Categories

Every default workspace contains a category hierarchy. The Categories folder contains a hierarchy of special, folder-like items called categories. Categories do not contain actual documents. Categories contain links to the documents stored in the workspace document library or on crawled sites. The benefit of this design is that you can associate a single document with several categories or remove a document from a category without affecting the document or its association with other categories.

The dashboard site displays the categories in a Web Part on the home page. Each category is a link to an expanded list that shows subcategories, category Best Bets, and documents assigned to the category. To a user browsing the workspace using Microsoft Windows^® Explorer, categories work like folders. By using Windows Explorer, a user can expand the category hierarchy and browse through the associated document links for each category. Figure 17.1 illustrates both views.

Figure 17.1  Categories viewed on the dashboard site and in Web folders

Using Categories as Metadata

Categories are values that you can apply to documents as metadata. Although they look like folders in the workspace, categories are an extended part of the schema. They function like a list property with a dictionary. Just as there may be a list of values defined for a Products property, the list of workspace categories are the dictionary values for the Categories property. SharePoint Portal Server keeps the hierarchical category dictionary in the schema synchronized with the set of categories displayed in the workspace. For example, when you add a new category, SharePoint Portal Server creates a corresponding value in the category dictionary.

Using Categories as "Search Folders"

The SharePoint Portal Server implementation of categories provides a convenient way to group documents into folders based on shared metadata such as categories. When a user opens a category folder by using Windows Explorer or browses to a category on the dashboard site, SharePoint Portal Server is actually performing a search query. The category query filters for and then displays documents that have been associated with a particular category value.