Accurately routing records to your Records Center file plan is a lot easier in SharePoint 2010 using the Content Organizer feature.  This feature allows you to set rules to route records based on the original document’s Content Type and one or more metadata values.  Content Organizer rules can be tremendously helpful to Records Managers concerned with the accuracy of user records classification and organizer rules should be leveraged as often as possible.

Here’s how you create a Content Organizer rule…

First, you must ensure that the Content Organizer feature is active on the site to which you want to route the record.  To check, browse to the site and select Site Settings under Site Actions.  Under the Site Actions group, click on ‘Manage site features’.

Locate the Content Organizer feature and click Activate.  (Hint: if you are having trouble seeing any of the images in this post simply click on it to see an expanded view.) 

Now return to Site Settings and click on ‘Content Organizer Rules’ under Site Administration.

Click on ‘Add New Item’ and the New Rule dialog is displayed.  Give the new rule a meaningful name that briefly describes what rules does.  Set the rule to Active with a priority to determine what should happen if multiple rules match the same record.  Next, select the applicable Content Type and any alternate names it may use.

Under ‘Conditions’ assign the metadata-based condition or conditions that must be met to match this rule.  (In this example, the Employee ID property must equal ’0034′ and the HR Category must be ‘Personnel’.)

Under Target Location, click Browse and select the destination library or folder for the record.

Click ‘OK’ for the destination library or folder and note the full path of the target location will be displayed.

Click ‘OK’ and the rule is created in the Content Organizer Rules list.

That’s all it takes.  Pretty simple, huh?  In my next post, I’ll show you how to configure the ‘Send-to’ feature to take advantage of your new Content Organizer rules.