How to Use the Taxonomy Editor

Taxonomies Available for Auto-tagging

The taxonomies that are available for auto-tagging purposes are listed below the Taxonomies List on the Manage Taxonomies page.

  • Each of these taxonomies are located in the SharePoint term store.

  • For this reason, each entry corresponds to a term set in the SharePoint Managed Metadata Service (MMS).

Note: We recommend that you create taxonomies with a maximum depth of three layers.
In other words, each parent should have no great grandchild nodes.

  • Use the test bench to see whether a taxonomy node is matched by any of the documents in the index.

  • Documents are determined to be a match when one or more of the documents is a match for the rule.

  • Each taxonomy node is delimited by a rule with one , or more terms, which must be matched in order for the taxonomy node/term to return a match.

To see test results, do not select all of the fields, or none of the fields in the Select column pop-up window.

How to Change the Taxonomy Editor View

  1. Click the name of the taxonomy that you want to edit. The Taxonomy Editor, or Test Bench, interface is displayed.
  2. Click (to the right of the Properties tab) and the Options pop-up window appears:


  3. Click the radio button that corresponds to the layout that you want to use:
    • Landscape:
      1. Default selection.
      2. This selection re-sizes the interface for wide-screen monitors.
    • Portrait:
      1. This selection is re-sizes the screen for traditional and laptop monitors.
    • Spreadsheet:
      1. This selection is recommended when you choose to edit taxonomy rules as a group and there is no need to see your matched documents.
      2. To expand this taxonomy, click the plus button (+)

    1. Note: When you select the spreadsheet view, you can use the drop-down operations that are available in the taxonomy pane to modify your taxonomy.

How to Use Term Store Operations

Term Store operations affect the selected taxonomy and you can see these changes in the test bench.

  • For example, if you add a taxonomy, or a taxonomy node in the Term Store, the change is also made in the Taxonomy Management page.

  • The same operations made in the Taxonomy Management page appear in the Term Store.

To make taxonomy changes in the Term Store, follow these steps:

  1. Go to the Central Administration. Click Manage Service Applications.
  2. The SERVICE APPLICATIONS page is displayed.
    • Make sure that the Managed Metadata Service (MMS) is started.
  3. Managed Metadata Service: Click and the Site Settings - Term store page appears:



  4. Select the taxonomy and taxonomy node that you want to see or edit such as GeneralBuiness_SKOS > Prerequisites.
  5. Right-click and select:

    • Create Term: Add a new term to the Term Store and to your taxonomy.

    • Copy Term Set: Duplicate the selected term set and taxonomy.

    • Reuse Terms: Select a term and this operation to replicate the selected term (and any children of this term) in the selected location.

    • Pin Term with Children: Add the selected term with any children.

    • Move Term Set: Add the term set to the new location.

    • Delete Term Set: Remove the selected term set.

  6. (As required) Use the appropriate tabs and panes on the right-hand side of the page:

    • Available for tagging: By default all terms are available for tagging. Deselect this checkbox and your documents are not tagged with this tag.

    • Language: Select the language for your tags using the drop-down arrow.

    • Description: Enter information about this tag here.

    • Default Label: This is the node name.

    • Other Labels: Add additional labels and these labels appear in the test bench.
      Note: The labels that you add here are immediately added to the selected node in the Test Bench.

    • Member Of: See the taxonomies where this label is a member.

    • Unique Identifier: This is the unique number that is assigned to the selected label.