What is the Best approach to manage Document Type field, which have different options for each site

Question

I have this question for our SharePoint sites which we are currently creating. Currently we need to create sites for our departments (10++), will take Commercial & HR as an example :-

• HR
• Commercial

Now inside the 2 sites we need to have a field named "Document Type" of type managed metadata to tag documents inside the documents libraries that got uploaded inside the 2 sites.

Now the issue is that the HR has different options compared to the Commercial site for the Document type field (some options might be the same such as the "Other" option). so i am planning to follow this approach:-

1. Inside the HR site to create a managed metadata column with internal name = "DocumentType", and link it to this term set named "HR Document Type":-

1. Inside the Commercial site to create a managed metadata column with the same internal name = "DocumentType", and link it to this term set named "Commercial Document Type":-

now this will work on paper for tagging documents with different options for each site. but we need to have an advance search page to allow to filter the documents from the 2 sites using the Document Type, for this i will use the PnP Modern Search web part, which depend on the search managed metadata & the search Refinables.

So now i got one managed metadata for the DocumentType columns:-

and i link it to a Refillable:-

then i am planning to configure the PnP modern search web part to filter the documents from all the sites based on the above refinable.

but i have the following 2 main questions, if anyone can help me in making decision on them:-

Question-1) is the approach of having 2 site columns with the same internal name inside the 2 sites, but linked to 2 different term sets, with the intention to be able to filter documents from the 2 sites using the same Refinable, a valid approach?

Question-2) now for the Document Type inside the Term Store, we can create 2 separate term sets; "HR Document Type" term set & "Commercial Document Type" term set as shown above , as follow:-

OR we can have one parent term set named "Document Type", and under it to create 2 sub terms (HR & Commercial), as follow, and link the site columns to the sub-terms instead of a term set:-

so which approach we should use ? 2 term sets ? or one term set with 2 sub terms? and why?Can anyone advice on the above 2 questions?

Thanks and i really appreciate any help in advance

Answer 1

Hi @john john Pter,

Hope everything is going well.

First of all, it is true that in SharePoint we use GUIDs to differentiate each term, and terms in different term sets will have different GUIDs even if they have the same name. But the impact of this on PnP searches depends on how you use managed properties to search independent of the organization of the term.

For example, HR and Commercial both contain the Other term, and we map the DocumentType column to the managed property RefinableString100.

1. If you use RefinableString100:"Other" in your PnP Search KQL statement, then all items that use the term name Other are returned. This is because the RefinableString100 managed property only records the names of the terms and not their GUIDs.
2. If you only want to get items that use Other terms in a specific term set, then you will need to use the ows_taxId_DocumentType property for your query. This property holds the GUID of the term. For example, to get only items that use the Other term in the HR term set you need to use this KQL statement: ows_taxId_DocumentType:"0c5f1a59-2334-4b23-XXX-abc1234ef567" (This is followed by the GUID for the Other term in the HR term set.)

Feel free to contact me if you have any concerns.

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Answer 2

Hi @john john Pter,

Thanks for your detailed explanation, I am more than willing to help you out.

Question1:

Based on your description, the whole process is correct.

But there is one thing I need you to confirm: Have you correctly linked both site's DocumentType properties to the same managed property in SharePoint Admin center? If yes, then this solution is correct.

Question2:

Term sets are used to organize terms into a logical grouping. Sub term sets allow for a hierarchical structure within a term set, enabling more granular classification.

For your situation, it is recommended that you use a structure with one term set with two sub-terms sets. This structure makes it easier for you to extend other sites document type terms later on.

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