Systems and methods disclosed herein relate to a method of storing metadata for a file on a cloud based storage system. A server may receive a request from a third party application to store metadata for a file. The server may determine a metadata type based on the request. The server may associate the metadata value with an application identifier. The application identifier may identify a third party application. The server may store the metadata value based on the determined metadata type. The stored metadata may be associated with the application identifier and the stored metadata value may include information related to an anchor. The anchor may be an attribute of the file, and anchor can change respectively as the attribute changes.