February 18, 2012

On Why Retention Based on Content Types Isn’t Enough

Posted by Don Lueders under Best Practicecs, SharePoint Records Management, SharePoint Records Management Fundamentals | Tags: , , |
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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.

 

July 20, 2010

SharePoint 2010 Content Organizer – Part 2

Posted by Don Lueders under SharePoint Records Management Fundamentals | Tags: |
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In my first post of this series, I showed you how to configure Content Organizer to run on your site.  In this post, I will walk you through each of the Content Organizer settings options and explain what each option does. 

To get to the Content Organizer settings, click on ‘Site Actions’ and select ‘Site Settings’.  Under ‘Site Administration’, click on ‘Content Organizer Settings’.  (If you don’t see this option, refer back to the initial post in this series.)

The first setting forces users to utilize the Content Organizer when they submit to the Records Center documents that have one or more corresponding Content Organizer Rules.  [Note - SharePoint 2010 allows you to use the Content Organizer to route documents to any Library or folder in your server farm and is not just limited to Records Center site Libraries.  However, because this blog is focused on SharePoint Records Management, we will focus our attention on managing records in the Records Center.] 

The second setting allows you to determine if you want to restrict the Content Organizer to Libraries and folders within the original site or open it to other sites across other site collections.  (This setting will determine how you configure the Target Location in your Content Organizer Rules.)

The third setting, Folder Partitioning, allows you to create additional folders once specific number of records are created in a target folder.  [Note - This feature may be particularly helpful to EU Records Managers subject to MoReq2 requirements.]  If this setting is not enabled, SharePoint will ignore the number of records submitted to each folder.

The fourth setting, Duplicate Submissions, controls how SharePoint responds when a record with the same name already exists in the target Library or folder.  The options are to create a SharePoint version of the record or append unique characters to the duplicate record name.  Records Managers should determine which of these options is most appropriate for their organization’s requirements. 

The fifth setting determines if audit logs and properties of the document are included with the document when it is declared a record into the Records Center.  This is likely to be important metadata relevant to the record and should probably be preserved.

The last setting allows you to specify your designated Rule Managers.  These are any users who should be granted authority to create Content Organizer Rules. 

The next installment of this series will describe how to leverage these settings to create Content Organizer Rules.

 

June 21, 2010

SharePoint 2010 Content Organizer – Part 1

Posted by Don Lueders under SharePoint Records Management Fundamentals | Tags: , |
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In MOSS 07 documents were routed to the Records Center and classified in the file plan based on the document’s Content Type.  This worked fine if retention and disposition of your records was managed purely by the type of document being declared. 

As Records Managers, we know this is rarely the case in the real world.  A human resources department, for instance, would create a number of very different document types, all of which would be declared into the file plan folder for the employee to whom the records applied.   This might include Offer Letters, Employee Evaluations, Awards, Disciplinary Actions, etc.  All of these records would be maintained in the employee’s personnel folder throughout the employee’s career and retention would not begin until the date the employee left the organization. 

For these types of records, simply classifying based on Content Type (e.g. ‘Employee Evaluation’) proved painfully inadequate.  To manage the record properly, one or more pieces of additional information – in the form of metadata – had to be leveraged to ensure correct classification.  An Employee Evaluation record can’t be managed for retention and disposition effectively – but an Employee Evaluation for Employee Number 321654 can. 

To solve this problem, Microsoft introduced the Content Organizer in SharePoint 2010.  Unlike the MOSS 07 Records Router, the Content Organizer routes documents based on their Content Type and one or more of the document’s properties.  I believe this new feature will be a tremendous leap forward in improving the ease and accuracy of the SharePoint records declaration experience.

Here’s how you setup the Content Organizer:

First, the Content Organizer must be activated on your site.  To do this, go to Site Actions > Site Settings and click on ‘Manage Site Features’ under ‘Site Actions’.

 

Click on the ‘Activate’ button to enable the Content Organizer.

 

 Once the Content Organizer has been activated, two new options will become available under ‘Site Administration’:  ’Content Organizer Settings’ and ‘Content Organizer Rules’. 

  

In upcoming posts, I’ll explain how you use ‘Content Organizer Settings’ to configure a number of useful Content Organizer options and I’ll explain how to use ‘Content Organizer Rules’ to set up rules that allow you to direct documents to specific parts of your file plan based on Content Type and metadata values.

 

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