Day 5 – Automating the Tagging of Metadata in Your Document Library

Why Automate Metadata Tagging?

When building SharePoint solutions, one of the first things clients request is to reduce the need for end users to manually enter metadata. Metadata tagging is an essential part of organising documents, but if users are required to fill it out for every document they upload, it can lead to frustration and lower adoption rates. By automating metadata tagging, we make the process simpler for the end users and improve the overall experience. In this challenge, you will automate the tagging of the Function column for your document library based on the folder a document is uploaded into. This way, when a document is placed in a specific folder (e.g., Campaign Management, Social Media), SharePoint will automatically tag the document with the corresponding Function metadata value without the user needing to fill it in.

Steps to Automate Metadata Tagging:

1. Navigate to Your Document Library
   • Open the Marketing Resources Document Library that you created on Day 2.
2. Access Library Settings
   • Click the Settings (gear) icon in the upper-right corner of the page and select Library settings from the dropdown menu.
3. Go to More Library Settings
   • Under the General Settings section, click on Column default value settings. This will allow you to configure default metadata values for your columns.
4. Select the ‘Function’ Column
   • On the Column default value settings page, you’ll see a list of the columns in your library. Find the Function column and click on it.
5. Set the Default Value for the Column
   • You’ll be taken to the settings for the Function column.
   • Under the Default Value section, select Use default value and choose the appropriate default tag that should be applied when a document is uploaded to a specific folder. For example, if a document is uploaded into the Campaign Management folder, you can set the default value to Campaign Management.
6. Repeat for Each Folder
   • Go back to Column default value settings and repeat the process for each folder, assigning the appropriate Function metadata to each folder.
7. Test It Out
   • Upload a document into a folder that has a default tag set, such as Content Creation or Social Media. After uploading, check the Function column to ensure that the document is automatically tagged with the correct value based on the folder.

Your Challenge for Day 5:

• Set up default Function metadata for each folder in your document library.
• Upload test documents into different folders and confirm that the Function column is automatically populated with the correct metadata.
• Consider how this automation improves the user experience by reducing the need for manual metadata entry.

What Comes Next?

You’ve automated the metadata tagging process, making document uploads more efficient and reducing errors. Next, we’ll dive deeper into leveraging metadata to create custom views and improve search functionality across your document library, enhancing the overall usability and power of your SharePoint site.

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