Chapter 12. Building Records Management Solutions

By John Holliday

Records management is all about compliance. With the recent increase in legislation surrounding the management of corporate records, companies are faced with the prospect of paying significant fines and other costs associated with keeping accurate records, safeguarding them, and making them available at any time for outside auditors. This dynamic regulatory landscape creates many challenges for managing information effectively. The fundamental question is how to adhere to the new regulatory requirements without interfering with worker productivity. How can companies ensure that compliance, while minimizing the additional costs associated with implementing a given information management policy?

Office SharePoint Server 2007 addresses this requirement in three ways. First, it provides a special site template for creating a records repository with built-in support for storing and managing official documents. Second, it exposes a rich object model designed specifically for records management. Finally, it defines and implements a web service that enables both SharePoint and non-SharePoint applications to interact with records repository sites. This chapter shows you how to work with the records management components to build custom solutions that take advantage of this open architecture.