Records Management is about managing information at the "Collection Set". In a genuine EDRMS, the Collection Set is the Container (File/Folder) that information such as emails and documents are placed within.

In Australian Government and Regulated Industries, information is managed by Subject. This is achieved by Containers using structured titling, with the Subject being Function - Activity - Descriptor.

Function and Activity are selected from the Classification (the structured titling component) and the Descriptor is the free text titling component which specifies exactly what each Container is for. This gives structure and context to the information placed in these Containers and makes it easy to find relevant Containers.

What you don't do in Records Management is attempt to manage at the Document Level. Everyone who knows Records Management knows that you'll go nuts trying to manage at the Document Level. That's why Records Management was invented, to make management of potentially millions of documents possible.

Things like Security and Retention and Disposal are managed at the Container Level, which makes sense as Retention Schedules are Subject-based. That means you don’t need to concern yourself over what's in the Container (all the documents and emails) as the Structured Titling (Subject-based) accommodates all management needs.

Microsoft Purview has no structure or Context and applies Retention Labels to individual documents and emails after analysing their content. There is no "Collection Set" for management purposes.

You are left with information contained within SharePoint folders with a Retention Label applied at the document level. This means documents within common folders can all have different Retention Periods, then Purview starts deleting them at the different times.

This is not Records Management, it is violating Records Management, as bits of information from folders start disappearing over time. It simply adds to the Information Chaos that SharePoint creates in the first instance.

Microsoft technologies operate on an object-centric model, where each individual item (document, email, etc.) stands alone with its own metadata. These objects share information through permission settings and interrogation, but lack centralized management at the container level.

In contrast, records management uses a metadata-centric approach built on relational database principles. This system focuses on the record itself - not the physical object. A single record may contain multiple objects, just one object, or no objects at all, as the relationship between records and objects is flexible.

The key difference: Microsoft's approach centres on individual objects, while records management prioritizes the information relationships between items regardless of their electronic form. If you delete the object in an object-centric model, you are left with nothing, no metadata to know if you ever had it in the first place.

Microsoft Purview does not do Records Management, it does Document Management, and the way it does it violates the very principles of Records Management.

Scott Brown is Information and Records Specialist at Safe Work Australia.