SharePointRecordsManagement.com

I’ve spoken to two different groups over the last couple of days and both groups asked me the same question about Content Types and SharePoint Information Management Polices.  Essentially, they wanted to understand why simply applying a retention and disposition schedule directly to each unique Content Type wouldn’t meet their records management requirements. 

This is an excellent question that addresses a fundamental understanding of SharePoint records mangement and is vital to a successful solution implementation, so I thought it might be a good idea to post my response here. 

Many retention and disposition requirements (indeed, most retention and disposition requirements at some organizations) are determined by an event rather than the type of record being managed, so a record’s Content Type is usually not enough information to accurately apply the correct Information Management Policy to it. 

This is probably best explained by an example.  Suppose you manage mortgages at a large financial institution.  With each new mortgage a new corresponding folder is created in your records repository.  Over the life of the mortgage, hundreds of records with dozens of different record types – Mortgage Agreements, Property Assessments, etc., etc. – will be added to the folder.  And most (or more likely, all) of these records will have their own Content Type.  Internal corporate policy and outside regulations require that these records are maintained for 10 years after the mortgage is paid off, at which point all the records in the folder, as well as the folder itself, are destroyed. 

From this example – known as case based records retention – it is easy to see why a record’s Content Type alone  wouldn’t provide adequate information for applying the appropriate retention and disposition schedule.  If you were to simply apply a 10-year expiration to, say, all Mortgage Agreement Content Types, SharePoint wouldn’t have any way of knowing when the record’s mortgage was paid off, so it wouldn’t ever trigger the record’s 10 year expiration period.   

This example also explains why the addition of Content Organizer was so critical to successful records management in SharePoint 2010.  Using Content Organizer, we can configure SharePoint to route a record to a folder in the Records Center based on its Content Type (e.g. ‘Mortgage Agreement’) and one or more metadata values (e.g. ‘Mortgage #12345′).  Once the records are properly classified into the correct folder, an Event Date can be applied to all the records it contains upon payoff of the mortgage and the 10 year expiration period can begin in compliance with corporate and external requirements.

There’s probably no single issue in this industry more heavily debated, more overly analyzed and generally more misunderstood than email records management.  And this is terribly unfortunate because an effective email records management solution is a critical component of integrated information lifecycle management.

Easily the biggest source of confusion is the definition of email records management itself.  Frankly, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had someone tell me they already have an email records management solution and it works just fine, thank you very much for asking…  These folks usually describe their ‘email records management solution’ like this:  ‘We store all our emails for two years from date of creation or receipt.’ 

This may be a very valid policy – particularly from a e-discovery perspective – but it is not email records management.  This is email archiving. 

Email is a format.  It’s a method of delivering the information the email contains.  In the paper world this would be equivalent to a policy that states, ‘Store all correspondence that comes in white, rectangular envelopes for two years from the date they were received.’  These types of policies give no consideration to the value of the information the emails contain. 

True email records management means evaluating the content of the email (and, potentially, its attachments) and classifying it into a repository that renders it immutable and applies business rules that make it compliant with your organization’s information management requirements.  One of those business rules should apply the appropriate retention and disposition.

Here’s an example.  Suppose you are the Project Manager on a large solution deployment.  Your customer sends you an email indicating she has accepted the new project scope changes and has attached a copy of the revised Project Plan.  Your email archiving policy will maintain a copy of this email for two years, after which it will be destroyed.  Forever.  But, from a legal perspective, all project records (regardless of their media) must be maintained for 10 years after the project is completed and then destroyed.  So that email, like all the other content critical to the success of the project, must be declared a record and managed throughout the life of the project. 

So hopefully that clarifies email records management a little bit.  In my next post I will explain not only one way to manage your email records, but frankly, I think the only way it can be done successfully.