Open and Closed Term Sets in Sharepoint

In this article we can explore Open and Closed Term Sets inside SharePoint.

Term Sets

Term Sets allow users to create collections of terms that they can reuse to associate with content.

Usually the Site Owner creates the Term Sets for all the other users.

An example of a Term Set is programming languages with values like:

1. C#
2. Java
3. Python

Term Store Management Tool

For site collections we can use the Term Store Management Tool. This is available from Site Actions > Site Settings > Term store management tool.



Closed Term Sets

By default Term Sets are closed. Here the term manager must create the terms and users will need to use it. There is no provision to add new terms on the fly.



The Term Association dialog is shown below.



Open Term Sets

Open Term Sets allows users to create more terms on the fly.

Once we mark the same Term Set as Open, we can add new terms in the association time.



Selecting a parent term and clicking Add New Item allows us to create a new term under the parent.

Groups, Term Sets and Terms

Please note that there are subtle differences among Groups, Term Sets and Terms. You can see the icons for them.

References

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee519604(v=office.15).aspx

Summary

In this article we explored Open and Closed Term sets.