Managed Metadata and the Term store

The Term Store is a big part of using the Content Syndication Hub.  By using columns made from managed metadata, we can really control the standardization of the Content Type across the farm.  With the Term Store, we can make adjustments to the values within the term store and have those adjustments be populated out across the farm, just as changed to the Syndication version of the content type are populated out across the farm.  Together, these are very powerful.

In order to use the Term Store, one needs access to Central Administration or access through Site Collection Features to the Term Store Administration link.  From there, the first steps is to upload the original Term Store information.  Initially, Term Groups need to be created.  Term Groups are the equivalent of site columns.  They are columns that have data in them, but that data may be further differentiated in a tree configuration.  So, if the Term Group is States, the first level would be the state names, but under each state name, there could be city names, under the city names, there could be county names, under the county names, there could be area names or neighborhood names.

Changes to the Term Store require a timer job that runs (typically) once per day in the middle of the night.  The timer job schedule can be change to run at a different time or on a different frequency, but it can also be run manually by going to Central Administration->Monitoring->Job Definitions and then going to Taxonomies which is on the second page of jobs. These jobs can also be run on request at any time by going to the Job definitions and choosing the Run Now button.