Is an iPhone a good analogy for SharePoint Metadata?

Question

Is using an iPhone a good example for an analogy for SharePoint's Metadata? I was thinking an iPhone is comprised of a camera, music, phone, and maps. But after thinking about it I doubt I can use it. After all, these are "functions" that make up the iPhone not information about information.

Answer 1

When I try to explain metadata in a SharePoint context I turn my head to a simple document. A document have content as in what's written within the document.

But metadata is all around the document

• The author(s)
• The date/time the document was created
• The date/time the document was last edited
• The version of the document
• If it's part of a project, the project can be metadata
• If it belongs to an organisation, the organisation can be put as metadata on the document
• Which department of the organisation is the target audience? Is it a purchasing manual in a quality system, the procurement department can be metadata.
• ...

These sort of things usually makes my users go "Ahhh, that's it", and they usually come up with other things in their ontology which is better than my examples of project and department and the discussion move forward from there.

Answer 2

When I try to explain metadata to my clients, I usually reference Amazon.com example. I show them a typical Amazon site page and show them an ability to search for say, shoes. The I show them different filters available. For example, color, cost, brand name, size, etc. And then I explain that each shoe has been tagged against those labels (tags) which in turn allow for filtering and searching.

I explain more on this in this article

I noticed that this analogy works best as users can easily relate to this and apply the same "tagging" and "filtering" to documents as well.

Answer 3

Metadata is data about the item which will help to make it search able /identifiable quickly. it is additional information about the item.

In you example you mentioned Iphone, But using camera or map is not additional information as it is basic information which all iphone model carry. and if you want to search by camera then its hard to get the correct information easily.

With following additional information( metadata fields attach to iphone item) Like this

• Iphone Model i.e. 6s/6s Plus/7
• Model #
• Storage size i.e 16gb / 32gb /64gb etc
• Color i.e. Black/white/gold
• Year i.e. 2010/2011,2012,2013
• Lock Status i.e. Factory Unlocked
• Carrier i.e. T-Mobile / Att / Sprint

Now you can sort the all the iphone by t-mobile if filter by carrier etc.

Check this slide deck, which will explain it http://www.slideshare.net/gzelfond/document-management-in-sharepoint-without-folders-introduction-to-metadata