What is the best way to store files in SharePoint and Teams?

What is the best way to store files in SharePoint and Microsoft Teams? Is that metadata or are they folders? I often hear that question. There are companies that choose to use folders and there are companies that only want to use metadata.

The introduction of Microsoft Teams has not immediately made it clearer how we should use this optimally. Hence this article, in which I will go into this in more detail. I would like you to leave a comment below this article about your own vision on this.

What is metadata?

Metadata is a description of a file. I will use a bicycle as an example. A bicycle has various parts, as shown in the picture below:

Suppose you want to save this bike in a file and you still want to put some details of the bike in the file. Then the file name might look like this: Dogma_2019_Black_21versnellingen_etc.docx. This way we can easily find it by file name (although the name is still not clear). Each part of the bike is a piece of metadata and describes what the bike looks like.

When you look at this bike, for example, it has rim brakes. Other bikes have, for example:

disc brake

rim brake

drum brake

electric brake

With metadata you could create multiple columns in a library that describe the parts, such as “type of brakes”, “brand name”, “year” etc. Now we can indicate in the column what kind of brakes they are, for example. This can also be done with the brand, year etc. etc.

You can find more information about what metadata is exactly here .

Why metadata in SharePoint?

For this we have to go back in the history of SharePoint. In 2001, the first version of SharePoint was released and at that time it was still simple at folder level. In 2003, metadata was added and the data became visible via a browser. Metadata was added to make it easier. To easily find files and possibly filter them in a SharePoint library. In later versions, a powerful search engine was also added. This search engine can handle metadata very well, making it even easier to find files.

Advantage of metadata

The advantage of metadata is that you do not have to work in folders. The disadvantage of working in folders is that your department or team must know exactly how the folder structure is put together. It sometimes happens that files are saved in the wrong folder. Or that the files are saved twice, because they belong to 2020 and 2019, for example. With metadata you can easily solve this and you get a nice overview of files that are very easy to search for.

Disadvantage of metadata

There are also disadvantages to metadata. This is namely with the use of, for example, OneDrive. When you synchronize the files with your local PC, the metadata data is not included. This results in a large container of files that are unstructured in OneDrive.
You also have to consider that when you use metadata, the data must be entered with the file. This can be done by using a number of standard values ​​in the library. If this is not done, a user must always enter the metadata via the browser. You do not want to record everything with metadata. Think carefully about what is really important when you work with metadata, so that you do not have to fill in 20 columns.

Advantage of Folders

Folders have existed since the beginning of the PC. Folders are established and everyone knows how to use them. The advantage of folders is that the folder is recognizable. But also that it is easily synchronized to OneDrive on the local PC. Almost every user knows how to create a folder. Folders in a fixed group of employees provide structure, as long as everyone is aware.

Disadvantage of Folders

The disadvantage of folders is that if you want a deeper structure, so folders within folders, you will quickly end up with 7 folders deep. I will take the bicycle as an example again. If you save it this way, you will first get a folder for the brand, then a folder with the year, then the brakes etc. This works well on a file server, but in SharePoint you will quickly run up against the limits. You can no longer save files, because of the length of the path.

When you use folders and a new colleague joins the team, that person often does not know the structure of the folders and has to search quite a bit. What often happens then is that that person creates his own folder structure again, with the result that many files are saved twice. In addition, you cannot easily search or filter on, for example, rim brakes.

Folders and Metadata

I personally find the principle of folders in combination with metadata very strong. Of course, this depends on whether it really concerns DMS functionalities or just file storage. What I often see and find a nice compromise is that you can use 3 folders per library and do the rest with metadata. This combination allows you to synchronize perfectly with OneDrive and you can add any metadata automatically or in the browser. You do have to pay attention to how skilled your colleagues are and how much standard data you can already provide.

Future

If we look to the near future, metadata will no longer be necessary to find files. And this is precisely where there is still a challenge.

What you see now with Microsoft Teams is the following. A Team is assigned a library. In a Team you can create multiple channels and each channel is a folder in the library. You can create up to 200 channels per Team.

Now creating that one folder is not so bad. But what do you provoke with this?
Users will start thinking in folders again instead of folders in combination with metadata. And they will start saving files twice again, because they do not see the file yet or it is not saved in the right folder. And each department has its own vision of folders.

What you see is that Microsoft is going to do more with Artificial Intelligence, but we are not there yet. This means that you can use the search function without metadata, because it also searches the content in the files. In practice, it does not yet work optimally. You cannot always find everything or you get far too much information back.

My own vision of files in Microsoft Teams

I would choose to have a library per channel in the near future. This allows you to set per channel whether you want to work with folders and metadata or only folders, which allows you to make the channels even more specific. By doing it this way, you make optimal use of the capacity of SharePoint and Teams together.

Please let us know in a comment what you think about this.

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