the term store management tool. One of these roles is the term store administrator. The term store administrator has the ability to manage the taxonomy and folksonomy in the term store. He is also responsible in setting up the contribute permissions to other users for the taxonomy we are going to create. Please note that the farm administrator is not automatically a term store administrator. However, the farm administrator has to define a term administrator if you want to manage the term store with the term store management tool.

With the next steps we are going to grant the term store administration permissions to a user of our choice. To do this login in as a farm administrator and follow these steps:

• open the central admin
• go to “Application Management” –> “Manage Service Applications”
• go to the managed metadata service application that you want to edit and click on its name (in our case the “Demo Managed Metadata”)
• you should see the term store management tool. You should find a section called “Term store Administrators” on the right side of the term store properties
• add as many users you want and press “Save”

Step 2: create the taxonomy with the term store administrator

Now, we are able to create our taxonomy described above with the term store administrator permissions. The term store management tool can be found in the central administration under the managed metadata service application or on any site collection (under site settings) associated to a web application which is consuming the managed metadata service application.

As the term store administrator follow these steps to open the term store management tool:

• open the central admin
• go to “Application Management” –> “Manage Service Applications”
• go to the managed metadata service application that you want to edit and click on its name (in our case the “Demo Managed Metadata”)

With the term store management tool open, we are going to create three different types of objects:

• a term group: in our example “Organization”
• a term set: in our example “Department”
• a term: in our example “Information & Technology”

Creating a term group

We should see the term store management tool and on the top of the left navigation bar the “Demo Managed Metadata” entry. We are going to create the first node “Organization” of our example. This node is a a term group that is usually used to organize more sets of terms. The term group is used as a security boundary. You can specify following properties in a term group:

• description: a short description about the group
• group managers: group managers are responsible in changing the structure of the term sets that are contained in this group. In addition, they are able to grant contribute permissions in this group to other people
• contributors: these are users that can contribute terms and term sets in this group

Let us create a new group by following these steps:

• select the arrow with the left mouse button near to the “Demo Managed Metadata” (if you can’t see the arrow, then you are not a term store administrator)
• Press “New Group”
• assign to the new group entry the name “Organization”
• assign “Group Managers” and “Contributors” if necessary

Creating a term set

In the previously created group we are going to create a term set. A group can contain multiple term sets. Term sets are used to contain one or more hierarchical terms. These term sets are selected in our site collections as source for the managed metadata columns.

The properties pane of the term set provides you with two separate tabs. The first tab “Properties” defines the properties that are following (also see next figure):

• description: a short description about the term set
• contact-email: used as contact address for suggestions on the managed metadata choice popup in the site collections that use managed metadata fields
• stakeholders: stakeholders are only for documentation purposes and do not define any permission settings or automatic notifications. Usually you can use them to track the names of persons that should be contacted before any change is made on this term set.
• submission policy: this defines if this term set can be modified solely by the people defined in the term set management tool or opened to everyone
• available for tagging: this flag defines if the term set is available for tagging or not

In the “Custom Sort” tab of the term sets you are able to sort your term sets individually or maintain the custom sort order.

We are going to create a new term set “Departments” by following these steps:

• select the arrow near to the “Organization” (if you can’t see the arrow, then you are not a term store administrator)
• Press “New term set”

• assign to the new term set entry the name “Departments”
• assign the properties that you want

Creating a term

As already stated before, a term set is used to group more terms. Terms now are used to specify a single term instance. The properties that can be defined in a term set are:

• available for tagging: this flag defines if the term set is available for tagging or not
• description: a short description about the term
• language: the current language for the name of the term and its synonyms. If you have multiple language packs installed you might be able to translate your term
• other labels: these are the synonyms that can be used for your term. When a end-user inserts a synonyms associated to a term in the term store, then the system changes this synonym into the associated term (for example the term “Information & Technology” could have a synonym “IT”).
• stakeholders: stakeholders are only for documentation purposes and do not define any permission settings or automatic notifications. Usually you can use them to track the names of persons that should be contacted before any change is made on this term set

We are going to create a term called “Information & Technology” by following the next steps:

• select the arrow near to the “Departments” (if you can’t see the arrow, then you are not a term store administrator)
• Press “New term”

• assign to the new term set entry the name “Information & Technology”
• under “other labels” assign the value IT
• assign additional properties if you want

Repeat the last steps for the remaining terms (“Accountancy”, “Management”, etc.)and you are done.

Summary

In this blog post we created the sample taxonomy of our blog series. We saw the different types of objects available in a term store and which properties can be set. The next steps that we are going to follow in the next posts describe on how to manage the taxonomy in the term store management tool with some store operations that might become handy in some situations.

Hope this helps,

Patrick