Managed metadata service application overview (SharePoint Server 2010)

Updated: 2009-11-12

[This article is pre-release documentation and is subject to change in future releases.]

The managed metadata service application makes it possible to:

Use managed metadata.
Share content types across site collections and Web applications.

A managed metadata service publishes a term store and, optionally, content types; a managed metadata connection consumes these. This article describes the managed metadata service and connections, and provides an example scenario for using them. Before reading this article, you should understand the concepts described in the article Managed metadata overview (SharePoint Server 2010).

Managed metadata services

When you enable managed metadata in your SharePoint Server 2010 application, a managed metadata service and connection are created. The service identifies the database to be used as the term store, and the connection provides access to the service. When you create new managed terms, or when users add enterprise keywords, these terms are stored in the database that is specified in the managed metadata service. When you publish a managed metadata service, a URL to the service is created. If you provide the URL to the administrator of another Web application, the administrator can create a connection to your service.

In addition to sharing metadata, you can also use the managed metadata service to share content types. By creating a new managed metadata service and specifying a site collection as the content type hub, you can share all content types in the site collection’s content type gallery.

You can create multiple managed metadata services, and share multiple term stores and content types from multiple site collections. However, each managed metadata service must specify a different term store. When you specify a nonexistent database for the term store, a new database is created.

Managed metadata connections

To use managed metadata, a Web application must have a connection to a managed metadata service. A Web application can have connections to multiple services, and the services can be local to the Web application or remote. When you create a managed metadata service, a connection to the service is created automatically in the same Web application as the service.

After you create a connection to a managed metadata service, you can configure the following four options:

Default keyword location: Whether to store new enterprise keywords in the keyword set in the term store associated with this managed metadata service.
Default term set location: Whether to store the term sets that are created when you create new managed metadata site columns in this managed metadata service’s term store.
Use content types: Whether to make the content types that are associated with this managed metadata service (if any) available to users of sites in this Web application. This option is available only if the service has a hub defined to share content types.
Push-down Content Type Publishing updates from the Content Type Gallery to sub-sites and lists using the content type: Whether to update existing instances of the changed content types in sub-sites and libraries.

If no connection is specified as the default keyword location, users cannot create new enterprise keywords. If no connection is specified as the default term set location, users can only specify an existing term set when they create a site column whose data type is managed metadata.

Important:
Within a Web application, do not make more than one connection the default keyword location. Within a Web application, do not define more than one connection as the default term set location.

Example scenario

This example shows how to configure managed metadata services and connections to implement a set of governance policies.

The company has set up the following governance policies that are relevant to the managed metadata service:

All documents that are created must include a core set of properties.
All keywords must be stored centrally.

Departments within the company also have specific requirements that affect how the managed metadata services are configured. The following list describes these requirements.

All documents that are created within the Products department must have certain additional properties.
The Legal department represents confidential information by using terms. No one outside the Legal department can view or use these terms.

The following figure shows how the company sets up its managed metadata services to meet its governance policies.

Managed metadata services and connections example

The sections that follow examine the SharePoint Server 2010 implementation for four departments: IT, HR, Products, and Legal. The example builds from the simplest implementation to the most complex.

IT creates the infrastructure to implement the policies

To use resources efficiently and to manage services centrally, the IT department runs all SharePoint Server 2010 service applications within one application pool. The intranet portals and collaboration sites for each department run in different Web applications than do the services.

To implement the first governance policy, IT creates a content type called Document-Base at the root site collection of its department portal. IT adds columns to Document-Base for all of the required properties. Then IT creates a managed metadata service application called Global Managed Metadata, and specifies the root site collection of its department portal as the hub of the content types the service application shares. IT publishes the service and provides the service’s URL to all departments.

By publishing the Global Managed Metadata service, IT provides access to the service’s term store. When all SharePoint Server 2010 Web applications connect to the Global Managed Metadata service and specify that keywords should be stored in the service’s term store, the second policy will be implemented

The Global Managed Metadata service

The IT, HR, products, and Legal departments each has its own site collections, and each department’s site collections run in a separate Web application. To access the corporate term store, to store keywords centrally, and to use the Document-Base content type, each Web application must have a connection to the Global Managed Metadata shared service. An administrator creates a connection to the service in each Web application, and sets the properties of all connections (labeled 1, 2, 3, and 4 in the previous figure) according to the following list.

Default keyword location: Yes
Default column-specific term set location: Yes
Use content types: Yes
Push-down content types: Yes

Note:
Some values will be changed when connections to other managed metadata service applications are created.

The Products Managed Metadata service

The Products department has multiple site collections, one for each product team. The Products department also has an additional governance policy that states that documents produced by all product teams must use an extended set of properties. Therefore, the Products department creates its own content type, named Products-Document-Base, in the content type library at the root of its site collection. The parent of Products-Document-Base is Document-Base. Therefore, Products-Document-Base has the same columns as Document-Base, and it also includes additional columns.

Because all product teams must use the extended Products-Document-Base content type, any changes to Products-Document-Base must be propagated to the site collections of other product teams. To propagate the content types across site collections, the Products department must use a managed metadata service application to share the content types, even though the sharing is within the product department’s own Web application. Therefore, the Products department requests a separate managed metadata service for its own use.

An administrator creates the Products Managed Metadata service application in the shared services application pool. The administrator specifies the site collection in which the Products-Document-Base content type is defined to be the content type hub associated with the Products Managed Metadata service. The administrator creates a connection from the Products Web application to the Products Managed Metadata service, and sets the properties of the connection (labeled 5 in the previous figure) according to the following list.

Default keyword location: No

Default column-specific term set location: No

Note:
Because each managed metadata service has an associated term store, the Products department has two options for where it can store its new column-specific term sets: it can store them in the term store associated with the Global Managed Metadata service, or it can store them in the term store associated with the Products Managed Metadata service. For this example, the Products department decides to store its new column-specific term sets in the Global Managed Metadata term store.

Note:

Because each managed metadata service has an associated term store, the Products department has two options for where it can store its new column-specific term sets: it can store them in the term store associated with the Global Managed Metadata service, or it can store them in the term store associated with the Products Managed Metadata service. For this example, the Products department decides to store its new column-specific term sets in the Global Managed Metadata term store.

Use content types: Yes
Push-down content types: Yes

The Legal department also wants to use the Products-Document-Base content type that the Products department created. An administrator creates a connection from the Legal Web application to the Products Managed Metadata service, and sets the properties of the connection (labeled 6 in the previous figure) according to the following list.

Default keyword location: No
Default column-specific term set location: No
Use content types: Yes
Push-down content types: Yes

The Legal Managed Metadata service

The Legal department uses term sets to represent confidential information. Therefore, it requires its own term store to prevent other departments from seeing the confidential terms.

An administrator creates the Legal Managed Metadata service application in the shared services application pool. The administrator creates a connection from the Legal Web application to the Legal Managed Metadata service, and sets the properties of the connection (labeled 7 in the previous figure) according to the following list.

Default keyword location: No
Default column-specific term set location: Yes (See explanation that follows this list.)
Use content types: Yes
Push-down content types: Yes

The Legal department populates the term store associated with the Legal Managed Metadata service with the confidential term sets. Administrators do not allow connections to be created from any other Web applications to the Legal Managed Metadata service. Therefore, the confidential terms can only be viewed by a user of an application in the Legal Web application.

Two connections from the Legal Web application to a managed metadata service are now defined as the default column-specific term set location. Providing two defaults is not allowed. Therefore, the administrator modifies the connection from the Legal Web application to the Global Managed Metadata service to indicate that it is not the default column-specific term set location.

Outcome of the implementation

The following table summarizes the settings of the seven connections to the managed metadata services.

Managed metadata connections

Connection	From	To	Default keyword location	Column-specific term set location	Use content types	Push-down content types
1	IT Web application	Global Managed Metadata	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
2	HR Web application	Global Managed Metadata	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
3	Products Web application	Global Managed Metadata	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
4	Legal Web application	Global Managed Metadata	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
5	Products Web application	Products Managed Metadata	No	No	Yes	Yes
6	Legal Web application	Products Managed Metadata	No	No	Yes	Yes
7	Legal Web application	Legal Managed Metadata	No	Yes	N/A	N/A

The following list shows the results of this configuration.

All departments have access to the Document-Base content type.
The Products department and the Legal department have access to Products-Document-Base.
All keywords are stored in the term store that is associated with the Global Managed Metadata service so that all departments can see all of the keywords.
All departments can see the IT, HR, and Products departments’ term sets.
Only the Legal department can see the Legal department’s term sets.