Tasks for Mapping Custom Metadata

There are five steps required to configure a SharePoint Portal Server workspace to crawl external content and allow the properties and meta tags in that external content to be promoted as properties in SharePoint Portal Server.

To promote properties from external content into SharePoint Portal Server properties:

1. Create a document profile that includes the list of profile properties that you want to have available through SharePoint Portal Server. This profile can include custom properties.
2. Create a content source that points to the external data. When saving it, do not start creating an index.
3. Modify and apply the property mapping code to map external content meta tags and property tags to the SharePoint Portal Server document profile properties. Example code is provided later.
4. Restart the SharePoint Portal Server services to flush any cached schema.
5. Start the full update for the content source.

The following sections explain these steps in detail.