Records Center Illustrated Primer - Part III
Now for our final step - to test and enjoy the fruits of our labor. The whole idea is that users can create Analysis Documents anywhere they need to, and not have to know about records management/retention/etc. All they do is send their Analysis Documents to the Records Center, and Records Center will look at the Content Type, determine the Records Routing based on it, and file the document in the correct Document Library in Records Center. From there the Policy we set up will manage the document lifecycle in the Document Library in Records Center, without any user intervention (and with complete auditing/logging to prove we've done what we said we were going to). This makes compliance efforts a lot easier to manage.
In a Document Library in your SharePoint site (you can create a new one or use an existing one), we'll need to configure it to allow our new Content Type of Analysis Document. Open the Settings on your Document Library...
And choose the Advanced Settings link
Check the radio button for "Allow management of content types"
Click the link for "Add from existing site content types"
And add your newly-created Content Type (and any others you want to allow in this Document Library) and click OK.
We're also going to re-order the menu under "New" in this Document Library in order to default to "Analysis Document" first. The link to do this is at the bottom of the Content Types section:
You can also look at the superset of columns for all Content Types allowed in this Document Library:
Now if we select "New" from our Document Library, we can create an Analysis Document
...but not if you are on Office 2003. Since we created that "Origin" column of metadata that is required, and Office 2003 can't provide it to us, you'll get an error message that tells you to use "Upload Document" instead. During the upload in the browser, SharePoint will prompt you for the Origin, and that metadata will accompany your document into the library.
However if you have Office 2007, Word will open and auto-magically gather the required columns right then and there. Pretty slick, and a good reason to upgrade to Office 2007! The combination of Office 2007 and MOSS is greater than the sum of its parts...
Once you have created your new Analysis Document, you can use the "Send To" in MOSS to send this document to your Record Center
You will get a confirmation dialog letting you know your document is now in the Record Center
If we now switch over to our Record Center we can see that a new folder has been created under our Analysis Documents Document Library. The naming convention for the folder is year, month, day, and time of creation with GMT offset.
Clicking on this folder, we can see that our document has been replicated inside it. Even if the original document library now deletes this document, the copy in Record Center will remain and be managed by our Policy.
I hope you've enjoyed this series, and please feel free to contact us for help with your SharePoint projects! Email us at info at syrinx dot com, or call us toll-free at 888-579-7469, option 1 on the IVR menu (888-5-SYRINX on your phone).