Metadata Designer Working with a Thesaurus

Creating a Thesaurus

A Thesaurus allows you to create a comprehensive list of terms with a relational mapping between them, for example, a broader or narrower term for the given value. You can set how words in the Thesaurus are related to one another and the Thesaurus is used as a backing store (data source) for specific field types in a metadata definition. In FlexMAM, when you enter a word in a field that uses the thesaurus as a backing store these relationships are displayed. Flex prompts you to view related terms, find broader or narrower terms, or uses an alternative term to replace the user-entered term.

You can create multiple thesauruses on your account and associate them to different metadata fields to make it easier to enrich your assets with metadata.

To create a Theasurus:

1. In the Metadata Designer,on the left-hand toolbar, select the icon.
2. Click the icon.
   
   
   
   
3. In the Create new Thesaurus dialog box, enter a name in the Name field.
4. In the Visibility field select any accounts, sub-accounts, and groups that you want this Thesaurus to be visible in.
5. Add a Description if you want.
   
   
   
   
6. Click Create; the Thesaurus configuration page opens.
   
   
   
   
7. Click the Add new term button. Enter a word and then click the + icon.
   
   
8. Add as many terms as you need to the thesaurus. 
9. To finish, click the orange arrow at the top of the screen next to the name of the thesaurus; any new thesuarus you create is enabled by default and all the terms are saved.  You can now use the thesaurus as a data source to create a new field in a metadata schema.

Limitations

• You cannot create terms that contain ONLY numeric values.
• You can create alpha-numeric terms (terms containing numbers and letters) separated by a hyphen. For example, jacket-222

Creating Relationships  Between Terms in the Thesaurus

To enhance the Thesuarus, you can create relationships between the terms in the Thesaurus. These relationships are displayed in Flex MAM when the user enters a word in a field that uses the thesaurus as a data source (backing store). Flex prompts the user to view related terms, find broader or narrower terms, or use an alternative term to replace the user-entered term.

The following relationships can be created between terms in the thesaurus:

To create a relationship between terms in a thesaurus:

1. Select a term in the thesaurus and click the pencil icon.
   
   
   
   
2. In the attributes panel on the right, click the type of relationship you want to establish. See the table above for an explanation of the realtionships.
3. Locate the word you want to relate to the word you selected  and drag it to the attributes panel. Release. It appears in the panel with the relationship that you selected.
4. If you want to change the relationship, click the black arrow to the right of the term displayed in Related Term, and select a different relationship.
5. If you want to rename the term you have selected in Step 1, click the term at the top of the attributes panel, modify the term, and then click the checkmark icon.
6. Repeat the above steps to add more relationships.
7. When you finish, click the orange arrow icon to the left of the thesaurus name to exit. All work you have done is saved. There is no other save process required. Users working in Flex MAM may need to refresh their connections to see updates.

Managing Thesauruses

In the Thesaurus tab of Metadata Designer, you can see a list of your thesauruses and you can perform a number of actions.

• If you have a large number of existing thesauruses, you can sort through the list using the search box and the Enabled/Disabled filter functionalities.
  
  
  
  
  
• Clicking on a thesaurus in the list displays the Details panel.
• Click the  icon at the end of the row to display more options: Edit to edit the thesaurus and Disable to disable the Thesaurus. 
  
  
• You can find disabled thesauruses using the filter and then use the icon to enable the thesaurus.

Editing a Thesaurus

You can edit your thesaurus by adding new terms, adding external ids, deleting terms, or changing the relationships between terms. You can also edit thesaurus properties.

To edit a thesaurus:

Open the thesaurus canvas by:

         - Selecting a thesaurus and clicking and selecting Edit 
         - Selecting a thesaurus and in the panel on the right-hand side, clicking Edit.
         - Double clicking on the thesaurus you want to edit.

To edit thesaurus properties:

To:	Do this:
Edit thesaurus properties	In the canvas, edit the matdata fields associated with the thesaurus.	You can edit these fields: - Display Name - Visibility - Enabled - Description
Add terms	In the canvas, click the Add new term button.
Delete terms	Select a term and click the delete icon.
Edit terms	Select a term and click the pencil icon. In the properties panel, edit the term name, add relationships to other terms. By default, the Reflexive check box is selected and reflexive relationships are automatically created between two Thesaurus terms (related-related, broader-narrower). Unselect the check box if you do not want to create reflexive relationships. To support integrations with thesaurus entries that originate outside of Dalet Flex, you can define an external id for your thesaurus terms.
Search for a term	In the canvas, type a term in the search box. The search only matches from the start of the term, for example, if you were to type "Pro" it would return “process” but not “appropriate”.
Delete a thesaurus	In the canvas, click the Delete Thesaurus icon in header and confirm the deletion. If you delete a thesaurus, all of the terms associated with that thesaurus will also be deleted.

Configuring the Thesaurus as a Backing Store

To use the thesaurus functionality in FlexMAM to see suggested terms, you must associate your thesaurus as a backing store to a specific field in a metadata definition. A thesurus field can be based on a text or a tag field type.

To associate a thesaurus as a backing store to a field in a metadata definition:

1. In the Metadata Designer and click the Metadata option at the top of the left panel.
2. In the list of existing metadata definitions, double-click the metadata definition that you want to add a thesaurus field to. 
3. In the left panel of the canvas , open the Primitives section and drag a Text or a Tag feld into the canvas. 
   
   
   
   
4. Select the newly added field, and in the field design panel on the right, fill in values for Display Name, Name, Multiplicity, and so on.
5. If you have added a Text field, select the Backing Store check box. If you have added a Tag field, the Backing Store check box is sel cted by default.
6. In the Backing Store section, in the Type drop down, select Thesaurus.
   
   
   
   
7.  In the Filter field, select the thesaurus that has the values you want to assign to this field.
   
   
   
   
8. Click the Save icon at the top of the canvas.

In FlexMAM, when you select a term included in a Thesaurus, FlexMAM suggests additional matching terms that you can add to your metadata.

See here for instructions how to add metadata using a thesaurus field.