Corporate taxonomies are the hierarchical classifications of entities of interest of an enterprise, organization or administration, used to categorize SharePoint content. Taxonomies can cover virtually any type of physical or conceptual entities (products, processes, knowledge fields, human groups, etc.) at any level of granularity. Taxonomies, managed in the SharePoint 2010 Term Store, help users to find the information they need much faster, it gives context to the cloud, connect users to social networks, provides portal-wide activity feeds and enables completely new ways to access information, independent of the storage location. It simply saves money. 

While Microsoft has provided a state of the art API for cross-site-collection taxonomy management and the Term Store Manager as an out-of-the-box sample implementation, the Taxonomy Manager for SharePoint 2010 offers a complete term life-cycle management application to efficently create, import, improve, export and deploy corporate taxonomies. Additionally the Taxonomy Manager extends the Term Store to add more advanced attribute to terms, like Content Classification Rules and Related Terms. Classification rules can be used for semi-automated or automated content classification tools like Tag Suggester and Auto-Tagger. 

• Advanced import features: Support of additional formats to import free and commercially available taxonomies, e.g. SKOS. Out-of-the-box SharePoint supports CSV only, multi-language localization and synonyms are not supported by default.
• Export feature: Taxonomy Manager allows exporting SharePoint-based corporate taxonomies without any loss of information into several different formats, e.g. SKOS. Out-of-the-box SharePoint doesn't offer any export.
• Change Management: Complete Taxonomy Life-Cycle Management, e.g. Term Suggestion, Term Publishing Workflow etc. Out-of-the-box SharePoint not offers any term change management. By default there is only an email link to notify the Taxonomy Manager. This feature will be provided with V2.0.
• Management of custom term attributes: You can add and manage additional custom term attributes. Out-of-the-box there is an API only in SharePoint 2010 for managing custom term properties.
• Classification rules: You can create and manage tag rules for content-based auto-classification including rule auto-generation and rule validation. 
  Out-of-the-box classification rules are not supported by SharePoint 2010.
• Related terms: Term relationship management will be suported in future releases. You can point to completely different terms, that are related to the current term in any way. Related terms can be used e.g. for advanced navigation features ("see also here"). This feature is planned for next relaeses. Out-of-the-box term relationships are not supported by SharePoint 2010.
• 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. 
• KMS integration: The Taxonomy Manager works seamlessly together with the other components of the Knowledge Management Suite for SharePoint 2010.

The SharePoint Taxonomy Manager is available as a component of the Knowledge Management Suite for SharePoint 2010 or separately. The solution comes with a robust installer to allow it to be easily deployed within any SharePoint environment. It is currently available for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 (any editions, not for Microsoft SharePoint Foundation).

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 annual 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 assistant. Use the "Run as Admin" option of the context menu (right click). You can activate and deactivate the feature as Web Application Feature in the SharePoint Central Administration (CA).

Fig.: Activation of the Taxonomy Manager Feature at Web Application level using CA.

Shareware Limitations:

• The "Advanced Settings" button is disabled for some seconds after the Term Properties Dialog is entered in the Term Store Manager.
• 25 terms can be exported / imported only.

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

Known Issues:

• Term Change management is not implemented yet, but export, import with update (deployment) is possible.
• Related terms feature is not implemented yet.
• Classification rule management including rule auto-generation and rule validation is implemented, see below for more details.
• The sample text is not saved with the term. This is by design, but it will change with next versions. 

Did you found any additional issues? Please give feedback.

Next Steps Planned:

• New feature: New custom term property to describe the meaning of the term in a rich text field as known from Wiki-style pages to make the new Term Profile Page the corporate "real-time" wiki.

Do you miss a feature? Please give feedback.

The Knowledge Management Suite for SharePoint 2010 offers rule-based content classification with support for several different rule-based engines. Currently implemented and available out-of-the-box is a classification rule engine, that is based on logical expressions of terms described here. Please note: If another engine is used, other rules could be operated (see vendor documentation for this).

Clasification Rules

Classification rules are managed in the Term Store Manager extension (see above). A rule describes a term and forms a logical expression, that gives true or false when applied to a SharePoint item or document. In case of true, the item or document is classified with the tag / term, that is related to the rule. Please note, that in case a rule is defined, the term name and synonyms are not used anymore. Please use the auto-generate rule feature to create a rule from existing term names and synonyms on the fly as a starting point. The auto-generated rule is the rule, that is used in case no rule is specified (empty field). In this case the term name and the synonyms are joined by the OR operator. 
Generally a rule is broken up into terms and operators and can use grouping.

Basic Terms

There are two types of terms: Single Terms and Phrases. A Single Term is a single word such as "Marketing" or "Sales". Terms are not case sensitive. A Phrase is a group of words surrounded by double quotes such as "Email Marketing". Multiple terms can be combined together with Boolean operators to form a more complex rule(see below).

Advanced Terms

Terms can be simple valid REGEX expressions without any parentheses. REGEX expressions have to be surrounded by double quotes. See here for more information about REGEX.

Boolean Operators

Boolean operators allow terms to be combined through logic operators. We support AND, OR, and NOT as Boolean operators (Note: Boolean operators must be ALL CAPS).

OR

The OR operator links two terms and finds a matching document if either of the terms exist in a document. This is equivalent to a union using sets. To tag documents that contain either "Sales" or just "Email Marketing" use the rule: "Email Marketing" OR sales.

AND

The AND operator matches documents where both terms exist anywhere in the text. This is equivalent to an intersection using sets. To tag documents that contain "Email Marketing" and "Direct Marketing" use the rule: "Email Marketing" AND "Direct Marketing"

NOT

The NOT operator excludes documents that contain the term after NOT. This is equivalent to a difference using sets. To tag documents that contain "Email Marketing" but not "Direct Marketing" use the rule: "email marketing" AND NOT "direct marketing". Please note, that the NOT operator cannot be used without other operators.

Grouping

We support using parentheses to group rules to form sub rules. This can be very useful if you want to control the boolean logic for a rule. To search for either "Email Marketing" or "Direct Marketing"  "Sales" use the rule: ("Email Marketing" OR "Direct Marketing") AND "Sales". This eliminates any confusion and makes sure, that "Sales" must exist and either term "Email Marketing" or "Direct Marketing" may exist.
Please note that nested parentheses are not allowed in the current version.

Samples of valid rules

("Email Marketing" OR "Direct Marketing") AND "Sales"
("Email Marketing" OR "Direct Marketing") AND Sales
("Email Marketing" OR "Direct Marketing") NOT Sales
("Email Marketing" OR "Direct Marketing") AND (NOT Sales)
("Email Marketing" OR "Direct Marketing") AND NOT Sales
(Email) AND (Marketing)
Email and Marketing
"email marketing" NOT "direct marketing"
(".+marketing" OR Direct Marketing)

Samples of invalid rules

 

 

 

• Missing "" error:

"email marketing" NOT direct marketing

• Nested parentheses error:

("Email Marketing" OR ("Direct Marketing" AND Sales))

• Operators not all caps error:

("Email Marketing" OR ("Direct Marketing" and Sales))

• NOT is used without any other operator

NOT "Email Marketing"

• REGEX is used without double quotes

(.+marketing OR Direct Marketing)