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Clare This is a bit of an unfair assessment of SharePoint and it's deployment. I would argue strongly that deployment of SharePoint is a business decision, taken not because IT particularly want it or to specifically do RM type things but because it fills a perceived requirement in the business. May be it is put in place because it can do a lot of the so called Enterprise 2 functions. It can be a website, you can build Wikis and blogs it has a social networking element and you can do some elements of RM. It is not best of breed at any of these things but can do them all, sort of. I like SharePoint and am impressed by what it can do not what if fails to address properly. Good record keeping is essential for business but RM has never been a business driver the business has always driven the RM requirement. I suppose for a business the question do you want to buy a collaboration tool and a website tool and a separate RM tool pay for all the separate training and hope you can get them all working in harmony or would you like to buy a single tool from a supplier that your already have a relationship with and get all your training done in one go. Perhaps a relevant point here is that the providers of RM solutions do not provide the sort of environment that SharePoint provides. This means their products generally don't work in the same way, are not intuitive and don't do the other functions business wants. SharePoint may not be a perfect answer to our RM problems but it is a good tool answering more than RM issues. Chris From: The UK Records Management mailing list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Cowling Clare Sent: 04 August 2010 09:58 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: SharePoint Dear all, Have been following the discussion on MSS 2010 with interest (and thanks James for that excellent article). Now can we get down to the nitty griity? The facts are: * SharePoint is being sold as the solution to pretty much everything. Whether it does or doesn't do it all (and we know it doesn't) is irrelevant because... * Most SharePoint deployments are being driven by IT or devolved to individual departments. This means that depts have SharePoint thrown at them, are given a bit of tekkie training (if they are lucky) and are left to get on with it. * SharePoint will continue to be deployed in preference to other tools/systems because it's - ostensibly - cheap. In the current climate, that's what matters. * Most SharePoint administrators and probably 99% of users probably have little or no theoretical - or even practical - information and records management (IRM) training. * SharePoint doesn't have Outlook integration as standard. * SharePoint doesn't "do" records management, though as far as most organisations are concerned, what is does do is good enough and who really cares anyway? Having no RM has worked a treat with email and shared network drives, hasn't it? Why change the habits of a lifetime? My questions are: * What are we IRMs doing about it? We constantly hear that good governance is essential when SharePoint is deployed (well, of course), but where is the specific guidance for our organisations? Are we actually saying that each deployment has to wait until we have gotten around to creating a (sort of) file plan/filing structure, metadata rules, disposal rules etc for everything in each site/sub-site - documents, blogs, discussion boards etc? Ye gods. I suppose that there may be organisations with umpteen records managers employed full-time to do this work up front... * Because SharePoint deployment is usually an IT project none of the above will happen until after the fact, if at all (I'm sure there are some wonderful exceptions and if so please share your achievements!). How do we deal with this issue? My suggestions are: * Organisations are in dire need of practical guidance on what to do eg some basic down to earth advice on best practice re document libraries (how many of you have noticed sites where all documents, irrespective of what they are about, are just bunged under "Shared documents"?), what sort of metadata to include and why, how and why to mandate best practice eg by enabling version control, why it's crucial to monitor access permissions, have disposal rules...etc etc. * We could simply circulate guidance already in place ie the usual best practice bumph about managing permissions, managing folders, document naming conventions, security classifications, version control, disposal schedules etc and say that they apply equally to SharePoint or * We could create some SharePoint specific best practice guidance which users understand (eg why - as well as how - we need to have proper control and monitoring and someone managing the site who actually knows a bit about IRM, rules about how we name and version control documents, where we store them within the site - those document libraries again - whether we need to define content types - do we? - how long we keep them, essential metadata, should we "archive" documents, should we have records centres or manage in place etc). This kind of guidance needs to encompass both MOSS 2007 and MSS 2010 and, as James has pointed out so clearly, that means non-system specific guidance on how to manage documents as records, whether or not to use folder structures etc. All very confusing and if I'm confused, what about the poor user/administrator? * I lean to the second option because many of us have already had to produce best practice guidance on managing mailboxes and shared network drives in situ, so it seems logical to have some specifically for SharePoint. I'm trying to write some but as I'm a total novice regarding SharePoint I'm quite frankly stuck. My plea to the group is: * Would anyone who has already done this be willing to share with the rest of us to stop the dreaded re-invention of the wheel? Help.... Clare p.s. The points/thoughts/questions above are based entirely on reading articles and on discussions with IRMs and SharePoint users in other organisations, not on where I work. 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