If you want to manage your organization’s documents and records successfully – from cradle to grave – I would encourage you consider implementing an enterprise Information Lifecycle Model.  Of all the philosophies and theories about information management I’ve heard, ILM is by far the one that seems the most logical and, based on my experience, the most effective.  And this is particularly true with SharePoint deployments. 

If ILM is new to you, let me try to explain the concept without getting too bogged down in the details.  Essentially, an ILM is a succession of conditions through which information is processed, from creation (or receipt) to final disposition.  These conditions are called ‘states’.  When a document moves from one state to another, one or more processes occur depending on the particular needs of the organization. 

Each organization must determine what different states its information passes through, but a typical lifecycle may look like this:

 Temporary  >  Draft  >  Final

In this example, when a user opens a document, it would be considered ‘Temporary’.  Over time, the user would make several modifications or, possibly, several users would work collaboratively on the document.  Eventually, the document would move from Temporary to a ‘Draft’ state.  (In SharePoint this would likely be done by changing the value of one of the columns in the document’s content type.) 

Changing the state to draft would fire off a couple of processes depending on the organization’s requirements.  One of those processes could be routing the document to someone for approval as well as sending the approver an email notice that informs him that he has an approval task to process. 

Once the approver OK’s the draft, the document owner can move the state to ‘Final’.  This new state would also cause processes to kick off.  For instance, the document could be published to a portal or emailed to a partner.  And the organization may have a requirement to declare the final document a record, so a process would fire that automatically sends a copy to the Records Center.  The point to keep in mind here is that all of these processes were initiated in a way that was completely transparent to the information worker who created the document, so we have the potential to significantly lower the burden on the end user, but still consistently enforce the organization’s policies and standards.

We just want to take a quick moment to pat ourselves on the back.  The SharePoint Records Management blog just passed its first birthday.  That means for over a hundredth of a century we have provided a ridiculous amount of information about an extremely narrow subject to a very limited number of people.  We couldn’t have done it without you, our loyal readers.  We’d like to personally thank you both.

If your organization is considering implementing a SharePoint records management solution there are two important solution design concepts that you should be familiar with.  (OK, I know you are all Records Managers and not information technology propeller-heads, but trust me, you want to at least be familiar with these concepts.)  

 The first concept is the Information Lifecycle Model.  Most of you have probably heard this term in one form or another, but the key here is understanding how best to apply it throughout the enterprise from within a SharePoint framework.  I will address the Information Lifecycle Model in my next post.

 The second concept is the use of Master sites and automated site provisioning.  Master sites and automated site provisioning will both help you govern your SharePoint implementation and allow you to effectively manage the information lifecycle of your documents and records. 

 A master site is just what it sounds like: a central location for all your organization’s standard Content Types, metadata and Information Management Policies.  They enable the design and retention of content to be defined in a single place. 

 Automated site provisioning allows an organization to quickly and easily commission standard SharePoint sites across an organization.  With automated site provisioning your organization can apply such things as standard taxonomy elements, information lifecycles, search, and security settings in exactly the same manner in every site you create.  This allows you to enforce site standards while still allowing your users the flexibility to customize SharePoint for their own purposes.

 If you are in the process of designing your SharePoint architecture or even if your organization already has SharePoint implemented, I would encourage you to investigate Master Sites and automated site provisioning and discuss developing them with your solution deployment team.  As a Records Manager, it could be one of the best strategic decisions you ever make.

For all of you planning to attend ARMA 09 in sunny Orlando this October, I want you to know that I will be facilitating an education session on SharePoint Records Management.  The session is called ‘Essentials of SharePoint Records Management’ and is scheduled for Friday, 10/16 at 10AM.  My co-facilitator will be Trisha Bush, Group Product Manager for Microsoft SharePoint Enterprise Business.

As the name implies, I will go through some basic SharePoint Records Management concepts and demonstrate a few fundemental records management features, such as Content Types and Information Management Policy.  Because Microsoft’s SharePoint Conference is scheduled for the week immediately after ARMA 09 and Microsoft plans to announce all the new SharePoint 2010 records management functionality at the conference, I will be demonstrating records management features from MOSS 07.  However, Tricia will be speaking about some of the things we can expect in SharePoint 2010 and she and I will both be available to answer questions at the end of our presentation.

If you’re going to be at ARMA, please try to stop by and attend our session.  Also, feel free to come up and introduce yourself after we talk, I always enjoy personally meeting anyone who reads this blog.

Microsoft released some information about SharePoint 2010 yesterday and I wanted to make sure it didn’t slip by any of you who may be interested in it. 

SharePoint 2010 development has hit a milestone.  They have reached the technical preview engineering stage.  This means they are going to allow a limited number of people access to preview what’s inside SharePoint 2010.  Clear progress. 

It’s going to be tough to get an invitation to the preview though, so the rest of us will have to wait for the SharePoint 09 Conference in October when they plan to make public all the new additions and feature upgrades in SharePoint 2010. 

In the meantime, Microsoft has made this sneak peek available on their new SharePoint 2010 landing page.  There aren’t a lot of details there and they don’t mention SharePoint Records Management specifically, but some of the videos are fairly informative.  They also have an FAQ and a guide to preparing for SharePoint 2010 that are worth looking over.