Metadata
Metadata means any data that is not part of the actual document but is closely related to it.
The purpose of metadata is to add context to the documents. One way to see this is to think about every way user might ever try to find the document by, for instance:
- By document’s date
- By who it was from
- By which project it relates to
- By document’s topics
- By its state (open, resolved)
- and so on
By adding this kind of context to the documents, no matter the kind of list the user is looking for, they can always create a search filter that returns exactly those documents.
Personal experience with metadata
Based on a personal experience, I like to categorize all documents with at least two or three keys:
- Company (or author)
- Document type (invoice, user manual, receipt, certificate, report…)
- Project (work, health, home, studies…)
In addition, there are some optional keys:
- Report type (if the document is a report of some kind)
- Person (if it relates to someone, relative, family member)
- Metadata (if the document is missing metadata, use automatic rule to mark it)
Even a simple metadata as described above works surprisingly well. However, every time you end up struggling to find the document you need, you should think about what context is the document’s metadata currently missing, and then add it. This way the metadata structure keeps gradually improving to suit ones own needs even better.