Why not Folders?

Welcome to Spot on SharePoint, metadata and you, module 2, why not folders? Most people are pretty comfortable with a traditional folder structure, and it’s a good way to organize your content as far as it goes, but folders have several limitations which make them less useful in the online environment. Folders segregate documents, meaning you need to upload a document in multiple locations and eroding your single source of truth. Folders inhibit the ability of search and filtering to function properly, meaning it can be difficult to find all of the information that you’re looking for or to be confident in the search results you found. Let’s take a look at an example. In our example, we’ve set up two document libraries with the same content. The first document library has a traditional folder structure by department with a standard set of subfolders. The subfolders may or may not contain information. When we try to search for a document, in this case policy, we return a list of subfolders, but there’s no context. We don’t know the parent folder. If we search for reports, again we see a list of folders and one sample document, but the human resources report did not show in the search. It was in the folder, but that’s all. Now let’s take a look at a metadata example. The same contents are currently grouped by department. When we do the search for policy, we see one document come up in human resources. Now when we search for report, we see all of the reports by department, so we have context and we even see reports that are reports and research. In this way, you only have one document that you’re uploading. We hope this helped give you context as to why metadata is a preferable way to classify information in the online environment. If you have any questions or comments, please contact us.