Auto Tagger for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 completely automatically categorizes SharePoint items and documents in background using taxonomy-based managed metadata or terms organized in the SharePoint Term Store. Tag rules, item and document properties and metadata, information store context and textual document contents are considered with the auto-classification. By default SharePoint 2010 offers a manual tagging feature only. Auto Tagger for SharePoint 2010 is available as part of the Knowledge Management Suite for SharePoint 2010 or as separate feature.

Tagging by default exposes relevant information on SharePoint portals. Auto Tagger for SharePoint 2010 offers the following additional features and benefits:

• Increased productivity and precision while bulk-tagging SharePoint items and documents automatically using a robust multi-level auto-classification system, based on given taxonomies / managed metadata.
• Auto Tagger could be helpful for initial tagging, e.g. after content migration from any system to SharePoint 2010, as well as for daily background operation.
• Taxonomy entry point (root node) is automatically chosen with respect to the current meta data column settings.
• List items are processed as well as enterprise documents and files located in SharePoint libraries.
• Properties (meta data column content) of list items and documents are considered for tagging.
• The context of items and documents, e.g. site, list, library, folder is considered for tagging.
• The document or file textual contents are considered, if IFilters are available.
• Use of categorization rules for auto-classification is supported (e.g. one term is in document content while another term is not). High quality of subject classification using a high performance completely Microsoft .NET Framework based rule engine.
  Rule-based classification is much faster, less expensive to implement, and produce reliable, reproducible results with higer accuracy compared to linguistic and statistical approaches.  
• Installed IFilters are used for content analysis, e.g. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF and many more).
• Fully integrated in default SharePoint tagging. Manually assigned tags keep untouched.
• Flexible background operation settings: Scheduling, inclusion and exclusion of sites, lists & libraries, columns and content types. 
• 100% SharePoint 2010 technology: The solution is completely based on the new Microsoft SharePoint Enterprise Metadata Management API. No MOSS 2007 legacy code or external 3rd party software (e.g. Lucene index) is used by default.
• Open API: Optionally plug-in of existing 3rd party solutions for text-mining, rule generation etc. 
• Seemless integration with other SharePoint Knowledge Management Suite components. Installation Checker included.
• You may also tag any external data sources to use with the SharePoint Knowledge Management and Social Networking features without any restrictions with the help of the Business Data List Connector for SharePoint. 

The Auto Tagger feature is available as a component of the Knowledge Management Suite for SharePoint 2010 or as a separate feature. The solution comes with a robust installer to allow it to be easily deployed within any SharePoint environment. It is available for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 (any editions).

Please register to download a shareware version of the Knowledge Management Suite for SharePoint for free usage now. Use the registration form on this page or contact sales@layer2.de . 

With the complete FREE shareware version you can download and use a feature-limited solution. To buy a license for this product, please click the shopping card symbols on this page.

The product is licensed on a per server base (one time fee). No additional clients licenses (CALs) are required. If you have several servers (e.g. in a farm scenario) all servers have to be licensed. You need a license for every web frontend server. For background operation (Auto Tagger) application servers have to be licensensed. Infrastructure server, e.g. for indexing or search don't need a license. You can optionally buy Software Assurance (SA) for free updates / upgrades to protect your investment.

For more information about licensing please check our FAQs or contact sales@layer2.de directly.

Please enter the product folder in the distribution zip-file, run the installer (*.exe) and install or upgrade the product following the steps. Use the "Run as Admin" option of the context menu (right click).

After sucessfull installation please activate the timer job that runs the Auto Tagger in Central Administration > Manage Farm Features as a Farm Administrator. Please re-schedule if required:

Fig.: The Auto Tagger Timer Job runs as a Farm Feature.

Please also activate the Auto Tagger feature on site collection level as a site collection administrator.

Fig.: How to activate auto-tagging in Microsoft SharePoint 2010 for taxonomy-based background content categorization. Please note that there is one feature activation available only starting with version 1.7.

The "Auto Tagger" feature generally activates background content categorization for the current site collection and creates the following lists (if not exists): 

• Auto Tagger Configuration List to define configuration items (jobs) to run at a specific time
• Auto Tagger Scope List to define scopes for certain configuration items, e.g. to include or exclude specific web sites, lists / libraries, columns or content types with tagging.

Please use these lists to setup more advanced options manually.

Upgrade note: If you have upgraded from earlier versions of Auto Tagger to 1.7 you have to re-activate the Auto Tagger feature to have the full functionallity available. See KMS manual for more details.

 

• Title
  You can use any title you want to describe your configuration item.
• TargetUid
  No longer used. The target is defined in the scopes list since version 1.7
• Interval
  Set the run interval in hours here. By default this is set to 24h. Please make sure that the Auto Tagger Timer Job setting is shorter compared to your interval settings. The timer job takes a look at this list to execute certain entries, if required.
• Overwrite
  Setting the overwrite flag to true (enabled) causes a complete new tagging for each item or document of the target area, which overwrite all previously given tags. By default the overwrite flag is set to false (disabled). In this way manually given tags are kept by default. The auto tagger by default only adds new and additional tags to the item or document.
• Last Run
  This entry is automatically written by the timer service to report the last run date and time.
• Next Run
  This entry is automatically written by the timer service to set the next run date and time. You can overwrite this, to enforce executing.
• Duration
  This entry is automatically written by the timer service to report the duration of the last execution of this entry (in seconds). Please make sure, that the duration is significantly shorter than your given interval.
• Tag Count
  This entry is automatically written by the timer service to report the number of tags given to items and documents with the last execution.
• Item Count
  This entry is automatically written by the timer service to report the number of Items and documents tagged with the last execution.
• Warning Count
  This entry is automatically written by the timer service to report the number of warnings in the last execution. See SharePoint Log for more detailed information.
• Error Count
  This entry is automatically written by the timer service to report the number of errors in the last execution. See SharePoint Log for more detailed information.
• Last Error Message
  This entry is automatically written by the timer service to report the last error message. This entry should be blank, if no errors occurred. See SharePoint Log for more detailed information in case of errors.
• Use System Update
  By default "System Update" is used to modify the item or document entry with tags by the auto tagger. That means, the "Last Modified" date/time and user is not changed by auto tagger. No workflows, offline replications etc. are started on item or document change by auto tagger. If disabling this entry, normal update is used. The "Last Modified" information is changed and e.g. workflows and offline replications are started on item / document change (if defined).
• Notes
  Please describe your configuration item here.
• Version
  The program version installed is listed here for debug and support.
• Attachments
  log.txt contains all log information of the last run. It is replaced with the next run.

• Title
  Use the item title to describe your scope.
• Scope
  Reference a configuration item here with lookup. 
• Website, List, Column, Content Type
  You can include or exclude any Web Site, List, Column or Content Type here.
  For example you can create one entity that includes all (using *) and another entry that excludes some elements. Alternatively you can include some specific elements only. In case of using Content Types you can include / exclude inherited content types of e.g. myContentType using myContentType*.
• Include
  If enabled, the elements are included in tagging, otherwise excluded.
• Notes
  Please describe the scope for others to understand your entry.

Shareware Limitations:

• Items with "Title" columns content starts with "A" or "a" are considered only for auto tagging.
• Documents with "Name" and "Filename" column content starts with "A" or "a" are considered only for auto tagging.

Please request a time limited full featured license for better evaluation, if required.

Known Issues:

• Categorization Rules are currently supported, but you need the Taxonomy Manager to add and edit. See Taxonomy Manager about how.
• Rule length is limited to 255 chars because of an Microsoft issue with custom term properties.
• Synonyms are currently supported starting with V1.1.

Did you found any additional issues? Please give feedback.

The simplicity and popularity of collaborative tagging as an information organization approach comes at the expense of several limitations. 
Manual content categorization / tagging

Traditionally, content has been categorized by subject experts, who manually reviewed documents and matched them to categories within a taxonomy. Despite the costs involved in manual categorization, it is perceived to have one key advantage: 100% accuracy. This is not necessarily true:

• Firstly, people choose tags based on their personal opinions, their knowledge background and their preferences. Subject experts may not have the bigger picture. An expert categorizing documents in his field does not necessarily possess expertise in other subjects - other parts of the taxonomy. An article about a businessman purchasing a baseball team may be reviewed by a sports expert, and categorized in the "Basketball" category, but not in one of the more specific subcategories of the "Mergers and Acquisitions" category.
• Furthermore, users may be describing the same object based on different granularity. This creates a noisy tag space and thus makes it harder to find material tagged by other users.
• Secondly, people may use polysemous words (a word that has many related senses) in order to tag the web resources. The lack of semantic distinction in tags can lead to inappropriate connections between items.
• Another problem is that different tags, which are either synonymous or have closely related meaning increase data redundancy, leading to reduced recall of information.
• Last, but not least, people tend to assign a very small number of tags to an object.

In addition, manual categorization it completely impractical for very large repositories of data that grow at a fast pace - exactly the case for most modern organizations.

All these limitations have led researchers to develop methods that assist users in the tagging process, by automatically suggesting an appropriate rich set of tags, in order to avoid the aforementioned obstacles.

Automatic rule-based content categorizing / tagging

Using this approach, information experts attempt to define the discriminating properties of categories using a set of rules. These rules may be simple (e.g. "does the word 'snow' appear in the document"), or use more complex operators (e.g. "does the word 'snow' appear together with the word 'skate'"). In order to find precise rules that distinguish similar categories (for example, "Financial Planning" and "Investment Banking") one needs substancial expertise in the subject being covered. This approach's reliance on human-comprehensible rules is an advantage, because it allows an organization to leverage existing knowledge and expertise. It needs time, effort and expertise to create the rules - but the results are absolutely predictable and can be improved step by step.

More Information

See here for more information about how to (auto-) generate, edit and use content classification rules with the KMS.