Document Management - White Paper (ID 5277).pdf Jul. 2014 | Page 24
Metadata vs. Folders
A property management company has just completed its capital budget for paving projects on all
properties in Pennsylvania and New York for 2011. In a typical Windows environment, the employee
defining the folder structure has to choose where the files are saved and if there should there be subfolders. In this example, the main folder might be defined as one of the following:
Projects
Budgets
Pennsylvania
New York
Paving
2011
The employee often has to make an arbitrary decision as to how to set up folders and where to save
documents. Later, another user who wants to retrieve a budget would likewise start trying possible
locations at random, browsing each of the wrong folders before finding the right one.
Metadata embedded in files by a document management system can eliminate this guesswork when
saving and opening documents. Metadata definitions make document identities independent of file paths
or locations. All the folder categories listed above can simply be metadata tags or keywords. The system
attaches all of these terms to the budget document.
“Project”
“Budget”
“Pennsylvania”
“New York”
“Paving”
“2011”
The metadata tags define the file’s identity in the system. Users searching for a file type in any combination
of metadata terms to retrieve the actual document, which is as simple as “paving” and “budget” and
“2011.”
Where folder systems implicitly force companies to choose one way to sort files, the metadata approach
can sort documents in many different ways instantly. For instance, a manager wanting to view…
…results for…
…would type the terms:
all 2011 budgets
“budget” and “2011”
every project that includes paving
“paving” and “project”
every project in New York with paving
“paving” and “project” and “New York”
all documents about capital projects
“project”
Metadata indexing provides a means to re-sort any company information in the DMS at any moment.
Employees and managers can now view and access documents more intelligently based on the context in
which they need them.
EASY DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT
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