Using TDC to get metadata into SharePoint

Charlie’s earlier posts this week talked about how to get metadata into SharePoint – specifically, how to add metadata to existing and new documents that you want to store in SharePoint. Charlie discussed several ways to do this. One of the methods I would like to dig into a little deeper is the use of our own product, Titus Labs Document Classification (TDC), to add metadata to documents.

First, a little about Titus Labs Document Classification. TDC is an Office add-in that ensures every Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint document is classified and protectively marked before it can be saved or printed. Organizations use TDC to raise security awareness among their users, and to protect their documents from inadvertent disclosure.

The user interface is very simple; users select from one or more picklists, as defined by your organization (you can also use defaults). Here is an example of a TDC picklist:

 

Titus Labs also provides a tool to apply classifications in bulk. So if you have a large number of documents that you know are Confidential, for example, you can apply that classification (and metadata) in just a few clicks.

Once a classification has been applied (either by the user or with the bulk tool), TDC creates matching metadata, which it stores in the Microsoft custom properties. This is great news for SharePoint, because it means that the metadata is in a standard location that can be read by SharePoint. You simply need to create a matching column (or columns) in your SharePoint document library. When you add the documents to SharePoint, any TDC metadata will show up in the SharePoint document library, as shown below:

So, using the example above, here’s how you would use TDC to get metadata into SharePoint:

1)      Configure TDC to prompt for  “Classification” when users create Word, PowerPoint, Excel documents.

2)      Set up a column in your SharePoint document library called “Classification”.

3)      Upload your document into SharePoint. The classification will show up in the SharePoint column.

Lara