Welcome to our free SharePoint Power User Training tutorial. This tutorial is based on Webucator's SharePoint 2016 Power User Training course.
The Managed Metadata service in SharePoint Server 2016 provides central term storage and management. The Term Store is what allows you to have common sets of terms that can be shared across all sites and site collections within a farm.
Term Store terms are organized within a Term Set, which is created within a Term Group forming a hierarchy nested within the Managed Metadata Service. The parent service defines Term Store Administrators that are responsible for creating the Term Groups. The Term Groups define the Group Managers and Contributors.
Once Term Sets have been defined within the Managed Metadata Service, they can be linked to lists and libraries through a Managed Metadata column type. Managed Metadata columns create fields on the SharePoint forms that are linked to the Term Sets and provide IntelliSense that provide users with choices of terms based on what they type.
Lesson Goals
The following walk-through will show you how to create a new Term Group, Term Set, and Terms hierarchy. Because the Managed Metadata Service is shared by the entire Farm it is important to use a Term Group name that will not conflict with others.
This walk-through will show you how to create a new custom list and add a new column that is linked to the Contoso Departments Term Set created in the previous walk-through.
Another feature of the Managed Metadata service is to replicate Content Types from a designated site collection hub to all other site collections sharing the Managed Metadata service. This allows Farm administrators to define a Content Type in one time in one place and have it available to use throughout the Farm. This feature would only be beneficial to Farms that have multiple site collections.
To facilitate content type replication, the Farm administrator must first configure the Managed Metadata service to point to a specific site collection as the content type hub. The following image comes from the Central Administration web site properties page of the Managed Metadata service:
The first time the Farm administrator visits this page, the Content Type hub is an empty text box that the Farm administrator types in whatever site collection path they want to use. To change it after it has been set the first time, you must use PowerShell commands.
Once the hub has been defined, the Farm administrator can then configure the Managed Metadata Service Connection to consume content types from the Content Type Gallery of the hub site collection. The following image is a screen shot of the Managed Metadata Service Connection properties:
Content types created in the site collection defined as the hub will have an extra link, Manage publishing for this content type, in the Settings group of the content type configuration page.
This link will take site collection administrators to a page where they can control publishing for that specific content type.
If you do not see the New Group option, it is most likely because your account has not been added to the Term Store Administrators list. You will need to contact your farm administrator to perform that task.
This option will allow new entries to be made at the list and library level where they are linked. A later part of this exercise will demonstrate adding a new entry through a list column linked to the term set.
If you get an error message refresh the web page and retry setting the option.