Fundamentally, SharePoint records retention (referred to as ‘Expiration Policy’) is time-based (or ‘subject’ based) retention. This is because out-of-the-box Expiration Policy can only be set based on when the record was first declared. (OK, technically speaking you can also base expiration on ‘Last Modified Date’, but as we all know, you never modify a record.)
Subject based retention works fine for most of your records retention schedules, but how do you configure SharePoint to manage your event-based (or ‘case’ based) retention? Well, as much as I hate to say it, that depends. There are really three ways to make case based retention work in SharePoint. They are:
- Implement the DoD 5015.2 Resource Kit
- Create custom expiration policy based on metadata
- Use out-of-the-box functionality in a case management manner
The solution you select will depend largely on your particular requirements. You may be in a highly regulated industry that requires that your Records Management solution is 5015.2 certified. If that is the case, you may have no choice but to use the Resource Kit. I will address the Resource Kit in great detail in later posts, so I won’t discuss that approach in this post.
That leaves the second and third options. I will split discussion of those two approaches between my next few posts, so stay tuned.
