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Physical Records Management in the 2007 Office system

  • Article

So far in this blog, we’ve talked directly about electronic records – the files created in document authoring applications, e-mail systems, etc.

But few records managers out there (if any) have the luxury of dealing solely with electronic records… for most organizations records will continue to come in both electronic and physical form for a long time. And even the “physical” category is fairly broad – depending on your organizations needs, you may need to preserve printed documents as records (especially if they’ve been hand-signed) or physical objects. (For example, Microsoft’s hardware team that produces our keyboards & mice need to retain our device prototypes as records!)

Some aspects of a records management program may be different for electronic & physical records -- for example, the storage of physical records is a very different challenge than electronic storage. (Especially from a cost-per-record standpoint; physical record storage costs don’t follow Moore’s law ;-) ). But from the underlying business/legal/regulatory requirements for records retention are independent of record format – whether it’s a Word document, an e-mail, or a piece of paper, it’s the content of the record that determines its retention schedule.

For that reason, it would be ideal for most organizations to have a records management application that can support both their physical and electronic RM needs – so that they don’t need to configure, manage, and maintain file plans in two separate systems. Fortunately, the 2007 release of Office SharePoint Server supports the management of both physical and electronic records.

Physical Records – just another type of “item”

The reason we haven’t labeled this post as a new “records management feature” is that in the 2007 release, we don’t think of physical records as being separate from the concepts we’ve already described. Rather, we took great care in making sure that as we created records management features like Information Management Policies, Expiration, Barcodes, etc., that all of those features can enable physical RM.

The core concept behind physical RM in the 2007 release is that SharePoint supports the management of not only “Documents” (electronic files, like the kinds authored by the Microsoft Office client applications), but also generic “items” (objects that don’t necessarily have an electronic file).

“Items” can be customized using Content Types to add metadata schema appropriate to representing physical records – for example information about the location of the physical object represented by the item, a description to enable searching, identifiers to relate sucessive "parts" of a collection of records, etc. Items can also optionally include attachments (electronic files relevant to the item) -- e.g. a scanned image of a physical document, for online browsing.

Workflows can be written to target non-document “items” – for physical records this would enable organizations to define appropriate human-centric workflows for transferring records, sending them to a custodian temporarily for review, etc.

And information management policies can also be applied to “items”, just like for electronic records. The barcodes automatically assigned by the barcode policy can be printed out on sticky labels & affixed to the physical records to facilitate retrieving the corresponding “item” using a barcode scanning device. Expiration policies can be configured to trigger a workflow as the disposition action for physical records, and that workflow can drive the appropriate process for the physical object.

So in short, the tools to enable an organization to manage physical records alongside their electronic records are available in the 2007 release of the Office system. In fact, Microsoft’s internal records management department (our first and best customer) is in the process of migrating their physical records management program onto Office SharePoint Server 2007!

Where partners add value

While it’s true that the 2007 release enables physical records management, it’s also fair to say that many organizations will want additional solutions/customizations beyond what we include “in the box”. As mentioned above (and in some earlier comments on the blog), there are several capabilities particular to managing physical records, including:

  • Imaging solutions that integrate with scanner/copier/printer hardware to automate the ingestion & capture of physical records.
  • Space/warehouse management solutions to handle allocating shelf space in physical storage sites.
  • Integration with off-site record storage providers.

We’re absolutely aware of the value of these types of additional solutions for physical records management -- and we’re actively working with our community of software, hardware, and service providers to help them extend their solutions onto the 2007 Office system. While I won’t name any individual partners/solutions in this post, stay tuned for more details on that subject soon on this blog.

Thanks for reading!

- Ethan Gur-esh, Program Manager.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    October 05, 2006
    I have read what the Blog says about content types & what you are saying about being able to create new content types with unique metadata fields to represent physical records. I am wondering though whether this is quite the same as customisable object types, by which I would include Folder entities.  Are content types confined to representing unique document/record entities (e.g. Content type for a photograph, a contract etc) or does the functionality also embrace the ability to create unique Folder enties with customisable & unique metadata fields which could then 'hold' document/record entity content types. While their is value in being able to search/manage by document/record type it is the broader contextual layer (where various content types might lie side by side as they all relate to the same issue,project, request etc.) that is perhaps most useful for record management.   Cheers

  • Anonymous
    October 05, 2006
    Hi, you mentioned that the barcodes on physical items could be scanned by a scanning device. Would there be come kind of connection OOB for MOSS2007 that will support a specific scanning device? For example if I were to scan a physical item with the scanner, will the compatible device bring up a sharepoint record/list/column or what have you? If so, is there a specific scanning device that you recommend? Thanks!

  • Anonymous
    October 24, 2006
    Hi It is great that it can now autogenerate bar codes. This is a nifty feature and would be useful to track phisical files. You mentioned that "..The barcodes automatically assigned by the barcode policy can be printed out on sticky labels & affixed to the physical records.." How can I print out the barcode? When I go to the property page, i can see the barcode along with all the other document properties. But there is not option for me to 'print the barcode'. Appreciate your advise.

  • Anonymous
    October 30, 2006
    @ ling: There isn’t “print” functionality in Office SharePoint Server 2007 for barcode printing. To print out the barcodes for items, you can copy & paste the barcode images into applications like Microsoft Office Word, which provides specific capabilities around printing onto sticky labels. (For example, ensuring that the barcodes are positioned appropriately on printed pages for labels of various sizes.) To use label printing in Word 2007, click on the “Mailings” ribbon, and then the “Labels” button, and then specify the label type/size that you’d like to use. Hope this helps,

  • Ethan Gur-esh, Program Manager.
  • Anonymous
    February 11, 2007
    If barcodes cannot be guaranteed to be unique they have little value. Try copy-paste a document - the new document will have the same barcode as the old!