Define Content Types for Records Management – Part 2
Guest Author: Michal Pisarek
In the previous article I talked about a whole range of tips on how to define Content Types. In this article I am going to take us through the Content Types and metadata that we will use in our solution.
If you are reading the rest of the series, keep this article somewhere handy because we are going to refer back to it often as we construct our solution. If you are at all confused then please leave a comment and I will get back to you. There is a lot to cover here so I really want make sure that we all understand the various components and how they fit together.
Events Site
EUSP Catering uses a collaboration site for each event that they cater. The event that we will use in our demo is for Foo Bar Aquarium, called Eat Less Fish Friday! EUSP Catering Co. stores all information relating to the event in this site – everything from event documents, client communications, discussions and a shared calendar.
Components
Metadata
With each piece of information within this event site there are three pieces of metadata that have been created that will serve multiple purposes. These are detailed below but it’s fairly standard – users need to know the client, the event, the date of the event and the status of the event to each piece of content that they create.
Now as a teaser does anyone know what the Expiration Date column does? It’s actually a column that is added which shows when the next action defined in an Information Management Policy will execute. This is incredibly useful since you can see when actions are due to be triggered.
Content Types
EUSP Catering found that they use 4 main types of content detailed below. To make this series interesting I have 3 different types of constructs: 2 documents, 1 document set and one list item. As we go through the series you’ll see how we can easily apply Records Management policies to any type of content within SharePoint 2010 which is extremely powerful!
File Plan Locations
We also have a whole range of retention policies that we need to apply to content. Once again to demonstrate the power of Records Management we have a combination of In-Place and Records Centre based retention, and we are also going to use the Content Organizer to create folders within our file plan for Contract and Receipts. Don’t worry if this doesn’t make sense at the moment, in future articles it will become clear!
Retention Schedules
We also have our retention schedules which control the various lifecycles that our content will go through. EUSP Catering allows users to declare records manually but there is also a need to automatically declare records after a certain period of time if they haven’t been declared already. This is a wise choice – it’s the best of both worlds where if a user forgets to declare a record then we can automatically do it for them.
Below is a table that outlines the retention policies that will be assigned to our different types of content. It is important to note that in SharePoint 2010 we have a choice of where that retention is applied from – either on the Content Type or a Folder. In our example, any items declared In-Place as records will use the retention policies applied at the Content Type level. Any items that are routed to the Records Centre will inherit retention from the file plan that they reside in:
File Plan Structure
Finally we have our file plan which is fairly simplistic but will serve to act as a demonstration for the possibilities that SharePoint 2010 offers:
So there we are with the 5 elements that we need to build our solution: Metadata, Content Types, File Plan, Retention Policies and Routing Locations.
Now that we have gone through this we can finally start to create the solution! Join me next time when I will take a spin through the new records center template to show how we will leverage it. After that I will talk about how to define retention on folders and on Content Types.
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Guest Author: Michal Pisarek
Michal Pisarek is a solution specialist for Habañero Consulting Group, a Microsoft Gold Partner in beautiful Vancouver Canada. He has been working with SharePoint for 3 years and has a passion for finding the right balance between technology, innovation, governance and fun to meet his client’s needs.
You can find other articles by Michal on his blog SharePointAnalystHQ or follow him on Twitter (@michalpisarek)
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Michal, I’m still with ya, I can’t wait to get into a SP2010 environment to adopt the practices you are teaching here, keep it coming!
I do have a question regarding creating a new content type vs creating custom workflows that manage document policy. An example would be of a library with over 200+ legally binding policies, those policies regulated by 10 or so committes; regulated in the sense of review/approval/disposition. Custom workflows can be created to handle these actions, thus only needing one content type – one point of view. My understanding of the new SP10 environment leads me to want to create a content type for each committee of oversight, thus having a transparent policy in place to trigger the regulating actions. How do you know which is best?
Is it best to use the inherent Sharepoint functionality over building custom workflows based off choice columns? Some with the other point of view argue that the philosophy of “use as few content types as possible to get the job done” is a stronger point to adhere to, so custom workflows are favored. Can you give some standard guidelines as to what you think is best?
Hey Kerri!
You pose a really interesting question so here are my thoughts. Personally I prefer to use Information Management Policies (IMP) for retention instead of workflows for a number of reasons:
1) Users can see the IMP associated with an item when opening up content in the Office client, if using a workflow then this vital piece of user information is missing
2) IMP’s can also be published out using Content Type Publishing very easily and transparently. You can publish out workflows but there are a couple of other steps that you will need to perform in order to make sure that it all works as expected
3) It is much easier for a Records Manager, with limited SharePoint skills, to define and alter an IMP, but considerable more difficult to alter a workflow.
In terms of many vs one content type it depends on your requirements but more so it depends on usability. In your case I think that having multiple content types will not be an issue since they are well defined and will make sense to your end users.
Hopefully this answers your question but please let me know if you need any more details.
Thanks so much! When looking strictly at SP07, it would seem that the benefits of multiple content types are not as great, but understanding the upgrade capabilities I think that helps to make better decisions as we continue to build on this platform and plan for SP2010. Without a way to really test it and see the improvements it is a bit difficult to judge what path is preferred. I think your articles are really wonderful, but I have to admit, I am bias toward information architecture and content management, geeky as that is, I think it is fascinating stuff!