Overview Of Managed Metadata In SharePoint Server 2013 And 2016

In this article, we will see the systematic procedure to create and configure managed metadata Service Application in SharePoint 2013 and 2016.

Today, we will learn about SharePoint managed metadata including terms, term sets, taxonomy, Groups, Term store Administrators, Group Manager, Contribute permission.

This will apply to SharePoint 2010 (As managed metadata is introduced with the version 2013 and 2016.)

Thus, let us start with what is managed metadata Service: Managed metadata is a hierarchical or we can say classified collection of centrally managed terms that we can define and then use as elements for the items in SharePoint Server. It allows using metadata and sharing content types on site collection, Web Application and Farm level.

Before stating, we have some keywords with managed metadata, I would like to cover that first: Taxonomy, Folksonomy, Terms and term sets

Starting from short description and can say definition for each above keywords.

Taxonomy
A taxonomy refers to the information architecture of your site collections or sub sites. Also, it is a hierarchical classification of words, labels or terms that are organized into groups, which are based on the similarities.
Folksonomy
The users collaboratively apply words, labels or terms to the content on a site in a classification. It is used to enable the content classification to evolve with the user to change accordingly.
Terms
A term is an individual item or a phrase that can be associated with an item, which comes under terms set in SharePoint Server. A term has a unique ID and it can have many different text labels. To go in more detail, there are two types of terms called Managed terms & Enterprise keyword. We will see the definition and use of it later in this article.
Term set
A term set is a collection or group of related terms. It depends on where a term set is created, its scope can be local or global.
Group
A group is a set of term sets that all share common security requirements. This is shown and configured for the users who have access. In simple words, we can say, “Groups define security boundaries.”

We've explained terminology used for managed metadata Services, let us start creating managed metadata Service on SharePoint Server and we will demo for each point with screenshots.

To create managed metadata Service on SharePoint Server

Open Central Admin site, user should have admin rights to create Services on the Server
The screenshot given below will be on the screen, once we have opened Central Admin.

Here, click on manage Service Application under the Application management, which I have highlighted on the above screenshot.
From the Manage Service Application, click on new drop down button from Service Application tab. Here, click Managed Metadata Service from New object drop down, as shown below.

Immediately by clicking on the same, it will redirect us to a new page called Create New Managed Metadata Service. We will be getting many required boxes, which should be filled to create new managed metadata Service, while the other things are the same.

Service Name
Name, which will be shown under created Application page. It may be any name but it should be identical.
Database server
Name of the database Server name.
Database Name
Database name for this Service.
Database authentication
Select as per your Farm.
Application Pool
It is used to run the Service; we can either use the existing app pool/ create a new one by selecting the option available.
Configurable
User name of this Service. We can register the new user name as well.
Content Type Hub
Type Service Application name for the content type.

The screenshot is given below for more details.

If you want to register a new managed account, click on the register new managed account, enter the user name and password.

Once everything is done, click OK option and wait for some time. Now, the Managed Metadata Service is configured.

We can check for managed metadata Service Application, go to Central Admin page and select Manage Services on Server from Application Management quick launch.

If managed metadata Service is stopped at this stage, we will need to start the managed metadata Service. If you start this Service, managed metadata creates the Service Applications.
Go back to Central Admin page, select managed Service Application and you can see managed metadata Service is created and status is showing as started. See the screenshot given below.

We can verify from SQL Management studio and the database is created.

Click on managed metadata Service, the setting page will open.

Once the managed metadata Service is created, we can create new managed metadata as well. Right click on taxonomy term store option shown below, create new group and assign the name. Here, we can change term store administrator and contributor as well.

To add a new administrator for managed metadata from Application Server page, click on administrator control on the top ribbon page under the tab called Service Application, it will pop up a page. Here, we need to add the user name and click OK, if you wish to remove any user and we can remove it from here. Select the user and click on remove.

With this, we are done with an overview of managed metadata and creating the managed metadata Service Application.