SharePointRecordsManagement.com

There are two primary ways to manually file records into Records Center Libraries.  One way is a manual upload.  To do this you navigate to the Records Center Library where your want to declare the record and select ‘Upload’.   This process will allow you to copy a document from anywhere it resides into the SharePoint Records Library you are in.  You can apply a Content Type to the uploaded document and add whatever metadata is required.

The other option for manually filing a record is to use the ‘Send to Records Center’ feature.  (It’s important to note that this feature is limited to documents maintained in SharePoint Libraries and not available for documents stored in other locations.)

To use the ‘Send To…’ option, you have to configure the Records Routing Table to recognize the Content Type of the document you are sending to the Records Center and direct it to the proper Records Center Library.  Here’s how you do that.

In the Records Center, click on ‘Record Routing’ in the Lists column.
 

In the Record Routing list page, click on ‘New’ and select ‘New Item’.

Give the List entry a title and description.  Under ‘Location’ enter the exact name of the destination Library in the Records Center for these records.  Next, enter the name of the Content Type.  (If there are more than one Content Types going to this Library, enter them all and separate them with a forward slash (/).) 

 
Click ‘OK’ and the new Record Routing Table entry has been created.

 
Now, using the example above, anytime you want to declare a Budget Content Type document a record, you can use the ‘Send To…’ option and it will automatically be classified in the ‘Financial Statements’ Records Center Library.

I go way back with the DoD 5015.2 Certified Resource Kit, so I may not always be as impartial as I should be.  But to be fair, I need to mention a few reasons you may want to think twice about using it. 

As I’ve discussed before, the Resource Kit is extremely complex and can be horribly brittle.  (In all fairness, this really isn’t the fault of the designers and developers as much as what it takes to comply with the arcane test procedures of the DoD standard.)

There are too many features that run off of timer jobs.   This means that things often don’t get processed right away.  Instead, you may make a fairly simple administrative change and have to wait over night for it to propagate throughout the system.  That can get tedious.

Destruction of records is the same as hitting the ‘Delete’ key.  This is not a huge problem unless your organization has strict requirements about guarantying that your destroyed records can’t possibly be recovered.  If that is the case (as it is in many government agencies), you’ll have to go through a very laborious database expunge process each time you destroy a set of records.

The Resource Kit only allows you to create file plans that are two levels deep.  Unfortunately, that’s all the DoD5015.2 requires and that’s what the Resource Kit provides.  (There are some work-arounds for this problem.  I’d be happy to discuss them with you, if you want to talk about them off-line.)

Finally, and probably the most troubling thing about the DoD 5015.2 Certified Resource Kit, Microsoft does not support it.  In short, you can download it for free and install it, but you are on your own after that. 

Apparently, this was a tactical decision by Microsoft and I understand not even Microsoft has unlimited resources, but if your IT Department is anything like the ones I’ve dealt with, you are going to have a tough time convincing them to install anything that isn’t supported by the manufacturer.

The good news is that Microsoft is well aware of these problems and I would expect to see some or all of them corrected if they certify the next release of SharePoint coming down the road.  Stay tuned…

To set disposition on SharePoint Libraries, you first have to create an Information Management Policy.  You can create Information Management Policies directly on the Library, but since it is likely you will use these policies more than once, I suggest creating them at the site collection level.

To create an Information Management Policy, login as someone with administrator permissions and navigate to the site Home page.  Click on ‘Site Actions’ and select ‘Site Settings’ and ‘Modify All Site Settings’.
 
Under the ‘Site Collection Administration’ column, click on ‘site collection policies’. 

 
In the ‘Site Collection Policies’ page, click on ‘Create’.

Enter the name of the new policy and a description. 

 
Scroll down to ‘Expiration’ and click on ‘Enable Expiration’.  This will allow you to select a time period for the retention and an action to take when the retention period ends.

Click on ‘OK’ and the new Information Management Policy has been created.
 

Next time we’ll learn how to apply this policy to a Records Library.

Despite what you may have heard there’s a lot of stuff in the DoD 5015.2 Resource Kit that you can use.  The cool part is a bunch of it is stuff your developers can either pull right out of the code (which they can download free from Microsoft) or get off the Net with very little effort.

Here’s my list of some of the best, most useful features from the DoD 5015.2 Certified Resource Kit:

• Vital Records review
• Folder closing
• Records relationships
• Folder level holds application
• Records versioning
• Global events and global periods

The few SharePoint Records Management resources Microsoft has made publically available all suggest limiting Records Libraries to one unique Content Type each.  In other words, all of an organization’s contracts will be declared to the ‘Contracts’ Records Library (and, presumably, given the same retention).  As experienced Records Managers, we know this simply isn’t practical.  Rarely – if ever – will a single file plan component contain just one record type.  This is certainly true for case-based records management, where a whole array of different record types are routinely maintained in the same folder. 

 I believe Microsoft promotes the notion of one Records Library/one Content Type because they want customers to use the Records Routing functionality that installs with Records Center out-of-the-box.  That’s understandable and I also believe in using the Records Routing tables, but one Content Type is just not practical for real-world implementations. 

So how do you manage multiple record types in the same Records Libraries?  Here’s how one of my customers is doing it.  First, create a single content type for all of your team, department or organization’s records.  Call it ‘Accounting Record Content Type’ or ‘Acme Company Record Content Type’.  Make sure the Content Type includes all the attributes necessary to manage the record throughout its life cycle.  Assign the Record Content Type to all of your Records Center Libraries. 

Next, have your developers customize the records routing process to route documents to the Records Center based on metadata value’s assigned to the original document’s Content Type.  (I’ve discussed metadata-based records routing in several previous posts.)  Now when your users declare the Elm Street Bridge Project contract a record, it can go into the ‘Elm Street Bridge Project’ Records Library with the other project related records, regardless of its Content Type.

To make this process even more efficient, I suggest including all the Record Content Type attributes in the base Content Types of all of your organization’s document Content Types and have your developers migrate these values to the Record Content type at declaration.  That way, when your users create a document, they can fill out the necessary record information from its inception.