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Lesson 6: Manage the category schema for change

In this lesson, learn how to strategically plan for changes in the category schema. Category schemas, like other areas of the repository, will change over time.

In the Software Development category schema, you added four new children nodes to the My Business Planning category so that you could better focus the assets that are created and submitted.

After a new asset has been categorized, a user can find the asset using the My Business Planning categories or any other categories that were applied to the asset.

Now, consider what will happen if over time, the company grows and needs to divide the My Business category into two categories: American Business Planning and European Business Planning. If you change the name of the category, the category value in the metadata of each asset tagged with the My Business Planning category will be lost. New categories or modified categories are not applied to assets that already exist in the repository.

If the categories are renamed then the category metadata is lost. The best practice is not to change the category schemas in the repository. Of course, there might be reasons to change these schemas because of new company acquisitions, growth, or reorganization within the company.

A workaround for this problem is to create a geography category and create Americas and Europe child category nodes. These nodes offer users the option to include both categorizations when they submit an asset. For example, when a user submits an asset that describes the new approved business plan in Italy it can be categorized in by using both the Europe category and the My Business Domain > My Business Planning > Approved categories. Also, a separate Geography category field would be easier for users to find and more easily adaptable to other assets that are in your repository.

Lesson checkpoint

In this lesson, you learned the effects of changing category schemas after they have been put into production.
You learned how to evaluate your category schema for changes that users will make, and some best practices for planning for growth.
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