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If you've ever opened a SharePoint library and found final version 7, really final, this episode is for you.
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Hey everyone, welcome back to the Simply SharePoint podcast, where we fix the mess, simplify the chaos, and make SharePoint actually work for real people.
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This week, on my blog, I shared a big project story.
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The policy and procedure hub that became the single source of truth across an entire organization.
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We use nothing fancy, no custom code, no third-party tools, just good, clean SharePoint fundamentals done well.
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But this week we're getting personal.
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Because while it's great to talk about organizational transformations, sometimes the real battle happens inside one very messy document library.
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The kind of library buried under files called final underscore version underscore seven underscore really underscore final.
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Yeah, that one.
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So today we're staging a SharePoint intervention.
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Every team has one.
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A document library that's basically the digital equivalent of a junk drawer.
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It starts innocently.
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Someone creates a folder called Dras, someone else adds archive, then someone decides to rename everything final.
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Before long, you've got nested folders, hundreds of duplicates, and a mysterious folder called old that no one's opened since 2018.
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And the worst part?
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People still depend on it to make business decisions.
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When I was brought in to fix this particular library, no one could tell me where the latest version of anything licked.
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The team had actually started emailing attachments again because search results were useless.
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Does this sound familiar?
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That's when I realized this wasn't just a cleanup job, this was an intervention.
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So once we'd taken a deep breath and agreed not to touch anything just yet, I started the real intervention process.
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The first thing I did was map the mess, and I mean literally.
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I exported an inventory of every file in that library.
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The names, owners, last modified dates, and sizes.
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This gave me visibility into what was active, what was abandoned, and who was responsible for what.
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Next, I asked one simple question to the team.
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What do you actually need this library to do for you?
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And that question completely changed the conversation.
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Because instead of we just need better search, what they actually wanted was confidence to know they were using the right document every time.
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That's when I explained my golden rule, which is you don't fix search, you fix the architecture.
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If you can't find what you need in a few clicks or by filtering a view, your library isn't structured properly.
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It's not a search problem, it's a structure problem.
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So that's where we started.
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I built the new structure around metadata, not folders.
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I know people love their folders, but in this case the folders were the problem.
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They were hiding context.
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So I flattened the entire structure and replaced it with clean metadata.
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We used four simple columns.
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First was department, so who owns it.
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Second was document type.
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Is it a policy, a form, a procedure, etc.?
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The status, is it working, approved, or archived?
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And owner, the person who is responsible.
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That's it.
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Four fields.
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Every single document had to have those four pieces of information before it could live in the library.
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Then I created a few smart views, the first being my department's documents, then approved documents only.
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Another one called Drafts in Progress and then recently updated.
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These views became the magic filters that replaced folders entirely.
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People could now click once or twice and instantly see what they needed, but no digging, no guessing.
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And the beauty of it was it looked simple.
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We didn't build some big new system.
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We just used SharePoint properly.
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Once we had the structure in place, we started cleaning up the actual content.
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Every final version went through a check.
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We reviewed it, tagged it with the correct metadata, and deleted or archived the duplicates.
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We agreed on a simple rule: one current version per document type.
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No duplicates, no half-edited drafts hiding in folders.
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I also created a working documents view where people could collaborate and draft.
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Once approved, the file was converted to PDF and moved
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into a published view.
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That one change alone stopped all the confusion between draft and final.
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We didn't need an expensive approval workflow or a power automate circus, just a consistent pattern that everyone followed.
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So what happened next?
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Well, the difference was day and night.
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Suddenly, search results made sense again, not because we fixed search, but because SharePoint finally had something clean and structured to search through.
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The team could filter by department or status and instantly find what they needed.
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No one had to guess which version was the latest.
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And for the first time in years, the library actually reflected how people worked.
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Within a week, the noise stopped.
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No more where's that final version emails, no more back and forth attachments in Teams chats, people started trusting the system again.
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Now here's the thing.
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We'd built a really clean structure, but you can't just hand people a new way of working and expect magic to happen.
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That's where user training comes in.
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We had to make sure the team understood the why as much as the how, because structure only works if people know how to use it, and more importantly, why it matters.
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So I ran short practical training sessions.
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I also recorded them and put them up on their intranet.
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They were nothing formal, just 30-minute drop-ins where I was able to show them some quick tips so they could start working in that library right away, but also properly.
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The first one was how to edit metadata quickly, right from the document library grid view.
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The second one was how to filter or group by department or status to find what they needed fast.
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And thirdly, how to spot gaps using a special view I'd built called missing metadata.
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Now, a quick note on that.
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When you do, people get blocked from saving, they get frustrated, and they start working around the system.
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Usually by saving locally or renaming files temp.doc, which is what we were trying to get away from in the first place.
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Instead, I make it visible and not painful.
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That missing metadata view became the friendly nudge that said, hey, you've got a few things to tidy up.
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It empowered users instead of punishing them.
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We also covered version history because most people have never really explored what that does.
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I showed them how they could roll back a document, see who made changes, and use that instead of final underscore version underscore h dot doc.
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Then we talked about the draft to final process.
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Once a file was ready, it was approved, converted to PDF, and surfaced in the published view.
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That clarity helped everyone understand what final actually meant, not just I stopped editing this.
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And this wasn't a one-and-done thing.
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We built ongoing learning into the process.
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Anytime a new team member joined or the library evolved, we did a refresher.
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Because good information management isn't a project, it's a habit.
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You just need to clean them up, give them structure, and make sure the people using them actually understand how it all fits together.
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And yet, lately I've noticed something interesting.
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There's this growing belief that you can just build an AI agent or switch on Copilot and it will somehow do the heavy lifting for you.
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Like AI is just going to swoop in and magically organize all those years of chaos.
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I wish it worked that way, but it doesn't.
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Copilot or any agent you build is only as good as the information you feed it.
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If your SharePoint is a mess, your AI will be confused too.
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It'll pull outdated documents, show draft versions, and surface content that should have been archived years ago.
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So even though we're living in this shiny new AI era, the same fundamentals still matter.
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Your information architecture, the way you name files, apply metadata, design content types, and structure libraries, that's what makes AI smart.
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That's what helps Copilot give meaningful, accurate answers.
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When I talk about AI readiness, I'm really talking about data discipline.
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Every column, every term, every title contributes to that readiness.
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If your metadata is missing or inconsistent, you can have the best agent in the world.
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It will still give bad results.
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So before you start building that next co-pilot extension or fancy agent, ask yourself: can a human find what they need in three clicks?
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If the answer is no, how is Co-Copilot going to find it?
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So that's why I always say, and yes, this has become a bit of a signature line.
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The fix isn't more AI, it's better organization.
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Because here's what happens when you get the foundations right.
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You don't waste time redesigning your entire SharePoint site.
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You refine it, you reuse what already works: the libraries, the lists, the metadata columns.
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You make it scalable and sustainable so every future project builds on the same logic instead of reinventing it.
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You don't need a big rebuild or a new app.
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You need clarity.
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You need good information architecture and a team that understands how to keep it clean.
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When those pieces come together, SharePoint stops being that annoying system people avoid and becomes the foundation that makes every AI tool around it work better.
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So remember, before you automate, before you integrate, before you add co-pilot, get your content right first, because the smartest AI in the world can't fix a messy library.
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Once the structure was in place and the training kicked in, the change was obvious.
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That same team who used to roll their eyes at SharePoints suddenly started using it every day.
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And not because they were forced to.
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They used it because it worked.
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There was no more where's the final version messages in teams.
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No more desperate searches through folders called old or backups.
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Instead, people could filter a view, click twice, and land exactly where they needed to be.
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The results went beyond tidy folders.
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Meetings stopped wasting 15 minutes trying to find the right document.
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New starters could get up to speed within hours instead of weeks because everything they needed was already surfaced with their department.
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And the best part, your team actually started replicating the model.
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Other departments saw how well it worked and asked, can we have that too?
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That's when I knew it had stuck, when the design became a pattern.
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But here's where it got even more interesting.
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Once everything was clean and consistent, we introduced Copilot.
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And for the first time, it actually made sense.
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When people asked Copilot to summarize all approved safety procedures updated this year, it could do it perfectly.
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Why?
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Because the metadata, content types, and the file names were right.
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That's the hidden benefit of doing this groundwork.
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You're not just building a better library, you're building a foundation that every AI tool depends on.
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Because here's the reality: AI isn't replacing your information architecture.
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It's powered by it.
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If your structure is weak, Copilot guesses.
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If your metadata is clean, copilot shines.
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And that's why I love seeing these interventions in action.
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They prove that SharePoint doesn't need to be rebuilt or replaced.
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It just needs to be understood and maintained.
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So the outcome of this project wasn't just a cleaner library.
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It was a smarter, calmer, more confident team, a team that trusted their content again.
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And as a result, trusted the technology.
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When you get that right, SharePoint stops being the system that IT made us use and becomes the tool that quietly powers everything else, including your AI.
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What started as a cleanup project ended up changing the way the team worked and even how they saw SharePoint.
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Because when your content is organized, everything else, from collaboration to co-pilot, finally clicks into place.
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And that's the real lesson here.
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AI doesn't replace good information management, it rewards it.
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When your content is well structured, your AI becomes smarter, your users become more confident, and your organization finally starts working the way it was meant to.
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So if you take one thing away from today's episode, let it be this.
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The fix isn't more AI, it's better organization.
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Next week, we're going a level deeper.
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I'll be sharing exactly how I design metadata and information architecture from scratch when I'm building new SharePoint solutions.
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I'll walk you through my go-to columns, my naming conventions, and the patterns that make every project scalable and co pilot ready from day one.
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Until then, I'm Liza from Simply SharePoint.
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Thanks for listening, and remember if it takes more than a few clicks to find what you need, you don't need better search.
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You need better structure.
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See you next time.