From the course: SharePoint for Enterprise: Data Management

The folder paradigm is out of date - SharePoint Tutorial

From the course: SharePoint for Enterprise: Data Management

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The folder paradigm is out of date

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- [Instructor] Has this ever happened to you? You need a file, but you're not entirely sure where it is. So, you go looking for it in your company's network, and you find a bunch of folders, but you're not sure which one it's in, which means you have to open them all up and look. And the folders even have more folders, and those have folders. Even worse, you find your file, but then you find more than one version of it, and you're not sure which is the right one. You might be able to see the last update time, but does that version contain all the changes made by the team member who saved an alternate version? You have no way of knowing without opening and comparing the documents. The idea of filing cabinets was a useful model for people when we first started moving information online. It gave them a familiar point of reference. Unfortunately, it's inherently flawed. With folders you're, in effect, assigning a physical location for something that has no physical existence. And physical location implies a path to get to it, which means that you have to know the path, or have someone share it with you, if you don't want to spend time hunting. What we need is a new way to think about categorizing data that will allow us to find it easier. Good news, we've got that. It's called metadata.

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