Step 2. Defining a Document Tagging Vocabulary

Defining a document tagging vocabulary requires a strong understanding of different types of documents that company needs to manage and the essential information associated with each document type. Tags associated with documents act like library cards helping users to compare and retrieve document in a large system without resorting to opening the actual file. The task of managing a tagging vocabulary is usually owned by the person responsible for the document librarian / library administrator (in larger organizations) or business/ department managers in smaller companies.

The following is an example of how tagging vocabularies work. For example, many financial departments use Document Management Software to track Invoices, Purchase Orders and Checks. Each one of these document types has a unique tagging profile associated with it. An Invoice document profile may contain Invoice Amount, Invoice Date, Product Name(s) and Customer Name.


Some tagging elements are common to many document types. For example, the Customer name tag is typically common to Invoices, Purchase Orders (P.O.) and Checks profiles.

The Document Management Software must allow for the creation of a tagging vocabulary framework that allows for different types of documents each with their own tagging profile. The system should be flexible enough to allow tagging to occur quickly by end users and should support ;

• Tags that users complete by entering a text, numeric, currency or date value.
• Pick from a list of pre-defined values. For example a pick list may contain a pre-defined list of company products, customer names or company departments.
• The ability to set individual fields as required to be completed when tagging a document as a user is adding a document thus ensuring a minimum information requirement are captured. For example when adding an Invoice document users must tag the document with an invoice number and have the option of tagging the document with the invoice date.
• Ability to define tags across different types of documents. For example the Customer Name tags can be used for the Invoices, Purchase Orders and Checks document types.
• Ability to tag documents en-masse with the same value. For example, users should be able to associate a customer name tag value to a group of 20 invoices at the same time.

The size of the organization and the volume of documents should dictate how granular the library administrator should make each document type. For example a company with relatively few financial transactions per month may have a document type called ‘Sales & Billing Documents’. Within this type a pick list may be defined further classifying this document to be a Invoice, Check or Purchase Order. Conversely, a company that conducts thousands of financial transactions a month would create separate document types to track for Invoices, Checks and Purchase Orders. Each of these would have their own tagging profiles.

FileHold '08 allows library administrators to manage a controlled tagging vocabulary containing tagging profiles that satisfying all aforementioned requirements. Over time new document profiles can be added or existing ones edited to meet the changing needs of the organization.