Metadata or folders? The crucial question in document management

[suchona.kani.z]

Moving documents from a drive to SharePoint seems simple: After a short wait, all documents and folders are available using copy and paste. So users can carry on working as usual, right? I explain in my blog post why metadata should be used instead of folders.

The IT world is diverse and SharePoint Online also has many use cases. In this blog post, I am therefore basing my discussion on a specific situation that I have often encountered: A large number of documents are to be managed within a SharePoint site. I am also assuming that this will be used via the SharePoint web interface, not the file tabs in Microsoft Teams channels. These are practical in the project context, but this is not what the following is about.

folder proliferation as a starting point
What does a folder structure look like today? It was probably created many years ago and has grown since then. Someone was kind enough and ambitious enough to use folders and subfolders to reflect the needs lebanon consumer email list of their daily work. Over the years, more folders were added. Special solutions were chosen for special cases, and in the end, stylistic flourishes such as "The advance notices are always in Mr. Vogel's personal folder" were created. All new employees had to learn this, and when Mr. Vogel retired, his folder was retained, even though personal folders should actually be deleted after retirement. Actually. You know... the advance notices. Some particularly cheeky contemporaries may have mentioned that the folder structure seemed illogical, but they were quickly put in their place with the words "We've always done it that way."

analysis of the disadvantages
What do I mean by that? A folder structure is created from just one perspective. It is either logical for accounting (one folder per quarter, finely separated according to debtors and creditors) or logical for the design department (one folder per designer, finely broken down according to the workpieces designed). The accounting staff would not find it intuitive to find their way around the designers, and the members of the design team would despair at the accounting logic. Depending on which department the folders were created for, in the worst case scenario the entire company would have to follow this filing structure.