Glossary
Metadata
Also called: document metadata, index fields
Metadata is structured information about a document rather than inside it: its type, owner, date, status, retention class and any fields specific to its kind. It is what makes documents filterable and reportable, and it is the difference between a searchable archive and a governable one.
Metadata explained
Why metadata beats full-text search for records
Full-text search finds documents that mention a word. Metadata finds documents that are a thing. "Every contract with this counterparty expiring in the next quarter" is a metadata query, and no amount of text search answers it — the renewal date exists as a sentence in a PDF, not as a value anything can sort by.
This is also why recognition accuracy matters less than it first appears. A document with correct metadata remains findable even when its OCR is imperfect.
The rule that decides whether a model survives
Optional fields decay to blanks. Every metadata model that has been in place for a few years contains fields that were added for a reason nobody remembers and have been empty ever since. The only reliable defence is to enforce a small number of fields at the point of upload and accept that everything else will be sparsely populated.
Three to six mandatory fields per document type is usually the right order of magnitude. More than that and people work around the system; fewer and the repository is unqueryable.
Which fields earn their place
A field earns mandatory status if a report, a retention rule or a routing decision depends on it. Renewal date earns it because renewals are missed without it. Notice period earns it because renewal minus notice is the date that actually matters. "Department" usually does not, because the folder already says so and it changes when people reorganise.
Extraction and confirmation
Where AI extraction populates fields from document content, the value should be presented for confirmation with its source passage retained rather than applied silently. Metadata nobody verified is metadata nobody can report from safely.
FAQ
Metadata: common questions
How many metadata fields should a document type have?
Three to six mandatory, and as many optional as you like — accepting that optional fields will be largely empty. A field earns mandatory status only if a report, a retention rule or a routing decision depends on it.
Is metadata the same as tags?
Tags are usually free-text and uncontrolled, which makes them useful for personal organisation and useless for reporting. Metadata in a document system is typed and validated, so a date is a date and a select list has a fixed set of values.
Related terms
- Document captureDocument capture is the process of getting documents into a system and making them usable: scanning or importing, recognising text, classifying, extracting fields and applying metadata.
- Duplicate detectionDuplicate detection identifies documents whose content is already present in the repository, normally by comparing a cryptographic hash of the file.
- Email-to-folder importEmail-to-folder import monitors a mailbox and files incoming messages and their attachments into a specified folder automatically.
- Full-text searchFull-text search queries the words inside documents rather than only their names and metadata.
- Intelligent document processingIntelligent document processing combines optical character recognition with machine learning to classify a document, extract named fields from it and route it onward.
- Optical character recognitionOptical character recognition converts an image of text into machine-readable characters.
Última revisão: 28 de agosto de 2026. Browse the full glossary.