Managing Metadata in the Enterprise
While it is well known that metadata is the key to effective search, in enterprises good metadata is rare. On the web, pages are tagged and curated manually by people who have a strong incentive to do so and a large SEO industry behind them. In the enterprise, it is impossible to tag everything by hand. Requiring authors and content contributors to tag everything usually backfires as it is very time consuming and people often avoid tagging or circumvent systems set up to force them to tag.
For example, one organization found that over 40% of their repository was tagged with the first term on the dropdown list. People simply picked the quickest choice, not the correct choice. Inconsistent tagging and incomplete or simply wrong metadata results in poor search – and degrades compliance.
Your Search is Only As Good as Your Metadata
Automated tagging is the only practical solution for effective metadata management. Manually generated or processed metadata can be supplemented by machine-generated metadata very cost-effectively. Machines may not be perfect at tagging based on human language, but they are much more consistent and often more accurate than humans.
BA Insight AutoClassifier leverages MMS to precisely define the metadata tags and automate the process of classifying information to improve the user experience. It applies text analytics and semantic processing to add consistent, quality metadata to content surfaced within SharePoint. It also works with content stored outside of SharePoint, as long as it is indexed into SharePoint Search.