Essential SharePoint

Susan Hanley

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Check this out: cool automated tools for designing and deploying SharePoint information architectures

Design and migration tools for SharePoint Information Architects

By Susan Hanley on Thu, 07/02/09 - 9:54pm.

Last week, I had a chance to get a demo of a cool product for designing and maintaining taxonomies for SharePoint sites called MetaVis Architect. The tool is designed for information architects – people who have the responsibility for designing an information taxonomy for a SharePoint site. They also offer a product called MetaVis Classifier that supports end users who have to migrate and tag content from a file share (or another SharePoint site) into a new site. Together, they make a suite worth exploring.

I have to caveat this by explaining that I haven’t had a chance to play with either tool yet myself (but there are free trials for both on the MetaVis web site) but I grilled a very patient Steve Pogrebivsky, the MetaVis CEO, as he did a detailed web demo for me. MetaVis Architect creates a visual diagram that allows designers to not only design the taxonomy but to provision the design in a SharePoint site automatically. Using drag and drop features, you can create an easy-to-read relationship diagram and then when you are ready to deploy, the tool compares the new design with the current environment and lets you deploy some or all changes to your existing environment. Really cool and very easy to understand. I like to see my entire architecture in one visual so if you have a really complex taxonomy, you are going to want to have a plotter to print out your diagrams (or you’ll need a lot of paper and tape!).

MetaVis Classifier helps users apply metadata and move or copy files anywhere in SharePoint. If you install the software on the server, you can preserve your original dates during migration. If you just install the client-side software, you can’t preserve dates such as Created and Modified during migration but you can apply metadata in bulk. This tool was also really easy to understand – requiring virtually no training to understand the basics.