Author: Natalia Tsymbalenko
My recent posts are more on SharePoint constructive criticism: I see the issues and flaws in SharePoint, and the challenges they cause to working with SharePoint. It doesn’t mean that SharePoint is getting worse; it just means I am getting better. The more I know the more I see. For the past couple of years I have been working on understanding how to use SharePoint right, where SharePoint is helpful, and what features are more appropriate for the specific use cases. Finally, I have figured out where the Managed Metadata can bring value.
More on that here:
Role of Enterprise Taxonomy in IA
Taxonomy, Folksonomy. What is it and why should we bother?
I have implemented managed metadata, and have used it successfully to improve surfacing the content on the portal. Nevertheless, working with managed metadata in the real world portal uncovers 5 flaws that currently exist in Term Store management implementation that I want to share here:
1. No history, no versioning. There is no way to see changes made in the term store, nor you can revert changes.
2. No author assigned to the term. The term doesn’t have an author field. So, there is no way to know who created or modified the term and when.
3. No track of term usage Being in the Term Store you can’t trace where the term has been used.
4. No UI to backup or restore. What you can do is to reach out to PowerShell to export terms for backing it up.
5. No sync options in case of Hybrid Cloud Architecture There is no way to maintain term store in sync between 2 farms: on-premises and SharePoint Online.
These 5 things can be very significant in the large implementation of SharePoint. For example, if you know that you will have a large number of authors that should support the Term Store, the current lack of collaborative features within Term Store Management tool, such as versioning, will wreak havoc with a whole idea of multi-author editing of the Terms. It’s better to be aware of the current limitations before making a decision on using a SharePoint built-in term store management. It doesn’t mean that these facts should stop you, but knowing about them upfront will allow you to set your expectations right.