Starting out with Taxonomy

[Mike S1]

One thing that is always interesting as you start to work with organizations about a new portal is defining a taxonomy structure for an Employee Center Pro setup. Taxonomy is all about the content. It is the glue that connects all the things you want employees to find behind the scenes to the user experience you want employees to have when they come to the portal.

What are some ways that this is used?

• By helping search by providing options to filter results
• Organizing of Topic pages to bring in items under a shared theme
• Providing employees dynamic content experiences by auto-populating things employees see based on topic
• Content recommendations through any matching or related topics
• Delivering targeted communications through individual widgets when linked up to audiences

There is an out of the box Taxonomy structure to use as a starting point, but it will probably need to be adjusted or swapped out to some level. Some of the things I’ve found to be good starting points as you go through the planning around this swap out process include:

1. Lay out the Taxonomy end to end. It doesn’t have to be anything crazy, just a sheet in Excel to define what is at the parent level and what makes up any sub-topics.
2. Include audiences in your planning. Define the audiences and the data that makes them up so they it’s clear what you’re expecting from the different areas.
3. Try to limit the number of top level topics. This will lead to a cleaner layout overall and a better experience.