SharePointRecordsManagement.com

I’d like to take a moment to expand on something I touched on in my last post.  Namely, the notion that having something in place to manage your records beats the hell out of doing nothing at all.  This applies across the board – but it applies to SharePoint based records management in particular. 

I will be the first to admit – as I have done before on these pages – that SharePoint provides only the most basic of records management features.  There is a lot of records management functionality missing from the Records Center and I am hoping that Office 14 will change that.  But the most optimistic release projections for O14 aren’t until late this year or early 2010.  So does that mean I think you should wait until O14 comes out before building your records management solution?  Or do I think you should implement some other solution because it has a million cool features and is available now?  No.  And, God, no. 

What I suggest is you start by doing the business process analysis and design work required to implement an effective records management solution.  This includes the taxonomy, file plan, metadata, retention schedules, user roles and everything else associated with a records management solution.  Once that is done, (and you can’t possibly overestimate the work involved there) begin to set up your solution.  Create a few Records Libraries and apply corresponding expiration policies to them.  Pull some important records off your random file servers and upload them into the Records Center.  Before long you will have the makings of a basic production records management solution.   And do all this knowing that O14 will provide additional records management functionality and upgrading the current solution to O14 should be quick and relatively painless.

I’d like to offer some quick advice that definitely applies to a SharePoint records management solution, but really applies to any records management implementation, regardless of the application you are using:  Don’t let the quest for perfection paralyze your efforts to implement an acceptable solution.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen perfectly acceptable solutions stall and even get cancelled because somebody (or worse – some committee) decides they want the solution to ‘do more’.   ‘Doing more’ invariably adds complexity and development time to your solution, with that, the corresponding costs and implementation delays.  I see this all the time and I firmly believe it is the direct result of our fascination with technology. 

When you begin to design your records management solution, ask yourself this one question: Does my current paper-based records management design satisfy my minimum records management needs?  This should include your metadata, searching and taxonomy requirements.  If the answer is yes, then make that design your implementation benchmark.  And fight the urge to add a bunch of cool bells and whistles just because you can.

This is one of the key reasons I frequently recommend SharePoint as a records management solution.  Because of its generally low price point, organizations I’ve dealt with have seemed less concerned with ‘getting their money’s worth’ by forcing additional complexity on a records management solution than simply being satisfied with the basic functionality necessary to manage records in an efficient and compliant manner.

And don’t get me wrong.  It’s not that I don’t understand some organizations’ logic.  If I paid a half a million dollars for a records management solution and I’m paying fifty grand a year in maintenance costs, that solution should be doing everything possible, short of making my coffee in the morning.  The question is do I really need a solution that does everything possible?

With proper configuration, when you or your users declare a SharePoint document a record the process can be as simple as right-clicking the document and selecting ‘Send to…Records Center’.  To make this process work, SharePoint needs to be configured to point to your Records Center. 

As a Records Manager, it is unlikely that you will be configuring the connection between your SharePoint Document Libraries and the Records Center.  This is probably something that would be managed by your IT department.  (At the minimum, you must be a member of the Farm Administrators SharePoint group to even have permission to complete this procedure.)  However, since you will ‘own’ the SharePoint records management process, it’s important that you understand how it’s done.

 The first step is to navigate to SharePoint Central Administration.  Do this by clicking on ‘Start’ and selecting ‘Administrative Tools’.

 Under Central Administration, click on ‘Application Management’.

Under External Service Connections, click on ‘Records center’.

This will bring you to the ‘Configure Connection to Records Center’ page. 

Select ‘Connect to a Records Center’.   Next, enter the URL to your Records Center site.  (If you and your developers haven’t done anything too funky, you should be able to go to your Records Center site homepage, copy the URL from the IE bar and append “/_vti_bin/officialfile.asmx” to it.   It should look something – but not exactly – like this: “http://mysharepoint/reccen/_vti_bin/officialfile.asmx”.)

The value in ‘Display Name’ will appear as the ‘Send to…’ option.  Enter something that makes it clear to your users that they are sending the document to your organization’s records repository.  The format ‘ABC Corporate Records Center’ works better than simply ‘Records Center’.

Click on ‘OK’ and you should now be able to declare a record by using the ‘Send to…Records Center’ option.

If your declaration process was successful, you will get the following confirmation.

I should note that this process assumes you configured the Records Routing process properly.  If you get the confirmation above, but can’t find the new record in its intended Records Center Library, check the ‘Unclassified Records’ Library.  You probably didn’t configure the routing process correctly.  Review Records Routing here.

If you get an error message after attempting to declare the record, there’s probably something wrong with the URL entered on the ‘Configure Connection to Records Center’ page.

So I was scheduled to give a presentation to the Reno, Nevada chapter of ARMA way back in November, but had to cancel due to a family emergency. 

Well, the folks in Reno were very gracious and understanding and I have rescheduled to present SharePoint Records Management to the chapter on February 11th. 

If you are an ARMAReno member or just in the area, I’d appreciate the chance to meet with you and learn about your SharePoint RM experiences.  Please try to stop by if you’re interested.