Offline SharePoint

We are really pleased to be partnering again with Microsoft on another important webinar. This time, we’re working with Nishan DeSilva, Director of Information Management & Corporate Records Compliance on how Microsoft’s Legal and Corporate Affairs Department (LCA) is leveraging SharePoint 2010 and Colligo Contributor for ECM and Records Management.

In this webinar, you’ll learn:

• Microsoft’s LCA strategy for information/records management
• How to easily move unstructured content & email in SharePoint
• Tips for consistent classification & compliant retention policies
• How Colligo facilitates email management in SharePoint
• Ways to improve the user experience to drive adoption & compliance

Nishan will also provide some insights into Microsoft’s strategy for SharePoint 2010 and how SharePoint along with Colligo Contributor enables organizations to take ownership of their information assets.  This is going to be another great webinar and I encourage anyone who’s interested in using SharePoint 2010 for Enterprise Content Management or Records Management to attend.

Register today for this webinar here.

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

Stephen Cawood has recently published an excellent book on SharePoint 2010, written specifically for end users who want to get the most out of their SharePoint 2010 implementation. The book is titled: “How to Do Everything: Microsoft SharePoint 2010” and is available from Amazon. Stephen is a former member of the SharePoint development team and is now the Director of Community and Support Services for Metalogix Software, a provider of SharePoint migration, management, and archiving solutions and a Colligo partner.

This book covers a lot of ground including providing a history of SharePoint as well as a wealth of practical and often step-by-step information that will help organizations and end users get quickly up to speed on SharePoint in general and the new features and capabilities of SharePoint 2010 in particular.  One area that he spends a lot of time is on metadata, where he offers some excellent information on the use and benefit of metadata, specifically the new enterprise managed metadata (EMM) and term store functionality of SharePoint 2010.  One of the major benefits of Colligo’s SharePoint client solutions is around capturing and managing metadata, so it’s great to see the amount of space that Stephen dedicates to metadata tagging and taxonomy in his book.

Stephen provides an interesting, easy to read, and highly practical book on SharePoint 2010 and I highly recommend it. A big thanks to Stephen for his three pages on Colligo Contributor in Chapter 10 “Using SharePoint with Client Applications” where he gives an excellent summary of SharePoint client technology and the benefits of Colligo’s integration with Microsoft Outlook and Windows Explorer.

Get the book from Amazon here.

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

Ed Kaczor, our VP of Sales, spent last week in Washington, DC at the 2010 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference.  Over 13,000 people participated in this year’s conference, far surpassing last year’s attendance, which is a very good sign for the coming year.  The conference featured some high profile speakers, including a keynote by former President Bill Clinton titled “Embracing our Common Humanity” in which he discussed where he sees the world going and the role  that technology plays in reducing global disparities.

Another very interesting keynote speaker was Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s Chief Operating Officer.  Kevin’s presentation covered a lot of ground but some important take-aways were Microsoft’s impressive success in building market share and the continuing success of SharePoint in the global market place.  SharePoint has been Microsoft’s fastest server product to hit $1 billion in revenue and Kevin predicts it will also be the fastest to $2 billion.  Another important take-away was Microsoft’s commitment to “cloud computing” with a focus on its BPOS Business Productivity Online Suite offering. 

Colligo is well positioned to take advantage of Microsoft’s emerging cloud strategy since our products already work with BPOS and we have lots of happy customers to prove it! We also saw a lot of interest in our products from other SharePoint hosting companies proving once again that “cloud computing” will be a hot topic in the coming year.

Ed’s discussions with our global partners provided further validation of the traction that we’re seeing in the market for SharePoint 2010 as a platform for enterprise content management (ECM).  This is great news as ECM and document management in SharePoint is a natural sweet spot for us with our Outlook to SharePoint and Windows Explorer to SharePoint integration solutions.

As Barry mentioned, I’m going to do a series of posts over the new few weeks based on the information that I presented at the webinar on Email Management in SharePoint 2010. These posts and the associated audio files and presentation slides break down the webinar into smaller sections and enable people to download the audio and slides and listen/view at their convenience.

In this first section, I’ll discuss how Microsoft is thinking about ECM and in particular email management in terms of how an organization can get it under control. Their are 4 key scenarios that we consider when we think about how to manage emails in an organization. These 4 key scenarios I like to call the continuum, starting on the left hand side with Personal Email Management, then moving right to Project and Case Management, then to Email Archiving and finally to Records Management.

Each of these scenarios has key outcomes and supporting software that Microsoft believes a company needs to manage emails within an organization.

Personal Email Management:
This is essentially driven by the individual and it’s characterized by how I think about email for my own personal purposes. How I consume what comes into my Inbox, how I manage my Inbox and how I act on the content in my Inbox. Personal email management is all about making my day simpler using many of the great new features of Outlook 2010 designed to make managing information easier as well as easier to tag or classify email to help me get my job done.

Key Outcomes:

• Well, managed and organized Inbox
• Information is easy to find
• Email is safe, secure and easy to recover
• Easy to elevate email to a higher purpose
• Easy to age email gracefully

Supporting Platforms and Software:

• Outlook 2010
• Exchange 2010

Project and Case Management:
This is all about dealing with teams, groups, projects, and specific issues within an organization. What’s important to note is that in this scenario, we treat email the same as any other content item such as a Word file, an Excel file, or a PowerPoint presentation. It’s all part of a single entity, whether that’s a single project or single case. I want to manage email in the same way as any other file related to a project. What’s required in this scenario is a consistent approach to managing all those different types of content, a consistent metadata capture requirement across all the content, and a consistent way to apply search and policy to the document or item. Email gets shared along with all the other content to the group.

Key Outcomes:

• Treat email the same as all other artifacts
• Share email broadly without replication
• Capture rich metadata
• Leverage workflow
• Apply rich policy

Supporting platforms and software:

• Outlook 2010
• SharePoint 2010
• Colligo Contributor

Email Archiving:
This is something that is more driven by IT and the business as well as by compliance and the regulations placed on the business around how you manage electronic communication. From an IT perspective, it’s about how to manage large volumes of emails coming into a business.

Key Outcomes:

• Simplify application of policy
• Broad brush, time based disposition
• Support larger archives with cheaper disk
• Support e-discovery requests

Supporting platforms and software:

• Outlook 2010
• Exchange 2010

Records Management:
This goes beyond the “broad brush” approach of email archiving to records management where it is more about identifying business critical content. This content must have specific metadata capture requirements, specific multi-stage policy applied in order to manage the entire lifecycle, and a set rules and regulations that are adhered to very closely. This also requires that a specific individual in the organization is taking care of this content, monitoring it over its lifecycle, and making sure that the right content is kept for the right period of time and then disposed of in an effective fashion.

Key Outcomes:

• Manage email as a business record
• Leverage file plans for classification
• Capture rich metadata
• Leverage workflow
• Apply rich policy
• Support e-discovery requests

Supporting platforms and software:

• Outlook 2010
• SharePoint 2010
• Colligo Contributor

For more information on these scenarios, please listen to the audio file below and review the slides. In the next posting, I’ll discuss what “ECM for the Masses” means for Microsoft.

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

Many of you may have watched our recent webinar with Ryan Duguid, titled “SharePoint 2010: What’s New for Email Management?” In fact, we had a record number of registrations for the event at almost 2600, so we definitely know that email management in SharePoint 2010 is a hot topic! Not only is Ryan very busy being Microsoft’s Senior Product Manager for ECM, but he’s also a very much in-demand speaker, recently providing the keynote address at the New Zealand SharePoint Conference in Wellington.

Ryan has agreed to be a guest blogger and do series here based on the webinar. Over the next few weeks, Ryan will publish blog posts that break down the webinar into more manageable pieces, as well as provide links to the slides he used and to the specific audio portion of his presentation. You can either listen online or download the audio and listen at your convenience.

Here is Ryan’s bio:

Ryan Duguid is a Senior Product Manager at Microsoft responsible for SharePoint Enterprise Content Management. Ryan moved to Redmond from Microsoft New Zealand where he was a Technology Specialist responsible for evangelizing the Microsoft 2007 Office system, assisting customers with deployment and adoption of Office system-based solutions and developing competency and confidence within the Microsoft partner ecosystem. He is passionate about understanding people, identifying their unique problems and helping them to realize their true potential through effective and innovative use of technology.

Thanks Ryan for agreeing to be a guest blogger, we are looking forward to your posts!

Ryan Duguid, Microsoft’s Senior Product Manager for ECM, was the guest speaker at our very successful webinar on “SharePoint 2010: What’s New for Email Management?” During the webinar we received several questions from attendees, some of which Ryan was able to answer live. However, a number of questions were answered by Ryan via email after the webinar and you can read those questions and answers below.

How do we educate users on what emails need to be declared as a record?

The decision about what email should be declared as a record varies from one organization to the next depending on specific internal requirements as well as industry and government regulations.  In general though, any email correspondence that is considered to be evidence of business activities and transactions would constitute a record.  Two of the most prominent definitions of what constitutes a record are:

ISO 15489 – “information created, received, and maintained as evidence and information by an organization or person, in pursuance of legal obligations or in the transaction of business”

International Council on Archives – “a recorded information produced or received in the initiation, conduct or completion of an institutional or individual activity and that comprises content, context and structure sufficient to provide evidence of the activity”

I’d also highly recommend reading and sharing the following document from ARMA:

http://www.arma.org/pdf/WhatIsRIM.pdf

Is there any way to force metadata entry without custom development?  For Document IDs, we require a sequential ID without the prefix requirement across the farm. Can this be accomplished using document ID provider customization?

Custom development is not required to force metadata entry.  All metadata attributes in SharePoint can be defined as required or optional.  If an attribute is defined as required, then a document cannot be checked-in without a value being provided for that attribute.

The Document ID provider is a pluggable model so you can define your own provider that generates sequential numbers.  The prefix is an optional component, defined at a Site Collection level, that allows you to ensure guaranteed uniqueness across Site Collections when using the out of the box Document ID provider. 

Can the same copy of a document be part of multiple document sets?

The Document Set is a physical storage structure and as such, a document can only reside in a single Document Set.  You can create pointers to a document that is stored in another Document Sets but there is no notion of a single document existing in multiple Document Sets.

How do we find the URL for a document ID? How do we save it, so we know what to search for in the future?

If you display the Document ID as a column in a library, the value is rendered as a hyperlink and the URL of the hyperlink specifies the document redirect service and the Document ID.  You can copy this URL by right clicking the hyperlink and selecting Copy Shortcut.

Can folders have an object ID?

Folders do not have a Document ID.

One functionality that I lack in the Content Organizer is dynamic rules/destinations. So for instance this scenario: Content Type: email, Cust No: xxx  Rule: route object of content type email to dynamic dest. Dest based on Cust. No. Can it be done OOB?

The Content Organizer has the ability to dynamically generate folders based on each unique value for a specific metadata attribute.  In your example, the Content Organizer would provision a folder for each unique value of Cust. No. under a root path that you specific.

The metadata driven navigation shows OOB all terms that are available in the term store. Is there a way to only display those terms that are used in the current library/list? Without filtering the metadata driven navigation gets impossible to navigate.

Metadata driven navigation is configured on a per library basis and for each library you need choose which Term Sets are available as navigators.  The choice of available Term Sets is based on the Term Sets used in the Document Library.  When configuring Managed Metadata columns on a Document Library, you need to select a specific node in the taxonomy hierarchy to bind to for tagging.  As a result, Metadata driven navigation does not show all available terms out of the box but rather it shows the specific nodes that have been chosen as key navigators.

Re: information management: how do you envision to update all the existing documents with the new policy rules and the retention periods. Is there going to be any mass migration tool?

SharePoint 2010 allows you to specify location based metadata default values and Information Management Policy.  This means that Document Libraries and folders can be used to drive policy rules and retention periods.  Any content that exists in a Document Library or folder will inherit the policy and retention period defined for the container and this will allow you to apply policy and retention periods to existing documents.  We have also worked with our colleagues in the Windows Server team to provide core capabilities that will migrate content from file servers to SharePoint, leveraging the content organizer to route content to the appropriate location within SharePoint, inheriting the policy and retention period on migration.  You can find more information at http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/ScriptCenter/en-us/f538c34c-4f74-4645-9649-fd25e49805d6.

In addition we have a range of partners that provide migration tools including Metalogix, AvePoint, Tzunami and Quest.  These partners support advanced migration scenarios from existing content repositories and allow you to manipulate information architecture, metadata and Content Type as part of content migration process.

Could this be used and what would be the best method of taking all incoming emails and send them to a document library inside individual project subsites? It would need to take an email associated with a project and automatically route it to the library?

My suggestion would be to define a term set in the Managed Metadata Service that defines each project (and potentially sub project).  I would then define routing rules in the Content Organizer that route content to specific Sites and Document Libraries based on the project name.  Once these rules are set up, you can have users tag email using Colligo with the appropriate project name and have the Content Organizer route the email to the appropriate location.

We’re looking for an effective work program – a documented/repeatable process to help organizations take advantage of the new capabilities or EX/SP 2010 to address messaging records mgmt best practices.  Where will I find that?

I would suggest leveraging the content on the following sites:

Enterprise Content Management Resource Center – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee263905.aspx

Records Management Resource Center – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ff598594.aspx

Exchange Server Tech Center – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd351165.aspx