Guest Author: Michal Pisarek

Before we dive in to creating our Records Management solution its worth to overview the various tools and features that we will use to construct our solution. SharePoint 2010 has come leaps and bounds in Enterprise Content Management, a vast range of these tools can be applied to our Records Management solution as well.

In forming a solution it is worth to try to determine what we are trying to accomplish. In essence Records Management refers to the practice of maintaining the records of an organization from the time they are created up to their eventual disposal. This may include classifying, storing, securing, and destruction (or in some cases, archival preservation) of records (thank you WikiPedia!)

But in essence we want to achieve the following:

1. A way to construct content that will become records
2. A way to classify records
3. A way to store and secure records
4. A way to report on records
5. what are the tools that we can use to accomplish this?

Constructing Content

Constructing content in the SharePoint sense is the definition, creation and upkeep of Content Types. The great thing about using SharePoint as a Records Management platform is that all content can be managed from a central location.

SharePoint 2010 however adds two vital features that aid in the creating of Content Types:

Content Type Syndication (CTS)

This to me is the unsung hero of the SharePoint 2010 platform. CTS allow us to define and manage the lifecycle of Content Types in one central location, with the ability to publish Content Types across Site Collections, Web Application and even Farms. This was a huge issue in MOSS 2007 as updating Content Types across Site Collections was problematic at best.

Now we can define our Content Types, with metadata, templates and in our Records Management mind set Information Management Policies, from one location and control those Content Types effectively.

Managed metadata

Just as CTS allowed us to centrally managed Content Types, the Managed Metadata Service provides the ability to centrally define metadata attached to Content Types. This gives us the ability to easily control the metadata that is so vital in order not to construct but also to classify and report on records.

Managed metadata also offers huge advantages in terms of the interface it presents to users. It makes entering metadata easier, and the more information that users add to their content, the better it can be classified and managed within a Records Management Scenario.

Classifying

Information Management Policies with Multi-stage Retention

This is one of the many improvements in SharePoint 2010 that is specific to Records Management. The ability to define retention schedules that have predefined triggers and associated actions closely models how many of the big players in the Records Management space work.

In essence it will allow us to control content as it moves from stage to stage in our retention plan, and with the addition of CTS we can neatly wrap these retention policies up in our Content Types and distribute them across the entire farm.

Default Metadata

Interestingly this is one of the new features of the platform that hasn’t got much attention, but I love it. You can now define default metadata at the document library level for any column that is present. In Records Management I really like this because we can route content to a folder and then automatically add pre-defined metadata to it simply because it landed in that location.

It makes things easier and more consistent, helping us to classify our content a little more effectively.

Unique document Identifiers

One of the more highly touted features in the ECM toolkit of SharePoint 2010 is the concept of unique document identifiers. This will give us 2 major advantages in creating a Records Management solution. Firstly we can now associated a unique identifier to a piece of content and retain that identifier across the entire lifecycle of the document. This means we can be confident that the content has not been altered or tampered in any way.

More important however is the easy findability of the document, regardless of its location within SharePoint. A unique document identifier does not contain the location of the document when you are trying to retrieve it so a user can find a document regardless of whether it has moved to the Records Center or is anywhere else within the system.

Compliance Information

Compliance information is now easily viewable from the context menu of any piece of content stored within SharePoint 2010. The more exposure that users have to routing policies, seeing if an item is a Record or other information such as Holds really help users understand the various policies that are attached to the content that they are using.

In Place Records Management

Another new ability is to mix Records and Non Records within the same library. This is a really cool feature that does make it much easier to get users to use the records management features inside of SharePoint since its now part of the user interface.

Now there is some tradeoffs to this approach and it is mainly to do with the fact that it is difficult to create complex routing rules using inplace records.

Multiple Send To Locations

With MOSS 2007 only one send to location could be defined. Now with SharePoint 2010 you have a whole host of options that can be leveraged in a Records Management scenario including new options when an item is sent, multiple locations to send to and the ability to actually hide send to location from users to distinguish items that have been moved manually and items that have been moved as part of a policy.

Store and Secure

Hierarchal File Plans

Another of the big feature changes for Records Management within SharePoint 2010 is the ability to create a hierarchal file plan. This relates to defining different disposition policies within different folders within our file plan.

The way that this is implemented within SharePoint 2010 is through the new ability to be able to specify the Information Management Policy source for content. We can now choose to override the disposition policies attached to a Content Type and use the policy defined in the folder.

Hierarchal file plans are a huge deal for Records Managers everywhere as it gives them the control to specify retention details down to a very granular level.

Records Centers

We also have a new Records Center template available that contains a number of useful features such as a in built Content Organizer, a search box where users can search for content by document identifier, a default Records Library to store records and an improved administrator interface.

Content Routing

The Content Organizer is the feature that will link our Content Types complete with metadata to our file plan. We will use the Content Organizer feature to organize documents within our file plan where they can then take on the retention rules defined on the folder that they belong in.

Reporting

Electronic Discovery and Holds

The eDiscovery aspects of the platform have also been greatly enhanced. Now we can search for content and create legal holds to track actions such as litigations, investigations or audits when we need to suspend any alterations to content.

Although not strictly part of creating a Records Management solution, it is a vital part of the capabilities that SharePoint offers

Metadata Driven Navigation

Again tied with more with the ECM capabilities of the platform but vital in a Records Management scenario. Essentially if we have many documents in a records center we need some way to be able to navigate those documents, and it shouldn’t need to be via the file plan.

Metadata driven navigation gives us this capability, allowing us to quickly navigate even through the largest of file plans with ease!

So as you can see a lot of the new ECM aspects of the platform we will use to create our Records Management solution. Really what we are doing is not creating a Records Management solution but a small ECM solution that emphasizes the Records Management aspects of SharePoint. But that is one of the great features of the platform that we can use pieces of functionality on so many different levels to craft the solution that we need.

Stay tuned for the next installment when we start to define our Content Types and metadata using Content Type Syndication and the new Managed Metadata Service!

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)

One of the many requests from users was the ability to create SharePoint content from within the Office clients. Instead of a user needing to navigate to a library to create particular item based on a Content Type it would be great if this could be done directly through Word, Excel, One Note or Powerpoint.

Not only would this save time but the ability to control and define templates within SharePoint, while allowing users the option to create to these Content Types from the office clients that they are familiar with.

In SharePoint the improved integration between SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 makes this possible. Essentially what this means is that a user can ‘subscribe’ to a document library and have those content types available within the office clients.

So how do we do this? Let’s assume that we have the following document library with the content types defined as below:

Now the user wants to be able to access these Content Types from Office 2010 clients. But how? Well it’s surprisingly easy! All you have to do is to click on the icon below:

This will add the Document Library to the Quick Links section. You can also click on the ‘Manage SharePoint Sites’ link to see what other site you have listed as well.

So now that you have performed this action you can now open one of the Office Clients, click on the ‘New’ button and see a new section called ‘SharePoint Templates’

The templates are available with full fidelity including any metadata attached to the Content Type, workflows and everything else. The other great integration piece is that if a user clicks on ‘Save’ SharePoint will save the content directly to the document library that the Content Types are subscribed to! That’s right there is no need to browse to the correct document library as it will open automatically.

Now this is a demonstration for Word 2010 but it works the same for all the Office suite of clients. Another example of the improved integration with SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010.

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)

Guest Author: Michal Pisarek

There has been a lot of talk within the SharePoint community in regards to the new Enterprise Content Management (ECM) features in SharePoint 2010.

Records Management had some weaknesses in MOSS 2007 which caused many customers reluctance in adopting the platform to truly manage content from creation through to disposition.

Fortunately in SharePoint 2010 there has been a significant investment in the Records Management aspects of the platform. Microsoft has listened to the user community and enhanced the functionality within the platform to support the creation of a full-fledged Records Management solution including:

1. Support for multi-stage disposition rules
2. Centralized management and syndication of Content Types
3. Unique persistent document numbering across the entire lifecycle of content
4. Complex routing rules to support hierarchical file plans
5. Reporting across Sites and Site Collections for compliance details
6. The ability to mix records and non-records within the same location

In this series of articles I am going to explain the process that we have gone through in creating a Records Management solution for clients using strictly out of the box configuration within SharePoint 2010. This series will provide an end to end overview of the kinds of decisions and considerations that we have made for our clients and will hopefully raise some questions from the user community about SharePoint and Records Management.

I also will be pretty honest in my findings! I am a true fan of SharePoint and love the new Records Management functionality but is it perfect? Of course not, however with some know how, configuration and planning you can build a robust, scalable solution that can really create value for your organization. I see SharePoint 2010 Records Management as a mid-market offering providing fantastic value while allowing an organization to manage their entire content life-cycle from a single, unified platform.

Our Goal

So before we start what are we trying to actually build? Well here is our very simplified version of our own endusersharepoint Records Management implementation:

1. A Records Centre with a full hierarchical file plan with disposition rules defined at each node
2. Centrally defined content types with retention policies and metadata attached
3. The ability for users to manually declare items as records but also for items to be automatically declared as records if certain criteria are met
4. A way to report on which content is in which stage of the disposition life-cycle.
5. Unique document numbering that is persistent across the full life-cycle of the content
6. The ability to declare any content as a Record, be it a document, list item or Document Set

Keep in mind that this is all out of the box configuration; there is absolutely no code at all! In some instances I have been a little creative and much more can be done if we layer custom code on top of our solution. But this is an example of how powerful configuration can be in SharePoint 2010.

Our Scenario

EUSP Catering Co. is a company that sells catering services. They contain a number of departments that use both collaboration sites to plan and coordinate events, in addition to less process driven sites such as document centers. When a new event is sold a collaboration site is created and all information is stored within the site. When items become records (such as contracts, menus, agreements and vendor receipts) they are either sent to a Records Center (in the case of financial information) or declared in place (in the case of discussions, tasks and other items).

The content goes through various retention rules dependent on the type of content. EUSP Catering Co. wants to reduce storage costs so a conscious effort is made to move content to cheaper storage after 3 years, and to destroy content after 7 years. In addition they wanted an easy way for employees to be able to declare contents as records, to be able to search for records and to ensure that no tampering of records has occurred.

Stay tuned as we begin the journey with EUSP Catering Co. to see if we can accomplish their goals and satisfy their business needs!

So where to from here? Well in the next article I will show the new features within SharePoint 2010 that will allow us to build our Records Management system including some tips on which features will provide instant benefit to any SharePoint implementation.

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)