I recently had the opportunity to work on a project where we implemented a Records Management solution using SharePoint 2010.
The high level project requirements were as follows:
1.Enable users to easily send documents from Team sites to a central Records Vault site.
2.Provide an approval process that would enable documents sent to the central Records Vault site, to be reviewed by designated Approvers, before the document is declared as a record.
3.Prevent document from being edited or deleted after it has been declared as a record.
4.Apply different retention policies based on the document type.
Part 1 of this blog will provide details on the following:
1.Configuration of retention stages (for records) in the Content Type’s Information management policy and Content Type Syndication
2.Configuration of Records Center/Content Organizer rules.
3.Configuration of Send To connection.
Part 2 of this blog will provide details on the following:
1.Approval process.
2.Issues encountered and workarounds.
Solution
Configuration of retention stages (for records) in the Content Type’s Information management policy and Content Type Syndication
A SharePoint site based on the “Team Site” template was created. Site columns were created and they were added to Site content types. The Site content types were based on a Content type that inherited from the Document Content type. Information management policies were added to the Site content types.A retention stage was applied to records. Figure 1 below shows the Information Management policy attached to a content type.
Figure 1
In the retention stage shown in Figure 2 below, a SharePoint Designer workflow is started when the Time Period (i.e. End Date + 6 years) has reached. End Date is a Site column that is attached to the Site content type. The workflow starts an approval process.
Figure 2
Additional Actions that are available in the retention stage are shown in Figure 3 below:
Figure 3
Content Type Syndication is a new feature (part of the Managed Metadata Service) in SharePoint 2010 that enables you to publish content types created in a source site (Content Type hub) to multiple site collections (subscribers). The steps to configure Content Type Syndication are shown below:
·In Central Admin site, click on “Application Management.”
·Under “Service Applications” click on “Manage Service Applications.”
·Highlight “Managed Metadata Service” and click on “Properties” option in the ribbon.
Enter the URL of the Content Type hub site. See Figure 4 below.
Figure 4
Figure 5
After the above Content Type Syndication configuration, the Content Types created in the Content Type hub were published to other site collections. Figure 6 below shows the screen that enables publishing of a Content Type.
Figure 6
This screen is accessed by clicking on the Content Type >> click on “Manage publishing for this content type” link under “Settings.” The publishing is handled by the following timer jobs in the Central Administration site. Click on the “Run Now” button in the jobs below to publish/subscribe the Content Types immediately.
·Content Type Hub
·Content Type Subscriber
Figure 7
Listed below are some things to note about Records Center site related settings:
- Block Delete is set by default. See Figure 8 below. I changed it to Block Edit and Deleteas one of the requirements was to prevent the document from edited or deleted after it has been declared as a record. This setting can be accessed by clicking on Site Actions >> Site Settings >> Record Declaration Setting under Site Collection Administration section.
Figure 8
- Content Organizer feature is enabled by default. See Figure 9below. The Content Organizer feature is a new routing feature that routes documents submitted to the Records Center to the appropriate document library.
Figure 9
By default, documents sent to the Records Center are stored in the Drop Off Library. You can create Content Organizer rules to automatically route documents to appropriate document libraries in the Records Center site. Figure 10 below is a Content Organizer rule that routes a document, that was submitted to the Records Center, whose Content Type is Finance, to the Finance document library.
NOTE: The Finance Content Type must be added to BOTH the Drop Off Library and the Finance document library for the Content Organizer rule to work.
Figure 10
- Configured the Content Organizer Settings to notify Rule Managers when documents submitted to the Records Vault site do not match any of the Content Organizer rules. You can enter groups or users here. See Figure 11below. Documents that do not match any Content Organizer rules remain in the Drop Off Library. The Rule Managers will receive an e-mail with links to these documents. They can then assign the proper Content Type to the document, fill out the required properties, and the document will then be routed to the appropriate document library.
Figure 11
Configuration of Send To connection
The Send To connection is configured in the Central Administration site. See Figure 12 below. This screen can be accessed in the Central Administration site by clicking on “General Application Settings >> External Service Connections >> Configure send to connections.” The Web Application where this connection should be available is selected in this screen. In addition, the display name of the connection and the action are selected in this screen. Note the 3 Send To actions (Copy, Move, Move and Leave a link) that are available. I chose “Copy” action, as the requirement was to leave a copy of the document in the team site.
Figure 12
Users could then submit documents from a Team site to the Records Vault site by clicking on the Send To menu as shown in Figure 13 below.
Figure 13
The following message is displayed indicating that the document will be copied to the Records Vault site:
After the OK button is clicked, the document is copied over and the following message is displayed:
This concludes Part 1 of this blog. In Part 2, I will provide details on the approval process, the issues that I encountered, and the workarounds that were implemented.
