Business travel can be frustrating. I've had a number of situations where my workshop engagement or training engagement takes me to a city with more than one major airport. The problem is that the person entering the engagement into my calendar was not aware of this, and so I would sometimes fly into the wrong airport. This is usually a minor inconvenience, but can be a major hassle and embarrassment if it inconveniences my customer, so I decided to solve the problem using SharePoint 2007. I pulled together a text list of major airports and their three-letter codes. I then put this into a list, and used the list as a look up in my travel calendar in SharePoint. I also sourced other items from pre-populated lists. This makes it easier to enter the data, less likely to overlook something if it is required by SharePoint, and far less likely to have multiple variants on an airport identification.
This is about the simplest example of a useful taxonomy I can think of for you to play with in SharePoint. You can purchase extensive lists of pre-populated and interrelated lists like this for use in SharePoint. These lists can do everything from speed up the entry of medical codes to help your end users navigate complex standards and industry codes. The key thing to remember is that these can be deployed more or less everywhere so that they are available to folders and lists no matter where they are found. The inheritance, webpart and content type capabilities within SharePoint make it possible to "teach" all of SharePoint to provide structured taxonomy data to all end users everywhere.
The POLICY taxonomy that I cover in my workshop helps you to establish standard policies and profiles to govern information that has been classified according to one of these NOUN taxonomies.
So...
If you are looking for a simple exercise that demonstrates how taxonomies can make information management simple, while making the software easier to use, try this:
1. Create a calendar list called "Travel Schedule" in one of your SharePoint sites.
2. Create a new column, name it "Airport" and format as a 'choice' column
3. Download AirportList file to your desktop, open it in Notepad and paste the contents into the choice list for the Airport column's settings.
4. Close up settings, and click 'New' in the Travel Schedule calendar.
5. You should now see a data entry field called "Airport" in the "New Item" form for the Travel Schedule calendar.
6. The Airport list includes every (more or less) international airport in the world. This makes it easier for the end user to enter data when scheduling air travel. They just need to choose an airport and don't need to look up the code and enter it in manually. This also cuts down on mis-spellings, omissions and other sources of bad metadata.
It would be possible to purchase noun taxonomy lists that then include addresses, airline selections and so on that are synchronized with each airport selection. That way it is possible to guard the end users' freedom, make it easier to enter data, and avoid having multiple variants for each data entry. It also cuts down on 'orphan' data elements which don't tie into or synchronize with other data elements.
Now please keep in mind that this is an example of a NOUN taxonomy and not a VERB taxonomy. A VERB taxonomy would then be able to apply policies, workflows and other actions to each selection. As an example, if the chosen airport is in China and the end user is in North America, a VERB taxonomy policy might then kick off a workflow to get a visa into the PRC as well as a work permit.
Here too is a Site Template File (STP) already laid out and ready to use. Download Airporttaxonomyexample
©Copyright Mark Ragar Schneider, 2009 All Rights Reserved
