Offline SharePoint

Continuing the series based on the recent webinar that I participated with Colligo on email management in SharePoint 2010, in this fourth blog entry I’ll outline the new features designed to extend the Records Management capability of SharePoint 2010.

In Place Records Management

Historically, most records management systems operate around what’s called a file plan or a business classification schema, which is essentially a hierarchical folder structure for classifying and storing content (including emails). Within the file plan hierarchy, you define your metadata capture and your retention policies. In SharePoint 2010, we have created a new way of managing records called In Place Records Management. The idea here is that records can exist anywhere within the SharePoint platform. You may chose to take that record and move it to a separate records archive but a lot of people in the collaborative world want to the ability to declare a content item as a record, and to leave that content where it is, in the context it was created.

Hierarchical File Plan

In addition to In Place Records Management, SharePoint 2010 also supports the Hierarchical File Plan, which is the location based approach to managing records (the records archive) that people are comfortable and familiar. This support allows people to decide whether they want to use In Place Records Management, the records archive, or some combination of the two. The Hierarchical File Plan allows users to create deeply nest folder structures for managing information. Combined with the Content Organizer, inbound content including emails can be automatically classified and driven into the appropriate part of the hierarchy where it picks up a location based disposition policies, security constructs, and default metadata values.

Multi Stage Policy

Multi stage policy is another new capability of SharePoint 2010. Multi stage policy is the idea that any piece of content, whether traditional documents or email, is going to go through different phases from creation through to disposition. This new capability allows for the user to create multiple policy stages for any piece of content that has been declared as a record.

Enhanced Reporting and Auditing

Another area where Microsoft has made significant improvements in SharePoint 2010 is in the area of reporting and auditing. The new capabilities make it easy for users to find out what exactly is going on with a specific piece of content by querying a content item and finding out the policy as well as the audit history that applies to it. Additional record information such as retention policy, content type and folder location as well as individual item auditing is also available.

E-Discovery and Litigation Support

SharePoint 2010 provides the ability to search for content across an entire SharePoint repository including any collaborative site, any project site, any team site, as well as records archives for content and place it on legal hold. In the same way that SharePoint 2010 offers In Place Records Management, it also provides In Place Records Holds. When a user comes up with a result set that matches the criteria given by external counsel, they have the option of taking that content out of the collaborative environment and placing it in a separate archive for litigation purposes or to leave the content where it is, so that the business still has access to it, but place that content on hold so that it can’t be tampered, deleted or altered.

For more information on these new records management features, please listen to the audio file below and review the slides.

Download the slides here (PDF, Right-Click & Save As)
Download the audio

In my second blog entry, I discussed how SharePoint is bringing together the traditional world of content management and the world of social networking and collaboration. In this third entry, I’ll look more closely at Project and Case Management in terms of the new features and functionality that Microsoft launched in SharePoint 2010 that will help in email management.

The Content Organizer

The Content Organizer is an underpinning piece of the SharePoint 2010 platform. The Content Organizer is a way to automatically classify and route information based on specific properties of that information. This capability makes it easy for users to take large volumes of emails and move them into the SharePoint environment for better project and case management.

Metadata Driven Navigation

SharePoint is all about capturing content along with rich metadata to describe that content. Metadata driven navigation provides a set of Navigators that are bound to specific metadata properties within the organization and allow you to filter information in the document library down to just the information that matches the specific metadata query. User defined filters can also be used to narrow down large volumes of information to a specific set of content that is relevant to what it is that I’m trying to achieve.

Shared Taxonomy

A shared taxonomy is a central metadata repository within the organization that powers the metadata driven navigation. A shared taxonomy is something that everyone can refer and ensures that users are applying consistently terms to content. In SharePoint 2010 this is called the Managed Metadata Service and is essentially a central service that provisions taxonomies. These managed metadata terms can be used to tag emails in SharePoint for better organization and findability.

Document Sets

Document sets provide a way to manage related content as a single entity and are of particular interest to project and case management. Documents sets can contain a variety of document types including emails and enable users to apply, for example, workflow, policy, and specific shared metadata properties to all of the items in that set of documents.

Unique Document IDs

An often requested new feature of SharePoint 2010 is the unique document ID. Every piece of content, whether it’s a traditional document or an email within the SharePoint environment can have a unique document identifier assigned to it. This document identifier lets you find that piece of content at any time through its lifecycle even if it no longer exists in the location that it was originally created or stored. The document ID follows the content through the SharePoint environment and if you search on the document ID, you’ll always find the document regardless of where it is.

For more information on these new project and case management features, please listen to the audio file below and review the slides.

Download the slides here (PDF, Right-Click & Save As)
Download the audio

In my first blog entry, I looked at the 4 key scenarios for email management in an organization and identified the key outcomes and supporting platforms and software for each scenario. In this next section, I would like to talk about content management from a Microsoft perspective, our notion of ECM for the masses, and how we think of delivering it from Microsoft.

When we look at the ECM space, we see two worlds, the world of traditional content management and the world of social networking and collaboration. From a Microsoft perspective and with SharePoint, we are looking at bringing these two worlds together and saying that this is all just content, no matter how it is created, no matter how it is rendered to the end user, or on what device it’s consumed over. It’s all simply content that needs to be supported with security, metadata, workflow processes, and with policy in place to make sure we keep the content we should be keeping and we dispose of content once it is no longer useful to the organization and in line with corporate guidelines, industry or government regulations.

SharePoint 2010 brings these two worlds together so that we can store and manage all types of content, including email, in a single platform while providing a consistent user experience regardless of the device or application. Underlying this is a comprehensive enterprise search capability to make it easy to find the information we need to do our jobs effectively on a day to day basis. The three key drivers for SharePoint 2010 from an enterprise content management perspective and that Microsoft used as a basis in terms of new features and functionality is ease of use, flexible compliance and cost effectiveness.

For more information on how Microsoft thinks about ECM for the masses, please listen to the audio file below and review the slides.

Download the slides here (PDF, Right-Click & Save As)
Download the audio