Does SharePoint Manage Records?

Digital records management seemed fictional for most organizations even as late as 2013.  Joe Shepley of Doculabs threw out the challenge that no one was really doing it right, “The problem is bigger than SharePoint – Now before I get accused of bashing SharePoint here, let me let you all in on a dirty little secret: 99% of organizations are not doing automated records management on an enterprise scale. And this is true whether they have SharePoint, IBM FileNet/P8/CMOD, EMC Documentum, OpenText, Hyland OnBase—whatever. In the end, it doesn’t matter: for a whole host of reasons, some of them technical, some of them organizational, so few folks are actually doing automated records management that we could accurately say that no one is.” (link).

But in 2014 maybe we’re poised to get a little more mature.  Bruce Miller of RIMtech realistically points out, “SharePoint does indeed manage records, but not to the level needed by most organizations with a formal recordkeeping program. I estimate SharePoint delivers 72 out of a needed 105 capabilities. You can find out how we arrived at these numbers here. There are three main areas of structural deficiency that must be overcome” (link).

Don Leuders’ of Harborpoint Information Management has been blogging on SharePoint and RM since 2008.  That’s 56 years in ‘computer years’!  In the fall of 2013 he highlighted how Microsoft eats their own RM dog food (link).  This year he’s actually got his eye on the clouds… “So where Office 365 was lacking robust records management functionality at the time of its 2011 introduction, it is now delivering the latest Microsoft technology, with SharePoint on premise falling behind. Code for the Compliance Center had just been tested shortly before SPC14 and will be shipping – added to the Office 365 environment automatically – in a couple of months.” (link).

If you like videos then this link’s for you!  It’s worth it just to hear the “Austrine” for metadata http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/Australia/2013/APT005 

This year the offerings for RM are getting even larger.  Jayson Kennedy of Collabware has a great recent post outlining your RM choices in SharePoint.  Here’s a teaser, “So here we are, stuck between the desire to keep records in a superior way, and the desire to create a user-friendly system to increase buy-in and record capture. An efficient, well-organized system will fail if its users refuse to accept it, but adding too much weight to the needs of the users can result in poor records management.” (link).  I recommend you click that link to see his big reveal.

The main thing to remember is whatever technology you have, you should try to manage your data, documents and records as best you can.  That’s what “the reasonable person” would do.