Design Tools for the SharePoint Information Architect

By Barb Mosher (@barbmosher) Apr 22, 2009

MetaVis Tools for SharePoint Architects and Developers Visual Studio is a great tool for the SharePoint Developer. But what about the SharePoint Information Architect? You don't write code, so Visual Studio doesn't cut it for you. Still it would be nice to have some kind of product that let's you work on SharePoint designs without having to have your SharePoint test environment up and running and without having to create that design only to have to change it because it isn't quite right.

MetaVis Technologies is offering a solution for all you SharePoint Information Architects that you need to take a closer look at. It's called the MetaVis Architect for SharePoint and it's only one of several new solutions they are publicly bringing to market today.

MetaVis Technologies is a company dedicated to metadata solutions. They want to enable you to manage your metadata easily and we all know that there is a lot of metadata to be designed and managed within SharePoint.

CMSWire had the opportunity to talk with one of the co-founders of MetaVis - Steve Pogrebivsky about their latest solutions for SharePoint and what we saw was very interesting.

Architect for SharePoint

As an Information Architect, you are often required to design SharePoint structures for new collaboration sites, document libraries and other SharePoint lists. Normally to do this, you have to create the design on paper and then manually implement it into a SharePoint environment.

And let's not even talk about making changes to an environment that already exists. The mere thought can send shivers through any normal SharePoint Architect or developer.

The MetaVis Architect for SharePoint will make life much easier. It is a visual designer, looking very much like Microsoft Visio, that enables you to create two dimensional graphical diagrams of your SharePoint repository without having to work in an actual physical SharePoint environment.

MetaVis SharePoint Designer for Architects

Using the MetaVis Architect you can create SharePoint designs from scratch before they are even implemented in a physical environment, or you can work download existing designs and make changes without affecting the production version. Once your changes are made and approved, upload the design and changes are made automatically.

Features and Functionality

MetaData Design: Create content types or lists easily, traverse a tree structure that shows you how the metadata structure looks at a glance.
Seeing the Big Picture: Look at the entire design of your SharePoint environment, compare it to an existing environment viewing overlaps and gaps.
Quick Site Setup: You don't have to build a new SharePoint site from scratch every time. Use an existing design to kick start your new site or library.
Make Changes Easily: Using the designer you can create new lists and libraries, modify or delete existing ones and quickly deploy the changes back to the SharePoint environment.
Eases Compliance: Easily update your site or content types to meet compliance requirements.
Document: Add comments and annonations to your designs to easily remember important points, add additional information or alerts. There's even a sticky note capability.
Share Designs: You can export and share your designs before they are implemented to ensure they meet the requirements.

Want to see how it all works? Watch these videos.

MetaVis Architect

MetaVis Architect with Compare Plug-In

If you want to compare two or more SharePoint sites, add this plug-in to the mix. With this plug-in you can identify differences in schemas (columns, content types, lists) and you can synchronize part or all of the sites you are comparing.