A Matter Of Degree

xobni - five minutes and I was hooked

I learned about xobni from a colleague last week, and downloaded it today.  Xobni ('inbox" backwards) bills itself as "the Outlook plug-in that saves you time finding email conversations, contacts and attachments" and / or "a more socially aware email environment."  I would prefer to describe it as "the free Outlook tool with addictive metrics."  Once it started analyzing, showing me, for example, who among my contacts is quickest to respond to me, I was fascinated.  Then when it gave me the option to send said contacts their stats, I was hooked. 

The design is bright and appealing (maybe a little too appealing - compared to the bland light-blue-and-white Outlook color scheme its orange, black and purple tones make it difficult to look away or ignore the pane) and I found it user-friendly and intuitive.  After eight hours I'm thinking of my correspondents in terms of their xobni rank ("Yeah, he's my number three") and trying to figure out imbalances ("Why am I sending her two emails for every one she sends me?").  It interfaces with LinkedIn.  It bubbles-up attachments.  It threads conversations.  It hasn't broken anything on my pc, although the comments on this post about xobni's business model indicate that it may cause problems with FireFox.  For my setup, there is no downside and a tremendous upside.

I would rave more, but I've got to go reply to an email from my #1.

Tag as you search?

Today I attended a seminar hosted by the Boston KM Forum on categorization and tagging.  One of the speakers, David Hobbie, brought up a great point - that tagging / categorizing in the enterprise happens when a document is saved into the content management system, when a better way would be to have people tagging documents as they find them in search results.  The first scenario – tag on upload – involves questions such as Which version do you tag?  How can other users tag and rate?  The second scenario – tag on search – accounts for these issues and will lead to richer search results in the future.  I’m not advocating doing away with tag-on-upload, but I’d like to see Hobbie’s idea implemented in the enterprise applications used by my clients.

 

Last night I attended a talk on Enterprise Search from Microsoft by Tara Seppa at the New England SharePoint User Group.   Microsoft emphasizes the value of SharePoint’s “actionable search results” (by which they mean “preview helpful summary information and clear graphical representations of files; move, delete, copy, and drag & drop files; send, forward and reply to messages directly from search results, and open and run applications from the results”). The tag-as-you-search concept would be great functionality to add to future releases of SharePoint Search.

David’s blog:

http://caselines.blogspot.com/

New England SharePoint User Group:

http://www.clearwaypartners.com/SUGHome.htm

KM forum topic:

http://kmforum.org/blog/?p=70

Actionable search results definition from the whitepaper Microsoft’s Approach to Enterprise Search:  Bridging the Gap between Information Management and Enterprise Search

How to insert SharePoint metadata into your Word or Excel document using Quick Parts and Content Types

I just learned this from a colleague who learned it at a SharePoint Developer class: When you create a custom Content Type for a document template, and add custom metadata fields to it, you can insert the metadata values into your document as Quick Parts.

Several elements need to be in place to make this work smoothly. In my example:

1. I created a Content Type for a NonDisclosure Agreement (NDA)
2. I created a Site Column for Opportunity (i.e., the client name)
3. I added the site column to the NDA content type
4. I added the content type to one of the document libraries on my SharePoint site
5. I created a new NDA from the "New" menu on the document library and
6. IMPORTANT! I saved the document back into that document library. (The Properties Quick Part will appear grayed-out until the document is saved.)

Then, with the document still open in Word, I was able to choose Insert -> Quick Parts from the ribbon, and my "Opportunity" field is available.

If the metadata field is already filled in for the document, you will see the actual data appear in your document (just as when you add the a Date field and today's date appears).

If the metadata field is empty, you can type the information into the document field, and you will see it will appear in the Properties (Server) window in the ribbon..

Lots of potential for bringing your paper forms online and ensuring better metadata compliance!

Here's a nice post from the Microsoft Word team on the subject – they refer to it as XML Mapping.

Your metadata on Library of Congress photos

Parris Island, S.C., barrage balloon (LOC), originally uploaded by The Library of Congress.

Flickr has partnered with the Library of Congress to allow everyone to tag, comment, and add notes on a portion of photos from the LOC's collections.

Read about The Commons project here.

I first heard about this from my colleague Mike, who read about it on Everything is Miscellaneous.

Search Relevance Tip - Best Practice - Spaces in Filenames / Title Field

I'm in my third and final day of MOSS 2007 Enterprise Search Advanced Training.  There's a best practice from yesterday's session that I want to discuss.  Microsoft recommends that content owners / end users use spaces in filenames to make them searchable (i.e., "MOSS 2007 White Paper" and not "MOSS2007WhitePaper").  The indexer treats a filename without spaces as a single word.  Tests during the session proved that filenames using underscores ("MOSS_2007_White_Paper") and dots ("MOSS.2007.White.Paper") also are not indexed as individual words but as a single word.  Therefore a search on a keyword that is a part of such a filename ("MOSS") will not show up in search results.

That's significant, but spaces in filenames can cause issues.  (Another example.  And another.)  These may not be SharePoint issues, but it's possible that you'll have compelling reasons not to use spaces in your file names.  At the very least, it could be difficult to enforce a file-naming convention across an organization, especially when there's no out-of-the-box validation at the time of upload.

My recommendation is to require the Title field in Sharepoint document libraries, and/or to train content managers on the importance of using this field.  Title is very important in ranking and relevance, so much so that MOSS 2007 search uses a text extraction algorithm that generates TWO title values for every MS Office document - the actual title field from the document property sheet, and a "shadow" title based on formatting and placement of the words at the top of the document.  If content managers populate the Title field with meaningful words, the formatting of the original filename is not so critical to search results.

MOSS 2007 - Bug involving custom folder metadata when creating list or library from template

I discovered a bug in MOSS 2007 that occurs when you set custom metadata on folders in a document library, and then save the document library as a template.  When you create a new doc lib from the template, all your folder metadata settings are gone.

In my case, I created a custom folder content type, added it to a document library, then edited properties on the folders in the doc lib.  I chose my custom folder instead of the default folder, and then filled out the metadata fields I had included with the custom content type (which included a multiselect lookup type of field).  When I saved this document library as a template, and then created a new doc lib, the folders had reverted to the default Folder content type.  When I switched them back to the custom content type, the metadata fields were blank.

I tested to see whether this would happen with the default Folder content type as well, and it did.  I added a new metadata field to the default Folder content type (by adding a new field to the doc lib and keeping the "Add to all content types" field checked), edited properties on the folders, added data to the new field (which was a single-line-of-text type of field), then saved the doc lib as a template and created a new doc lib.  Again, the new metadata field was blank in all the folders of the new doc lib.

My developer colleague found that the settings are saved in the manifest.xml file; but due to the bug they are not getting passed to the new doc lib from the template.  Microsoft does not have an estimate on when this will be fixed.  If I get an update I will post it here.

Metadata is the subject of today's Open Source

Chris Lydon discusses David Weinbarger's new book Everything is Miscellaneous:

“To get as good at browsing as we are at finding — and to take full advantage of the digital opportunity — we have to get rid of the idea that there’s a best way of organizing the world.”

Discuss!

Metadata Tagging – a call for standardization

I'm hearing a lot about how the generation that's currently entering the workforce is going to be more supportive of knowledge management concepts than the generation going out, because the young workers will already be familiar with wikis, blogs, tagging, bookmarking, and profiling.

To support this evolution, I plead with developers to come together and adopt a standard for tagging. We've gotten to a place where users feel confident that they can use basic search language standards such as Boolean operators in most search engines; I'd like to feel the same level of confidence when tagging data online. But right now the rules vary from site to site, and if I want to get my tags right I have to remember where I am and what to do. For example, here are the tagging rules for some of the web services I use every day:

Flickr – space-separated, double quotes can be used to join words together in a single tag.

Del.icio.us – space-separated. Multiple-word tags need to be joined with a hyphen or underscore. Commas and quotes become part of the tag.

Blogger – comma-separated. Quotes become part of the tag.

I can try to keep a mental matrix of which sites use which rules ("If it's Blogger it must be commas!), but if (when) I make mistakes, it's going to affect the integrity of my tags, and by extension the integrity of others' search results.

Please, let's have a standard. I don't care which one. I just want to spend more time searching, learning, and tagging, and less time going back and re-doing all the tags that sorted to the top because they start with ".

How to filter a SharePoint list or library by workflow (approval) status

Recently I had a client who wanted to show only "Approved" documents (i.e. documents that had been through the built-in Approval workflow) on a site's home page. When I tried to set up the filter, setting the [Workflow Status] field to Approved, the filter returned no results. As it turns out, workflow status is stored as a numeric value. The values are as follows:

In Progress - 2
Complete - 5
Canceled - 15
Approved - 16
Rejected - 17

The view filter needs to look like this:

I owe this solution completely to David's blog, and thought it was important enough to pass along. Thanks, David!

MOSS 2007 - How to assign metadata to a folder

I am not a proponent of using folders in a SharePoint document library, but if you must (as I recently had to for a client due to permissioning requirements), it is now possible to assign metadata to folders as well as list/library items in MOSS 2007.

If you choose "Edit Properties" on a folder, however, you will not see any of the metadata associated with the list or library. 

Folders are special beasts, and their metadata fields need to be added at the content type level.  The best way to do this is to create a new folder content type, then add the desired columns to this content type.  (Not a good idea to over-write the default folder content type!)  Then make sure the desired list or library allows management of content types (in Advanced Settings on the list or library), add the new folder content type, and you're all set.  The good news is that even if you've created your folders already, all you need to do is switch them to the new content type (in the Edit Properties window) and you can then assign metadata.

Thanks to adrian at MossChampions for pointing me in the right direction.