Understand Records Management in SharePoint

Records management involves tracking and organizing the critical files and information generated by an organization throughout the life of the items, from the time they are created to the time they are purged. Not all files are considered records. A record is a piece of information that is required to be held as evidence for a legal, regulatory, or essential business need. Some examples of records are as follows:

• Signed contracts are legal documents that are usually treated as records.
• Documents reviewed, approved, and signed by a specific person may be essential to keep.
• A calendar appointment or a task might be needed to prove that an organization was meeting a regulatory demand.

While much of records management focuses on retaining information to ensure it is not deleted inadvertently (or on purpose to dispose of evidence), an equally important function of records management is to ensure that records are reviewed and deleted when they are no longer needed. In some scenarios, companies are legally required to dispose of information that they no longer have a right to hold after a period of time, and they can be penalized for keeping the information. In other cases the penalty for keeping records too long may be more subtle: Information held longer than legally required might be used against a company in legal proceedings.

Where does SharePoint come in? In a Wise Technology Management study published in 2010, researchers analyzed SharePoint 2010 against the Australian records management standards as embodied in the International Council on Archives’ Principles and Functional Requirements for Records in Electronic Office Environments – Module 2. They found that SharePoint 2010 could meet 88 percent of the functional requirements of records management through built-in functionality and careful configuration. The remaining 12 percent of functional requirements could be met through custom software or third-party software. While this whitepaper was only intended to measure SharePoint 2010 against a single set of standards, the findings give a general idea of the level of compliance most organizations can expect to achieve with SharePoint 2010.