What is Metadata? - Document
Metadata Overview
Simply defined Metadata is data about data. Much like a catalogue card
is needed to find books at the city library, Metadata is used to classify
documents and ensures the document can be searched for and found quickly
at a later date.
FileHold provides for a highly configurable system that
provides flexibility for Administrators who wish to further define the
information about their documents using centrally controlled Metadata
/ index values. While a document can be stored in a folder and then found
via full-text search, this can be limiting when wanting to describe the
status of a document, the type of document, the date the document is subject
to review and other important information. When a system contains thousands,
hundreds of thousands or millions of documents, a full text search result
from searching the contents of the document can bring back large results
since many documents share common keywords and phrases. Finally, you may
be storing images, graphics, TIFF scans, maps, schematics or other images
that do not contain any information. Assigning metadata to these types
can also make searching and retrieving dramatically faster and easier.
We will now examine metadata and how FileHold provides for custom categorization
and classification systems to allow users to quickly and easily define
additional information.
Consider a Purchase Order Document. The metadata that can be used to describe
this document could be Purchase Order Number, Purchase Order Amount, Customer
Name and simple fact that the file is a Purchase order and not a different
type of document like Invoice or Contract.
The Library administrator can easily create metadata classification standards
on behalf of the entire company making it easier for system users to classify
and search for documents. The Metadata to be collected can be quickly
customized by document type depending on what information is important
to be captured.
Metadata fields can be of various types including drop down menus, number
fields, text or date fields, Yes/ No and currency fields to name a few.
Where appropriate, the same metadata fields may be used in more than one
document type. In this example the customer name metadata field is associated
with the Purchase Order, Contract and Bill of Lading documents types.
This will allow users to search for all types of documents that relate
to a given customer.
Metadata is captured when documents are added to the FileHold
library and can be changed as new versions are introduced through FileHold
version control. The metadata associated with documents is then used to
drive searching and folder views.
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