Octavie van Haaften

In my last post I wrote about setting up the User Profiles service application. This time I want to show you how to setup the Managed Metadata service application and how to use the managed metadata with your content.

For starters…the hub

With SharePoint 2010 it is possible to define metadata centrally and use it in the entire farm or even cross farm. For this purpose SharePoint 2010 offers you the Managed Metadata service application. The service uses a hub for publishing the content types and managed metadata. This hub is just a site collection with the feature Content Type Syndication Hub activated. So, before installing the Managed Metadata service application create a new site collection to act as a content type hub. After creating the site collection go to Site Actions, Site Settings, Site Collection Features:

Next.. installing the service application

it’s time to install the Managed Metadata service application. From Central Administration go to Manage Service Applications and click the New button and select Managed Metadata Service.

Enter all needed data, such as a representative name, database server and database name and especially the url of the content type hub. Click OK. Now we wait… 🙂

Next… The Term Store

After installing the Managed Metadata service it’s time to set up the term store. Definition of terms from the Microsoft TechNet site:

A term is a word or a phrase that can be associated with an item in SharePoint Server 2010. A term set is a collection of related terms. You can specify that a Microsoft SharePoint Server column must contain a term from a specific term set. Managed metadata is a way of referring to the fact that terms and term sets can be created and managed independently from the columns themselves.

Click on the installed Managed Metadata service application and the term store will be opened.

On the left side click the the term store Managed Metadata Service Application and select New Group. Enter a group name, like Publication.

Click on the created Group Publication and select New Term Set. Enter a Term Set name, like Newsletter or Press Release.

Click on the Term Set and select Create Term. Enter a term name or phrase, like Commercial or Employee of the Month.

I think you get the picture, so let’s leave it like this. Now we’re going to use it.

Next.. creating a Content Type with managed metadata

Let’s go back to the content type hub site (in our case, http://portal/hub). Go to Site Actions, Site Settings and under Galleries select Site Content Types.

Create a new Content Type called Newsletter based on Item.

Create a new site column called NewsCategory and the type for this column is Managed Metadata.

You can now browse to your correct Term Set Newsletter.

Click OK

Next… publish the Content Type

We now have a content type with a column based on managed metadata. Sweet. So, since this content type is on some particular site collection, how do we use it elsewhere? The answer is simple: the content type needs to be published.

From the Manage Content Type NewsLetter screen, click on Manage Publishing for this content type.

Select Publish and click OK.

What happens now? In Central Administration there are 2 jobs: Content Type Hub and Content Type Subscriber. The Hub job is scheduled to run every 15 minutes. This job manages content types to be publishes. The Subscriber job receives all published content types and applies them to the local content type gallery. This job runs every hour. You can speed things up from Central Administration.

Who are the subscribers then? For that answer we have to go back to Central Administration, Manage Service Applications. Now, click on the Managed Metadata service application Connection and click Properties:

The 3rd checkbox indicates if the web application connection consumes from the content type hub.

Finally…. test it

Go to you portal site and create a new library or list based on the content type Newsletter. It should be there. If not, run the jobs mentioned earlier.