MacroView DMF provides excellent support for capturing and utilising metadata to enable effective management of documents and emails on Microsoft SharePoint. Three key features of DMF in relation to metadata handling are:

 

1) automatic recording of email attributes, such as To, From, Subject, etc as emails are saved to SharePoint from Outlook;

2) automatic recording of file system attributes such as Created Date, Last Modified Date, Author and Producer as files are uploaded to SharePoint from Windows folders;

3) Automatic metadata columns such as Client and Matter in document libraries that are created in the SharePoint DM store fo new Projects or Matters.

 

DMF ships with a number of Library Templates that contain all the metadata columns that can be recorded automatically by DMF (see points 1 and 2 above). However, rather than relying on Library Templates, organizations using SharePoint 2010 Server may well prefer a more centrally-managed approach based on Site Content Types, Site Columns and List Definitions. The Content Type Publishing feature of SharePoint 2010 handles the propagation of these defintions across the whole SharePoint environment.

 

The good news is that MacroView DMF v7 also supports this centrally-managed approach. The advantages are that changes to document library structures can be made much more readily, and the need to deploy standard library templates across all Site Collections is eliminated.

 

Metadata columns that can be recorded automatically by DMF are defined at Site-Collection level with a Hidden property and incorporated in a custom List Definition.  This will result in those columns being present in document libraries that are based on the custom List Definition - but they will not be prompted for by DMF.

 

'Subject' columns in DMF Library Templates are implemented as Computed columns. These can also be incorporated in a  custom List Definition.

 

A similar approach can be taken with Automatic metadata columns (e.g. Client, Matter, etc).  The 'automatic' values for these columns in a particular library are implemented as default values, defined at the point where the library is created from the custom List Definition.

 

MacroView can provide consulting assistance with this centrally-managed metadata approach, including the creation of custom List Definitions that contain the metadata columns that are relevant to your organization.