A fruit seller at the local market had “Best Quality” red apples for sale on one side of her stand at $3.50 and others marked “Great value” for $2.50 on the other side. A friend asks her – what’s the difference between the apples. Her answer – just the price and what the buyer perceives… Sticker price is not always a good proxy for value. 

Information Leadership does a lot of EDRMS make-overs and reviews as well as fully blown EDRMS implementations in SharePoint. We’ve found the “red apple” dilemma applies to selecting EDRMS recordkeeping functionality. That is the functionality and usefulness of different systems often has little to do with price.

This has led many implementations into “having” a records management engine but not necessarily “doing” or getting value from their records management tool. Through our experiences, there are nine must haves for doing records management in modern systems.  Some are obvious and relate directly to core records management practices like disposal while others make records management far more effective and more relevant to the organisation.

Here is our checklist…

1 Metadata Driven R&D Rules

“Win-win for users and record keepers”              

Allows the establishment & execution of a wide range of recordkeeping rules driven by metadata, not just record location. This allows global rules to be set up (e.g. how contracts are managed, no matter where they sit in the business classification and file structure). It also allows for multiple rules acting on a file location (e.g. document library).

How useful? It creates a win-win for users and record keepers, as the location can be designed for users first. This makes it easier for them to file and find, so adoption is high.

Record keepers are happy because their rules separate out the different record types in this location.

2 Case file R&D

“Local empowerment saves record keepers time”          

Working with iWorkplace Smart Folders, allows local admin people in teams to elegantly close case files and in doing so, records are moved to libraries that have retention & disposal rules. They do this by just updating a master case file list with the new status of the case file (e.g. closed, finished, sold, person has left).

How useful? This deals with the difficult and time consuming task record keepers have of triggering R&D at a time not known when the records were created (e.g. about an asset - you won’t know when they are to be sold or decommissioned at the time that the records are created). Without this, they need to find the records at the time when the case file is closed and kick off the R&D process.

3 Manual Appraisal and easy system wide analysis

“Efficiently deal with huge volumes of records”

Easy to look at records grouped, sorted by metadata and not just libraries (where they reside), sites or site collections. Lets you globally identify problems and inconsistencies. The action tools then allow you to make changes immediately in bulk, with a record of this in the transaction log, with your narrative on the problem and your fix.

It is also easy to give the records in question a batch number, export a summary of the records to a pdf or spreadsheet. This can then be used to gain manager approval to take action. Once this is sought then the records can be called up by batch number and action taken.

How is this useful? Better insights and action, takes less time to understand your content, pick up problems early, deal with bulk record changes including metadata update and moving records due to organisational and other changes. Brings manager approval into the R&D process elegantly at a batch level.

4 Information Governance

“Actively manage & monitor library integrity”    

Easily see and create reports library (called file locations in some systems) creation and areas no longer being used.  Identify ad hoc set-up of libraries or metadata problems as they happen, then use the action tools to fix them or move content in bulk. See the big picture and be able to move content and update metadata in bulk.

How useful? Gives you the tools to easily and actively understand and manage your content. This is particular useful in systems like SharePoint, where information is containerised and therefore hard to analyse across what might be thousands of locations.

5 Adoption Reporting

“Immediate & flexible to pinpoint problems early”          

Allows you to measure the health of your deployment and to see what potential problems are developing, without having to get technical people involved in creating the reports.

Quickly set up reports yourself to show what documents, photos, emails etc. individual users are adding to the system.  Place these reports on your dashboard for quick access.

How useful? The immediacy and ease of this means that it’s like driving a car – you get feedback on your speed immediately so you can do something about it, not in a report several weeks later, when it’s too late and less relevant.

This means that if you are meeting a team or individuals you can pull up live reports on what content (e.g. documents, paper records, email, photos) is being created by whom for this week, is the metadata being entered correctly and are the records in the right place.

Often adoption problems have legitimate underlying causes (lack of training, technical glitch, unclear where to put a record in the business classification). By getting immediate intel, you can work with the users to address the underlying problems and raise adoption and their satisfaction.

6 Report on R & D

“Efficiently structure your R&D flow of work”    

Flexible and targeted reporting on R & D actions that have happened or are due to happen. Group, sort, filter content across the entire system and export to spreadsheets, pdf and data formats as needed.

How useful? You have control.  You can set-up reports and add them to your dashboard without relying on technical support or a vendor to help. 

7 Bulk global actions

“Immediate & flexible to pinpoint problems early”          

Through automated rules or manual appraisal, easily make bulk changes to records (including updating metadata, moving or copying content, removing previous versions and creating authoritative versions). All recorded in the transaction log.

How useful? Allows you to see how content is organised and to address any metadata discrepancies. Highly useful for migration from file shares or legacy EDRMS where you want to do more than just dump content into your system, or when there has been a significant organisational change.

8 Global Workflow & auto-classification

“simplify the flow of work”         

Create automated rules that will take actions on records. For instance:

• Inwards mail or jobs can be routed to different teams, via a status field. When the status is “Operations”, the records can be moved to the Operations file locations

• Update metadata based on known file information. For instance if the filename contains the word “report” then set the Document Type to equal REPORT

• Combinations, where users can use shortcuts (e.g. in the field) to set metadata or take action. For instance, if the filename contains FINAL then lock the document down. If it contains #234, then set the job number metadata to 234

How useful? Simplifies the flow of work and reduces the need for manual action by users or record keepers, or complex and widely distributed workflow.

9 Manage file sizes and versions

“Save on storage costs”

Find content by file size and version number, by configuring the reports yourself. Splice and dice the results and export if needed, or place on your dashboard.  Set up one off and automated rules to remove unneeded content, or versions, or move content to another lower cost repository such as a locked file share, leaving a link & the metadata in the system, so it can still be found and managed.

How useful? Save on storage costs, reduce clutter

Grant Margison  co-founded Information Leadership with Sarah Heal in 2004. He started their digital workplace focused SharePoint practice in 2007 and continues to drive its direction and innovation. Grant has an engineering science degree and diploma in business.