Managing Categories

                 

 
Special Edition Using Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server
By Robert Ferguson

Table of Contents
Chapter 12.  Creating Categories


Managing categories can be a fairly simple task if the appropriate management processes are put in place. You should establish standards and requirements around adding and removing categories, similar in approach to the change control/change management processes discussed in Chapter 20.

To read about change management as it applies to SharePoint Portal Server deployments, see "Addressing Change Management," p. 536.

It is a good idea to create a change management procedure with your users and content owners as they request to add, delete, or make changes to the category structure and its attributes. SharePoint Portal Server only allows the Coordinator role to perform management functions on the category structure. All other roles have read-only access. Therefore, if a large number of changes are required throughout the life of your workspace, this could become a very tedious responsibility.

Because categories inherit their security settings from the workspace Categories folder, security can only be managed from the workspace. Categories are different from regular directory folders. Remember, as we have previously discussed, you cannot move a category inside the category hierarchy that you have created.

Deleting Categories

When you delete a category, the documents associated with it are not removed. However, the category itself and its subcategories are removed. All of the documents associated to a category that is deleted are changed by the removal of the category value from the Categories property.

Deleting a category, depending on the number of documents associated with it, should be a very well-thought-out decision. The reason? You will not have a record of these documents and their association to the category once it is deleted. Therefore, you may want to consider reassigning the documents to other categories or simply renaming the category until you determine how or if you will re-categorize those documents.

To delete a category named "computers," perform the following:

  1. In the workspace housing the "computers" category, open the Categories folder.

  2. Right-click the category to be deleted, in our case "computers."

  3. Click Delete.

  4. Click Yes.

Deleting categories is often performed as part of regular SPS workspace maintenance, as you cannot move categories in the same way that folders might be moved. The only way to effectively move a category is to delete it and then create a new one elsewhere.

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To better understand the entire process involved with moving a category, refer to "Not Possible to Move Categories" in the "Troubleshooting" section at the end of the chapter .

Renaming Categories

There may be an instance where your workspace community suggests that you rename a category. When you rename a category, the new category will have the same documents associated to it as the original category, and the end users will receive updates in the category property with the new category name . To rename a category named "computers" to "platforms," do the following:

  1. In the workspace housing the "computers" category, open the Categories folder.

  2. Right-click the category to be renamed , in our case "computers."

  3. Click Rename.

  4. Type the new name for the category, "platforms."

  5. Press Enter.

Remember, like the ability to delete a category, only Coordinators at the workspace level may rename a category.

It is suggested that the Coordinator perform management and maintenance functions on categories during maintenance windows or when usage of the workspace is low.

To help Coordinators manage categories in the workspace, SharePoint Portal Server provides a Web Part (administrative tool) to create, edit, and delete categories without using the SharePoint Portal Server client. The Web Part is called Category.exe and can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/Sharepoint/techinfo/reskit/category_management.asp. Additionally, the Category Sort Order tool may also be leveraged to manage categories. This tool, found on the SPS Resource Kit CD, sorts the values for the Categories property in a workspace into alphabetical order. The order of these values determines the order in which the category list displays when an end- user categorizes a document. See the \Tools\category_sort folder on the resource kit to obtain this tool.


                 
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Special Edition Using Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server
Special Edition Using Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server
ISBN: 0789725703
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2002
Pages: 286

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