RSMUS.comInformation architecture in SharePoint is dependent on the industry and the type of business. Recently, our team engaged in a SharePoint information architecture and discovery session for a construction engineering firm.
Engineering firms are dependent on the standard specifications to deliver their projects. These standard specifications contain the standards to be used for electrical, mechanical, HVAC, plumbing and similar projects. These standards contain the regulations from the local city, county, state and the federal government as this industry is governed by standard codes to be followed during the construction.
These standard specifications change with new laws and new regulations getting effective from year to year. Each standard specification is indexed by a standard code being used in the industry. These codes change every year based on the new laws and new regulations.
For example, If the mechanical standard specification document has got a code of 10001 in the year 2015, and the same document also reflects the code 20001 in the year 2016, a typical challenge is to reindex all the standard specification documents with the code 10001 and add the value 20001 to the code metadata. This is a major maintenance challenge for an engineering firm with thousands of standard specification documents.
Our team created the code metadata as the terms in a term set in SharePoint. These terms allow synonyms. In order to do this all you have to do is to add 20001 as the synonym to the mechanical code term. SharePoint does everything else in the background and all the documents with the code metadata of 10001 also recognize the metadata of 20001 without any need to reindex any of these documents.
To find out more about this or other ways that RSM can assist you with your SharePoint needs, contact RSM’s technology consulting professionals at 800.274.3978 or email us.
