SharePointRecordsManagement.com

I’m getting a lot of questions about the next release of SharePoint, so I thought I’d give you all a quick update.  Here’s what I know.  SharePoint is a component of Office 14, which is due to be released at the end of this year.  The rumor flying around is that date is slipping and may be closer to early next year. But no official announcement has been made, so I’ll stick to the end of the year until I hear otherwise. 

The Alpha code was released to a select group of partners within the last couple of weeks.  Alpha versions are usually fun to look at, but often only vaguely resemble the final product, so I wouldn’t get too excited about that. 

The Beta version should be available publically sometime in May.  I plan to get my grubby little hands on the earliest release I can find and I will jump right to the records management features, first thing.  My intent is to write a review of the new and enhanced records management functionality Office 14 provides as soon as I have had enough time to analyze it.  The review will most likely come out as a whitepaper through the company I work for, so I won’t be able to post it here.  Once I’ve written the review, though, I’ll post an announcement and you can shoot me an email if you are interested in reading it.

As I discussed in an earlier SRM 101 post, you should create all your required Site Columns before putting your Content Types together.  (Obviously, given the evolving nature of any organization’s metadata requirements, you will almost certainly have to come back and create new Site Columns and alter your Content Types.)

 
To create a Site Column, login as someone with Administrator privileges and click on Site Actions > Site Settings > Modify All Site Settings.
 

Under the Galleries column, select ‘Site columns’.  (Duh.)

In the Site Column Gallery, click on ‘Create’.
 

For the new Site Column, enter the column’s name and select the type of information in the column.
 

To simplify managing all your columns, it is a good idea to bunch them into groups.  Either select an existing group or create a new one.

Next, you can enter a brief description of the column, determine if the column is mandatory or optional, limit the column’s length and create a default value.  
 

Click ‘OK’ and you will return to the Site Column Gallery where you will see your newly created column.

That’s it.  Now your new Site Column will be available for use in your Content Types.