Designating and Managing Your Records
Records management often seems to be a driver behind an enterprise content management initiative, usually one driven by an organization that requires a formal records repository for archival or regulatory purposes, or both. The challenge then is that records management occurs late in the content’s life cycle, requiring the larger scope of enterprise content management to plan the earlier aspects of the content life cycle and lead into an effective records management solution. I saved this part of the book until last so that you can leverage the analysis and design work you did in the earlier stages of your enterprise content management solution, building on that knowledge and filling in the details for how to preserve your records.
The chapters in this part look at how to manage official records as I guide you through how to design and implement a records management solution. I start with an overview of file plans and then I look at how to design one for your organization, which designs the content classification index for content within a records management repository. From there, I discuss how you can implement a records repository in Microsoft SharePoint 2013, and how you can manage content retention and disposition through policies and workflows in your records repository. Finally, I provide some considerations for how to integrate with other records repositories as part of your records management solution.
As you consider your records management needs, remember that records preserve an evidentiary account of a transaction, decision, or historical reference, maintaining which should provide some future value or meet some future retention requirement. This perspective will help guide your design decisions, from what type of retention policies to apply, to how to store the content. You organize and associate your retention policies and storage design through a content classification scheme, the most notable of which is your file plan, which is where I start.