Managed Metadata: Terms, Term Sets, Term Store

Managed metadata is user defined centrally managed hierarchical collection of terms used as stored attributes in SharePoint. Managed metadata is used to refine search results and allows user to have better control over documents filtering and sorting like features.

The Term can be associated with an item in SharePoint like a document and a collection of such terms is call Term Set. All Term Sets are stored in a specific TermStore. Terms and Term Sets are not hard bound to a specific column in a site but can be independently managed either at site collection level or globally in Managed Metadata service application.

Terms Sets managed at site collection level are called Local Terms while the terms created outside the scope of site collection are called Global Terms sets. Term managers can be associated to a term set to manage a Term set at global level and these are available to all users for use at site level depending upon the availability set by Term Set manager.

Terms can be classified into two types:

·         Managed terms: usually pre-defined, mostly hierarchical, user defined and can be controlled with permissions.

·         Enterprise keywords: simple words or phrases added against SharePoint items. These are non-hierarchical under a keyword set.