Decide which structures to apply

When you have decided which workspaces you should create, based on one of the four reasons to split documents into different workspaces, you will need to design the information structure for these workspaces, thereafter create workspace configurations and lastly create the actual workspaces.

The process of designing the information structure for workspaces is iterative and is best done in workshop-form with a few representatives from the team(s) that will be working with the documents. Our recommendation is to start with a longer workshop (2-3 hours), with all the users that will be involved in defining the future document structure, to set a broad scene of the future document management solution. The agenda for the first workshop is typically something like this:

  1. Goals and vision
    1. What has driven you to invest in a new document management solution (overcome the issues that you have been having with your previous document management)?
    2. What are the goals and vision that you have for your future document management solution?
  2. Introduction to document management
    1. What is document management (the basics)?
    2. Understand the concept of metadata driven document management as opposed to folder driven document management.
  3. Demonstration of MetaShare
    1. How to find documents (filter, sort and search).
    2. How to add documents (upload and create from template).
    3. How to edit documents and their properties/metadata.
    4. How to manage documents (versioning, approval, reviewal, etc.).
    5. Show how documents in different types of workspaces can have different information structures.
  4. Information modelling
    1. Show which test-workspaces you have created so far (based on MetaShare’s sample workspace configurations), briefly show the structure under each and one of them and explain why you believe that these workspaces are needed (permission, structure, cooperation or amount of documents).
    2. Brainstorm with the participants what other workspaces need to be created.

Once the broader scene has been set, in workshop 1, the next set of workshops (1-2 hours) are conducted with the different teams that need specific workspaces. Easiest is to begin with the documents that are most structured, normally the sensitive documents within HR, Finance, Management and Board.

Before running the consecutive workshops, send the workshop participants links to the test-workspaces that you want them to test and ask them to note down their change requests (if they have any). A good idea is to let each and one of the users test to upload 10-30 of their most common documents and see if the information structure makes sense when tagging the documents and that it later also is possible to find the document, using metadata filters. Give the users a few days to test before running the workshop with them. The agenda for the consecutive workshops is typically something like this:

  1. Metadata fields:
    1. Discuss whether the metadata fields are sufficient or if other metadata fields are needed.
    2. Discuss if the metadata fields are of the right types (e.g. Managed metadata, Person or group, Date, Yes/No).
    3. Discuss if any of the metadata fields should have any specific settings:
      1. If they should have any description
      2. If they should allow multiple values
      3. If they should allow fill in values
      4. If they should have default values
  2. Metadata values:
    1. For each and one of the managed metadata fields (where you can choose an item in a drop-down list), review each and one of the items and decide whether the items are needed, whether they have meaningful names and whether they are distinctive enough to be able to select only one applicable option.
  3. Permissions:
    1. Discuss who should have permissions to the workspace and if there is a need to create more than one workspace of the type (one accessible for all users, the other(s) only accessible to certain users).
  4. Workspace names:
    1. What should be the names of the final workspaces (once you delete the test-workspace).
  5. Microsoft Teams:
    1. Discuss if any of the documents in the workspaces should be linked to any of the channels in Teams.

Once you have finalized the workshop, do the changes that the team proposed and once the workspace(s) have been modified send a new message to the participants to check with them if any more changes are needed. Depending on the answer, either create the live-workspaces or book an additional workshop with the team.