Report Categorisation

Overview

Reports are managed on a two level hierarchy of Category and Sub category, with individual reports attached to a subcategory.
The purpose of this is to allow you to define the way in which your reports are accessed by your users. It is critical that you carefully consider how your report 'taxonomy' is to be implemented.

Taxonomy

An important part of the report management process is the creation of you 'report taxonomy'. Taxonomy is how you categorise and define the information you wish to publish. It is used to help people find and search across all reports in your repository.

The challenge

Setting up a taxonomy is an act of communication. They basically capture an essence of the knowledge that resides in your organisation. A conceptual short-hand overview that describes what's important and how things you are interested in relate to each other. Creating a taxonomy, like anything that worthwhile can be hard work, time-consuming and require considerable domain expertise and creativity.

Imagine a "Creatures of the World" web site. It may have a taxonomy like this:

• Animals
  • Vertebrates
    • Mammals
    • Birds
    • Fish
    • Reptiles
  • Invertebrates
    • Arthropoda
    • Crustaceans (Crabs, Lobsters, barnacles, etc.)
    • Insects

Already you may be thinking, I wouldn't have organized the Creatures like that, my users need to access them like this:

• World
  • Seas
  • Land

Making a Taxonomy for your company or area of expertise can be very difficult. However, the context of information usage in your company will determine the most appropriate form of taxonomy to implement.

See [Category Management] for more information.