SharePoint Search

Autoclassifying Content Inside and Outside of SharePoint

SharePoint includes a Managed Metadata Service (MMS, also referred to as the term store) which holds taxonomies and ontologies. MMS allows for manual tagging of content to drive findability, workflows, compliance, etc. It also includes a number of other powerful elements used in information architecture, such as content types. However, the term store is an empty container that needs to be filled in. The OOTB approach is to tag content manually.

Manual tagging proves unworkable at an enterprise scale. It becomes essential to create metadata automatically if it is to be consistent and applied to all content. Autoclassifying content is a game changer.

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BA Insight’s AutoClassification software leverages the SharePoint MMS to assign metadata to content by machine rather than by hand

Event triggering allows composition of metadata generation, forms, and workflow. Metadata generation can be done in-place (in SharePoint lists and libraries), or during indexing (against any content source with a connector). Automatic metadata creation enables a wide variety of metadata-driven scenarios around search, ECM, workflow, and compliance.

SharePoint OOTB does provide a feature called ‘entity extraction’ as part of search. These are verbatim extractors (string matchers) that match crawled content to a list of strings you compile ahead of time. Though they can be valuable, OOTB extractors are a quite limited form of entity extraction, and they only work on content being indexed, not on content ‘in place’ in SharePoint.

Read about BA Insight’s Classification Software.

BA Insight complements and extends the OOTB verbatim extractors (string matchers) to support sophisticated scenarios. This includes support for:

  • Regular Expressions
  • Partial Matchers
  • Custom Extractors

We also add many other text analytics capabilities including:

  • 1AutoClassification: supporting taxonomy and ontology-based scenarios such as a hierarchy of product names
  • 2Automatic Content Type Assignment: can be used with the SharePoint Content Organizer and other OOTB facilities to provide better compliance and content quality
  • 3Smart Metadata Mapping: includes flexible content processing with scripting, datasets, and on-the-fly tag creation
  • 4Taxonomy Management: the AutoClassifier includes a Taxonomy Manager that complements the OOTB taxonomy management UI and can be used alongside or instead of it. The Taxonomy Manager includes a drag & drop UI and a Test Bench which reduces administrative effort and speeds development and troubleshooting of classification rules
  • 5Import/Export: supports interoperability across industry tools by importing and exporting to the SharePoint term store and includes important elements beyond the OOTB CSV import/export terms. Support includes CSV, SKOS, RDF, and ARTX formats for import/export.  The files include terms, nodes, and relationships plus Synonyms, Rules, and Extended tags

BA Insight’s Classification Software brings machine-made metadata into the SharePoint infrastructure.

Since the metadata is integrated into SharePoint, it is immediately accessible for workflow, analytics, forms, and content management. For example, when a document is uploaded to a drop-off library, a document can be auto-classified, with a form presented to the user to verify the metadata. The Content Organizer (part of SharePoint) can then move it to the appropriate library – ensuring consistent metadata including content types as well as consistent organization of document locations.

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