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.
