In this chapter, we will discuss one of the more powerful aspects of SharePoint—metadata. We're all familiar with the information we put into SharePoint, which takes the form of documents, spreadsheets, images, and so on. Metadata is detailed information about these documents and artifacts.

For example, a document might be about a particular business process, but the metadata about the document will include thingssuch as the author's name, their department, the date the document was created or updated, the subject of the document, and keywords and phrases that we might use when searching for the document. Organizing and managing metadata will help your users to locate the resources they need more efficiently.

Configuring and using managed metadata brings a lot of advantages to a SharePoint environment:

• Consistency: Using managed metadata and term sets allows users to select from predefined terms, ensuring consistency in spelling and phrasing.
• Improved discoverability: By using consistent names and terminology across your enterprise, you improve the user's ability to search for content and refine results.
• Metadata-driven navigation: Metadata can be used to create navigation elements for sites based on terms, as well as to create dynamic views of information in libraries and lists.
• Increased flexibility: Because of the ease of updating term sets, you can quickly update the classification of items across an organization. For example, if a business updates or changes a product name, administrators can merge terms in a term set. Alternatively, if similar terms are discovered, administrators can merge the related terms. In either of these cases, all of the content previously tagged with either of the terms is updated.

The topics covered in this chapter are as follows:

• Planning and configuring Managed Metadata Service applications
• Planning and configuring the Managed Metadata Service features
• Planning and configuring the Term Store security
• Planning and configuring the Term Store structure
• Planning and configuring the Term Store languages
• Maintaining the Term Store

By the end of this chapter, you'll be able to successfully configure the Managed Metadata Service. We have a lot of information to cover in this chapter, so let's get started!

Planning and configuring Managed Metadata Service applications

In this series of sections and tasks, you'll learn about the terminology related to metadata and content classification, as well as the tools and options available for making metadata available to your users. Planning a successful Managed Metadata Service implementation requires input from both business and technical resources to ensure there's a well-reasoned structure that takes into account the taxonomy and terminology that the organization uses.

Overview and terminology

When discussing metadata, the following terms are used to describe the core concepts:

• Taxonomy: This is a formal, hierarchical grouping of words, labels, and terms used to describe something.
• Folksonomy:This is an informal classification system containing labels, keywords, and terms applied by end users to describe something. If you've seen blog sites that have categories and tags (such as a tag cloud), that is an example of a folksonomy.
• Terms:This is aspecific word or phrase linked to a SharePoint item. Each term has a unique ID, although it can have many associated labels or synonyms. There are two types of terms:
  • Managed terms: These are predefined or curated sets of terms created and managed by a Term Store administrator. Managed terms are selected from a list of terms to be applied to content.
  • Enterprise Keywords:These are words or phrases that a user adds to an item. Keywords can be used in a folksonomy or informal tagging mechanism.
• Term set:This is agroup of related terms. Terms are typically organized in some sort of a hierarchy—for example, Books > Cookbooks > Vegetarian. Term sets can be open (anyone can add terms) or closed (only specific users can add terms). In addition, term sets can have two different scopes:
  • Local: Only available within the context of a specific site collection, such as with a specific list or library
  • Global: Available to all sites that use the Managed Metadata Service
• Groups: These are sets of term sets that share common security, business, or management requirements. To manage term sets in a specific group, a user must have contributor permissions for that group.
• Tagging: This is the process of applying a term (either from Managed Metadata Service or Enterprise Keywords) to an item.
• A Managed Metadata column: A column is a data structure that holds data (such as terms or other metadata), similar to how you might add a column called Notes to a spreadsheet. A Managed Metadata column displays terms from a specific term set to use when tagging data. It can use an existing term set or be mapped to a new local term set specifically for that column.
• An Enterprise Keywords column: This is a type of column that can be added to content (such as libraries or lists) that allows users to tag items with their own words.
• The Term Store management tool: The Term Store management tool is used to manage term sets, terms, groups, and other aspects of the Managed Metadata Service. To manage the Term Store, a user must be a member of the Term Store administrators.
• Content types: A content type represents both a data item and information about that particular data item. Content types can be used to link or associate a particular item with related metadata, document templates, or policies.

Now that you have an understanding of the terminology for this section, you can learn how to configure the Managed Metadata Service application.

Planning the Managed Metadata Service application

Understanding your organization is paramount to defining the structure of the Managed Metadata Service. Managed metadata can be used to help enforce a certain consistency and structure across your organization, or it can be used in more grassroots style management to help users find resources by using terminology that is familiar to them. The core decision comes down to how you want to control the use of metadata in your organization:

• Do you want to control things globally or only use metadata locally on certain sites?
• Will term sets be curated and managed or will they be open for users to edit and contribute?
• Will you allow the use of Enterprise Keywords (folksonomy) or not?

SharePoint allows organizations to combine both formal, managed metadata with user-driven tagging, depending on the organizational data classification requirements.

Managed terms allow users to select from pre-defined terms, helping enforce consistent usage across sites (or the organization as a whole). It helps improve discoverability and search capabilities since you can be assured that the metadata values are spelled and applied consistently across the organization. Additionally, managed metadata allows metadata-based navigation, allowing users to filter search results on selectable options.

Planning for taxonomy and folksonomy

As mentioned previously, one of the benefits of managed term sets is the ability to apply metadata values to items consistently. Planning and implementing a term set helps users labeling content to use the same terms throughout the enterprise, eliminating incorrect or misspelled terms.

In creating a term set for your taxonomy, you'll need to understand how data is classified in your organization. To get an idea of how you might plan a taxonomy, let's look at this data table of cuts of beef that a restaurant supply company might use:

Depending on how your organization refers to this data, one taxonomical structure may be preferred over another. For example, you may want users to navigate the terms in the previous term set by preparation method, followed by cut, and then section.

From a content classification perspective, you may want to enable users to tag certain cuts of beef with meal ideas (such as tagging both skirt steak and flat iron steak with the term fajitas). Once you have settled on a taxonomy structure and whether or not to allow Enterprise Keywords, you can begin configuring the Managed Metadata Service application.

Configure the Managed Metadata Service application

In order to start using metadata on your farm, you'll need to configure the Managed Metadata Service. The steps in the following sections will walk you through a basic configuration if one hasn't already been created.

Creating and configuring a service account

First, you'll need to select (or create) an account for the purpose of running the Managed Metadata Service:

1. For this section, you can create a normal domain user account in Active Directory Users and Computers. We'll register it as a managed account assigned to the Managed Metadata Service. You can also use PowerShell to create an account:

          $Password = ([System.Web.Security.Membership]::GeneratePassword(15,2))
          

          $SecurePassword = ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText $Password -Force
          

          New-ADUser -DisplayName "Managed Metadata Service Account" -SamAccountName mms-svc -Name "Managed Metadata Service Account" -AccountPassword $SecurePassword -Enabled $True
        

You can retrieve the plain-text password in the$Passwordvariable for use in Step 6. If you create the account through Active Directory Users and Computers, note down the password.

2. Launch SharePoint Central Administration.
3. Under Application Management, select Manage service applications.

4. Select Security, then select Configure managed accounts under the General section:

5. Select Register Managed Account.

6. Enter the credentials for the service account, using DOMAINusername as the username and the password acquired from Step 1. If desired, select Enable automatic password change to configure SharePoint to automatically update the password on a scheduled basis, then scroll to the bottom of the page and click OK:

Now that you've created and configured an account, you can move on to creating the service application.

Configuring a Managed Metadata Service application

In this section, we'll instantiate the Managed Metadata Service application:

1. Click on Application Management from the left-side navigation menu.
2. Under Service Applications, select Manage service applications:

3. Click New, then select Managed Metadata Service from the service application list:

4. On the Create New Managed Metadata Servicepage, fill out the details accordingly:

• Name: Enter a name for the service application.
• Database Server: Enter the instance of SQL Server where you want to create the managed metadata database.
• Database Name: Enter the name that you want to use for the managed metadata database.
• Database Authentication: Select either Windows or SQL authentication (supply credentials if you are using SQL authentication).
• Failover Database Server: Enter the name of your failover database server if you're using one.
• Application Pool: Select the Create new application pool radio button.
• Application Pool Name: Enter a name for the new application pool.
• Select a security account for this application pool: From the drop-down list, select the Managed Metadata Service account that you registered in Step 6 of the previous section.
• Content Type Hub: If you're going to connect to a content type hub, enter the URL for that site collection in this box. If this is the first Managed Metadata Service application that you're configuring in a farm, leave this blank:

5. Click OK.

The Managed Metadata Service application has now been created. Next, we'll configure the settings for the Managed Metadata Service connection.

Configuring the Managed Metadata Service connection

After you have created one or more Managed Metadata Service applications, you can configure the settings for them. Configuring a service connection allows you to manage the following settings:

• This service application is the default storage location for Keywords: If you are using Enterprise Keywords (folksonomy) as part of your metadata strategy, you can enable this option to select this Managed Metadata Service application as the default storage location for Enterprise Keywords. If you've configured multiple Managed Metadata Service applications in your organization, you can only select this on one service application per web application. If you are not going to use Enterprise Keywords, you need to ensure this checkbox is cleared for all Managed Metadata Service connections.
• This service application is the default storage location for column specific term sets: Enable this option if this service application is used to store custom term sets that are created at the site collection level. If you are using more than one Managed Metadata Service application in your farm, only select this option for one service application per web application. If you do not want to allow custom term sets, clear this checkbox for all Managed Metadata Service connections.
• Consumes content types from the content type gallery at http://<sitename>: If this service application will be used to make content types from a content type hub available to users of sites in this web application, select this option. This option is only available if the service has been configured to use share content types.
• Push-down Content Type Publishing updates from the Content Type Gallery to sub-sites and lists using the content type: This option determines whether content type changes are published to sub-sites and lists that use the content type.

To configure the service connection, follow these steps:

1. Launch Central Administration.
2. Under Application Management, select Manage service applications.
3. Find the Managed Metadata Service connection you wish to configure and click on the row:

4. With the row highlighted, click on Properties under the top ribbon.
5. Select the checkboxes for the enable or disable options and then click OK:

Now that you've configured a Managed Metadata Service application, you can begin configuring the Term Store.

Planning and configuring the Term Store security

In the context of Term Store administration, a group is a collection of related terms. Every person who administers some aspect of the SharePoint Term Store must be granted some level of permission. By managing the Term Store security, you can assign or delegate administration and configuration of the entire Term Store, groups, and term sets. In this section, we'll configure the security of the Term Store, which is required for later administering it.

To make changes to the Term Store management tool, you must be granted one of the following specific roles:

• Term store administrator, which has the following capabilities:
  • Create or delete term set groups.
  • Add or remove group managers or contributors.
  • Change the working languages for the Term Store.
  • Can carry out any other task that a group manager or contributor can do.
• Group manager, which has the following capabilities:
  • Add or remove contributors.
  • Perform any other task that a contributor can do.
• Contributor, which has the following capabilities:
  • Create or change a term set.

Let's begin with the Term Store administrator.

Adding a Term Store administrator

By default, SharePoint Server farms do not have any users in this (or any other Term Store administration) role. Before you can administer any Term Store features, you need to add an account to the Term Store administrator group. You should use an account that already has farm administration privileges to assign Term Store administrators. You need to be a Term Store administrator to assign other roles. Follow these steps to add Term Store administrators:

1. If this is your first time administering the Term Store, you'll need to grant account permission. In the tree-view navigation pane, selectManaged Metadata Service (next to the home icon), add an account to Term Store Administrators,and click Save.
2. Navigate to the Term Store management tool. You can access it in a few ways. If you're already in Central Administration, you can go toApplication Management | Manage Service Applications and then select theManaged Metadata Service application that you wish to administer. From a site collection, you can select Site settings | Term store management:

After adding your account to the Term Store administrators group, when you hover over items in the navigation, they'll now display a drop-down arrow. In the next section, we'll add group managers.

Adding a group manager

Group managers aren't necessary unless you are delegating roles to other users in the organization. Larger organizations may need to delegate the management of business-specific term sets to relevant groups. Follow these steps to add group managers:

1. Open Term Store Management Tool.

2. Expand the taxonomy and then select a group. Add users by adding usernames or addresses under theGroup Managerssection, separating them with semicolons:

3. Click Save.

Let's see how to add contributors in the next section.

Adding a contributor

Similar to group managers, contributors aren't necessary for an organization (as either a group manager or Term Store administrator can contribute terms). Follow these steps to add contributors:

1. Open Term Store Management Tool.
2. Expand the taxonomy and then select a group. Add users by adding usernames or addresses under theContributorssection, separating them with semicolons:

Once permissions have been assigned for managing the Term Store, you can begin defining the structure.

Planning and configuring the Term Store structure

While it is possible to have a single term set for your entire organization, you'll probably want to configure multiple term sets—perhaps each restricted to a certain business group, agency, or department. A group is the security boundary for term sets. When planning out the structure, use these recommendations and tips—they will give you a good balance between flexibility and structure:

• Use groups: While you may have global term sets (such as general business terms, department names, or other topics that are common across the enterprise), you may also find that departments or business groups have specific terms related only to their specific area of the organization—such as finance, legal, or human resources. You can use groups to organize term sets.
• Use term set hierarchies: Terms can be placed in a hierarchical fashion (such as Books > Cookbooks > Italian or Construction > Materials > Roofing). Complete and well-designed hierarchies will help users refine data more specifically and increase the likelihood of metadata being assigned correctly.
• Be careful to understand the difference betweencopying, reusing, and pinningterms:
  • Copying a term means you are using a source term as a template to create a target term. As soon as you save the new term, it is its own entity and is not connected to any other terms.
  • Reusinga term means you are creating an editable linked copy of it in another term set. If you later update the term (either the original or the copy), bothterms get updated. This can be both useful and have unintended consequences.
  • Pinninga term means you are making alinked copyof it, but the new term is read-only and can't be changed. This might be useful if you want to create standard sets of terms across your enterprise.

• Establish processes for handling the deprecation of old terms as your business changes.
• Use the Other labelsproperty of a term to add synonyms to it, rather than creating the synonyms as new terms. This will help to reduce confusion and keep content labels consistent (for example, rather than creating separate terms for lawyer, counsel, and attorney, create one term for lawyerand then add the counsel and attorneysynonyms to it).

Once you've determined how you want to manage the security and use (and reuse) of terms, you can begin creating term sets.

Creating and managing term sets

Before you can use term sets in your organization, you'll need to decide on a structure and architecture based on your business needs. The process to create and manage term sets is fairly straightforward. The regular maintenance procedures can be divided into the following categories:

• Creating a term set
• Managing a term set
• Creating a term
• Copying a term
• Reusing a term
• Pinning a term
• Merging a term
• Deprecating a term
• Moving a term or a term set
• Deleting a term or a term set

Let's go through each one of these individually.

Creating a term set

To create a term set, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to Term Store Management Tool. You can access it in a few ways. If you're already in Central Administration, you can go to Application Management | Manage Service Applications and then select the Managed Metadata Service that you wish to administer. From a site collection, you can go to Site settings | Term store management:

2. If this is your first time administering the Term Store, you'll need to grant account permission. In the tree-view navigation pane, selectManaged Metadata Service (next to the home icon), add an account to Term Store Administrators,and click Save.After adding your account to Term Store Administrators, when you hover over items in the navigation, they'll now display a drop-down arrow.
3. Click on Managed Metadata Service, then select New Group:

4. Fill out the properties for the name of the group managers and contributors and then click Save.
5. Point to the new term set (or an existing one if you have previously configured a group to be associated with a site), select the arrow that appears and then selectNew Term Set.
6. Enter the value you want to use as the default label or name of your term.

7. In thePropertiespane of the Term Store Management Tool, click on theGeneraltab and then fill out the required information about the new term set:
   • Term Set Name:Enter a value for the name for your term set.
   • Description: Enter a description for using the terms.
   • Owner: Specify an owner.
   • Contact: Enter an email address of a user or group for feedback purposes.
   • Stakeholders: Add the names of groups or users that should be notified prior to changes being made to the term set.
   • Submission Policy: Specify whether you want the term set to be Openor Closed.
   • Available for Tagging: Select the checkbox to make the terms available for tagging items. If the term set is still in development or not ready to be deployed, clear the box.

8. Select the Intended Use tab,then specify the following settings:
   • Available for Tagging: Select this checkbox to make this term set available for tagging content.
   • Use this Term Set for Site Navigation: Select thischeckbox to enable usage for managed navigation.
   • Use this Term Set for Faceted Navigation: Check this box to enable refiners based on managed properties on the managed navigation pages. This is an advanced setting.
9. Select the Custom Sort tab, then select a preferred sort order. By default, terms will be sorted alphabetically for the current language. Select Usecustom sort order so that you can organize terms to always appear in a consistent order.
10. Select the Custom Properties tab to specify any additional shared property name and value data about the term set.
11. Click Save.

Managing a term set and maintaining the Term Store

There are a number of maintenance activities that you may need to perform throughout the life cycle of your SharePoint Term Store. These changes might be necessary as the organization implements changes to business units, departments, products, or services. Common tasks in a Term Store include creating, copying, reusing, pinning, merging, deprecating, moving, and deleting terms.

All of the following tasks are performed within the Term Store Management Tool.

Creating a term

Terms must be added to the Term Store before they can be applied as metadata to content. Use this process to add a new term to the Term Store:

1. Expand the groups to find the term set that you want to add a term to.
2. Point to the term set where you want to add a term, click on the down arrow that appears, and then selectCreate Term:

3. Enter the value that you want to use as the default label for the new term.
4. In thePropertiespane, specify the following information about the new term:
   • Available for tagging: Select this box to make this term available for use in tagging.
   • Language: Select the language for this label. If you have not yet enabled multilingual terms, you'll only see the default language for your tenant.
   • Description: Enter a description of the term.
   • Default Label: Enter the default name of this term.
   • Other Labels: Enter any synonyms in the current language for this term. Synonyms are any values you want a search to associate as equal (for example, if you wantschoolroom to be treated the same as classroom).
5. Click Save.

The new term is available for editing.

Copying a term

You may have terms that require similar properties. You can save time by copying the original term to use as a template. Use the following process to copy a term. The new term is placed in the same term set as the original term:

1. Expand the groups and navigate to the term you wish to copy.
2. Point to the term, then click on the down arrow that appears next to it.
3. Select Copy Term. The default label for the new term is Copy of <original term>. None of the term's child terms are copied, but the properties of the original term are copied to the new term:

4. Make any additional changes and then click Save.

The new term should now be available for editing.

Reusing a term

As mentioned earlier, reusing a term basically involves creating a linked copy of a term in one term set to another term set. Take the following steps to reuse a term:

1. Expand the groups and navigate to the target term set where you want to reuse an existing term. The term you want should not be in this term set.

2. Point to the target parent item (either a term set or a parent term under which you want the new reused term to appear) and click on the down arrow that appears next to it, then select Reuse Terms. In the following example, theGeneralterm set underFinanceis going to be the target for the Standard Operating Proceduresterm located in theMarketingterm set:

3. On the Term Reuse page, navigate to the source term.In this example, the source term is located in the Generalterm set under the Marketinggroup. Select OK:

4. Notice the new term under the target term (or term set). The icon shows that it is a linked or reused term. Changes made to either of the linked terms will be reflected in the other linked term:

You can see both the original and reused terms in the console.

Pinning a term

Pinning a term is similar to reusing a term—the main exception being that only the parent (source) term can be modified. Take these steps to pin a term:

1. Expand the groups and navigate to the target term set where you want to pin an existing term. The term you want should not be in this term set.
2. Point to the target parent item (either a term set or a parent term under which you want the new pinned term to appear) and click on the down arrow that appears next to it, then select Pin Term With Children.In the following example, theGeneralterm set underMarketing will be the target for theManagers termlocated under theFinance term set:

3. On the Reuse and Pin Term: Select a Sourcepage, select the source term, then click OK:

Merging a term

If you have some level of redundancy in your terms, it may be time to merge them. You may need to merge terms if you are retiring one product and replacing it with a similar product or if you have duplicative terms that refer to the same concept. In either of these cases, merging terms could be the solution. To do so, take the following steps:

1. Expand the groups and navigate to the term set that contains the term you want to collapse into another.
2. Point to the item you wish to collapse or merge into another, click on the down arrow that appears next to it, and then select Merge Terms.In the following example, theTime Offtermis going to be merged into the Time Away term:

3. On the Select term to merge into page, select the target term, then click OK:

4. Notice the dialog box regarding the term merge. The synonyms, translations, and other properties of the source term will be copied into the target term. Click OKto continue the merge or Cancelto abort.
5. Click Saveto save the updated term.

Deprecating a term

At some point, it may become necessary to discontinue the future use of an existing term. Deprecating a term inactivates it for usage, but existing instances of the term continue to be applied. Deprecating a term does not affect any of its child terms:

1. Expand the groups and navigate to the target term set containing the term you want to deprecate.
2. Point to the item you wish to deprecate, click on the down arrow that appears next to it, and then select Deprecate Term.If you choose to deprecate a reused term, all instances of it are deprecated.

Moving a term or term set

Take the following steps to move terms or term sets:

1. Expand the groups and navigate to the item you want to move.
2. Point to the item you wish to move, click the down arrow that appears next to it, and then select Move Terms (if the item is a term) orMove Term Set(if the item is a term set).
3. On the Term move: select a destinationpage, select the destination, then click OK.

Deleting a term or a term set

Deleting a term removes all instances of it. Items that had been previously tagged with the deleted term will not be tagged with that term anymore:

1. Expand the groups and navigate to the item you wish to delete.

2. Point to the item you wish to delete, click on the down arrow that appears next to it, then select Delete Term (if the item is a term) orDelete Term Set(if the item is a term set).
3. Click OK to acknowledge the deletion.

Let's see how term sets are imported in the next section.

Importing term sets

If you have already created a taxonomy elsewhere or have a very long term set to create, you can import it directly into the Term Store. The term set import file is a CSV that has a specific format.

The first line of the CSV import contains the following comma-separated data:

          "Term Set Name","Term Set Description","LCID","Available for Tagging","Term Description","Level 1 Term","Level 2 Term","Level 3 Term","Level 4 Term","Level 5 Term","Level 6 Term","Level 7 Term"
        

The second line of the import file contains the actual name of the term set, a comma, a description of the term set, two more commas, either TRUEorFALSEto indicate whether the terms are available for tagging, and then eight more commas.

The third line of the import file is where the actual terms begin. The first two fields are blank, followed by the locale identifier (if this field is blank, then the locale of the Term Store is used by default), either TRUE or FALSE to indicate whether a term is available for use, and the term description. The last seven fields are used to show the hierarchy of the items.

Imagine the following bulleted list represents the items in the term set:

• Locations (term set)
  • United States (level 1 term)
    • New York (level 2 term)
      • New York City (level 3 term)
      • Albany(level 3 term)
      • Rochester(level 3 term)
    • Florida(level 2 term)
      • Jacksonville(level 3 term)
      • Tampa(level 3 term)
      • Orlando(level 3 term)
  • Europe(level 1 term)
    • France(level 2 term)
      • Nice(level 3 term)
      • Paris(level 3 term)
    • Germany(level 2 term)
      • Berlin(level 3 term)
      • Frankfurt(level 3 term)

The sample CSV import file might look as follows:

"Term Set Name","Term Set Description","LCID","Available for Tagging","Term Description","Level 1 Term","Level 2 Term","Level 3 Term","Level 4 Term","Level 5 Term","Level 6 Term","Level 7 Term"
"Locations","Office Locations",,TRUE,,,,,,,,
,,1033,TRUE,,"United States","New York",,,,,
,,1033,TRUE,,"United States","New York","New York City",,,,
,,1033,TRUE,,"United States","New York","Albany",,,,
,,1033,TRUE,,"United States","New York","Rochester",,,,
,,1033,TRUE,,"United States","Florida",,,,,
,,1033,TRUE,,"United States","Florida","Jacksonville",,,,
,,1033,TRUE,,"United States","Florida","Tampa",,,,
,,1033,TRUE,,"United States","Florida","Orlando",,,,
,,1033,TRUE,,"Europe",,,,,,
,,1033,TRUE,,"Europe","France",,,,,
,,1033,TRUE,,"Europe","France","Nice",,,,
,,1033,TRUE,,"Europe","France","Paris",,,,
,,1033,TRUE,,"Europe","Germany",,,,,
,,1033,TRUE,,"Europe","Germany","Berlin",,,,
,,1033,TRUE,,"Europe","Germany","Frankfurt",,,,

To import the term set file, follow these steps:

1. Open the Term Store Management Tool.
2. Navigate to the group where you wish to import the term set file. If one does not exist, you can create a group using the steps in the previous section. Point to the group, click on the down arrow that appears next to it and select Import Term Set.
3. On the Term set importpage, click Browseand navigate to the location of the saved import file. Click OK.
4. Review the imported term set:

After importing a term set, you can go through and configure the properties of the terms as you would any other term in the store.

Next, we'll look at the tasks surrounding managing the Term Store languages.

Planning and configuring the Term Store languages

If your organization has locations internationally, chances are you'll need to support multiple languages in the Term Store. Multilingual support for terms means that users can tag and refer to content in their local languages, making it available to others who speak the same language. By default, the only language support available for SharePoint Server 2016 or SharePoint Server 2019 is the language that the installation was performed under.

The following sections will help you understand the process of deploying and managing languages in SharePoint.

Downloading and installing language packs

Adding support for additional languages in SharePoint Server requires downloading additional language packs. To do so, follow these steps on each server in your farm:

1. Download one or more additional language packs for SharePoint Server 2016 (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=746633&clcid=0x409) or SharePoint Server 2019 (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=57463). You'll want to create a separate folder for each language pack you download, as the language packs all share the same filename (serverlanguagepack.exe).

2. Run the language pack installation by double-clicking the serverlanguagepack.exe file. The installation will be displayed in the language of the language pack, so you'll need to be aware that the text will not match the installed server language. Click on the box at the lower left-hand side of the screen to accept the license terms and then click the button to continue:

3. Leave the box selected to run the SharePoint Products configuration wizard and then click on the button to finish:

4. Click Next on the Welcome to SharePoint Productspage.
5. Click Yes to acknowledge that services that will be restarted during configuration.
6. Click Finish to close the SharePoint Products configuration wizard.
7. Repeat the process for every additional language pack.

Configuring multilingual support

Once you have installed additional language packs, you'll need to make them available on the SharePoint system for use. To configure multilingual support for your Term Store, follow these steps:

1. Open the Term Store Management Tool, select the top-level (taxonomy), and then under Working languages, select the additional languages you wish to support. If you have not installed any additional languages, none will show up under Installed language packs:

2. ClickAdd >> and then click Save.

Once you have enabled multilingual support, you can then begin adding labels in other languages to your terms. In the following example, we will add a French label for the Resources term:

1. Select the term in the navigation tree.
2. From the Generaltab, under Language, select the additional language that you wish to add labels or synonyms for:

3. Every language requires a default label. Enter the primary label for the newly selected language. In this case, the French variation of Resourcesis Ressources. Add any additional synonyms or labels as you would for the primary language. When finished, click Save:

You can continue adding additional synonyms to other terms throughout the store, thereby improving the discoverability, searchability, and accessibility of content throughout your organization.

Summary

Managed metadata can be used to provide a consistent database of structured terms to apply to content throughout an organization, improving the search and discovery experiences. In this chapter, you learned about the capabilities of the Managed Metadata Service, as well as common administrative tasks, such as creating, copying, and deleting terms. In addition, you learned about the multilingual capabilities of the Managed Metadata Service, further improving accessibility and search capabilities for those whose native language is different than that of the content creator.

In the next chapter, we'll learn about how to configure the SharePoint Online environment for guest access and some of the methods available to secure it.

Questions

Use the following questions to test your knowledge of this chapter. You can find the answers in Chapter 16, Assessment Answers of this book:

1. When you ________ a term, you are creating a read-only copy of it.
   1. reuse
   2. pin
   3. replicate
   4. duplicate
2. You are configuring support for multiple languages on your SharePoint farm. After downloading and installing the language pack, you attempt to configure the language in the Term Store management tool, but the newly-installed language isn't available. What step do you need to perform first?
   1. Back up the Term Store database.
   2. Edit a term.
   3. Run the SharePoint Products configuration wizard.
   4. Restart the Managed Metadata Service application.
3. When you ________ a term, you are creating a linked copy of it.
   1. reuse
   2. pin
   3. replicate
   4. duplicate

4. What are the four benefits of managed metadata?
   1. Consistent labeling
   2. Improved content discoverability
   3. Improved application workflows
   4. Increased flexibility
   5. Metadata-driven navigation
   6. Application management
5. Term store groups are ________ boundaries.
   1. partition
   2. security
   3. secure store
   4. connectivity
6. During a meeting, one of the business stakeholders requested for users to be able to use their own terminology to add metadata content. Which two concepts relate to this capability?
   1. Enterprise Keywords
   2. Taxonomy
   3. Folksonomy
   4. Grouping
7. When importing a term set, which values cannot be imported?
   1. First-level terms
   2. Seventh-level terms
   3. A description of the term set
   4. Term synonyms
8. You are the SharePoint administrator for your organization and are responsible for configuring managed metadata. You are unable to create or manage term sets, although you can browse to the SharePoint Online admin center. What is most likely the cause of this?
   1. You do not have a SharePoint license assigned.
   2. You are not a member of the Term Store administrators.
   3. You are not a member of global administrators.
   4. You are not a member of the Term Set administrators.

9. You are the SharePoint administrator for your organization. As part of the process of improving accessibility for your users, you need to allow your users to be able to tag items using terms in their native languages. What feature should you configure?
   1. Enterprise Keywords
   2. Multilingual term sets
   3. Multi-geolocation features
   4. Merged terms
10. You are the SharePoint administrator for your organization. Your organization is discontinuing a product and wants to remove all managed metadata tags associated with this product. What is the best process to follow for this task?
    1. Deprecate a term.
    2. Merge a term.
    3. Delete a term.
    4. Pin a term.
11. You are the SharePoint administrator for your organization. Your organization is retiring an older product version and incorporating its features into a new product. The business wants to update all of the terms associated with the older product to point to the new product. What is the best process to follow for this task?
    1. Deprecate a term.
    2. Merge a term.
    3. Delete a term.
    4. Pin a term.
12. You are the SharePoint administrator for your organization. Your organization is retiring an older product version. The business wants the older product still discoverable for support and archival purposes but wants to prohibit users from tagging new items with those related terms. What is the best process to follow for this task?
    1. Deprecate a term.
    2. Merge a term.
    3. Delete a term.
    4. Pin a term.