Records Management

Every organization, whether privately held, publicly traded, or not-for-profit, needs a disciplined approach to record keeping. Proper records management is vital to an organization’s knowledge management, legal defense, and regulatory compliance. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 introduces features for creating and supporting formal records management capabilities in your organization

Records management is the process of collecting, managing, and disposing of corporate records (information deemed important for the history, knowledge, or legal defense of a company) in a consistent and uniform manner based on the company's policies. These policies are shaped by the work of the organization, its legal risks, and the laws and regulations that govern it.

The following table describes these features for records management.

New or Enhanced Feature	Description
Policy and Auditing (new) On MSDN	Includes the following: Content-type and policy-based document retention and expiration schedules Auditing and reporting of policy-based actions Support for labeling and bar coding without physical document modifications Integration with Microsoft Windows Rights Management Services (RMS)
Records Repository (new) On MSDN	Core of the records management implementation. A stable, scalable, and efficient repository built on Windows SharePoint Services, which offers: A specialized Records Repository site template A records vault with capabilities that help ensure integrity of the files stored in the repository Information management policies that consistently and uniformly enforce the labeling, auditing, and expiration of records Hold capabilities that enable the application of one or more "holds" that suspend the records management policies on items to help ensure that they remain unchanged during litigation, audits, or other investigations Records Collection Interface that eases submission of content to a records repository by people and automated systems; supports "write only" access without requiring direct access to the records in the repository Record routing for automated routing of content to its proper location within the records management system, based on content type Extensibility for solutions that need additional capabilities beyond those in Office SharePoint Server 2007
Search and Process (new) On MSDN	Performs search query, and then performs a specific, custom action upon each list item returned by the query. For example, you can identify a set of documents, based on specific document metadata, and then move the set into a records repository. Can also specify a list of people who are sent an e-mail message with the results of the search and process operation.

See Also

Concepts

Guide to SharePoint Server Features