{"id":2050,"date":"2012-02-05T06:50:03","date_gmt":"2012-02-05T06:50:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/poiseddevelopers.com\/reality-tech\/?p=2050"},"modified":"2024-05-06T12:21:17","modified_gmt":"2024-05-06T12:21:17","slug":"records-management-with-sharepoint-information-architecture-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/poiseddevelopers.com\/reality-tech\/records-management-with-sharepoint-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Records Management with SharePoint \u2013 Information Architecture: part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There is a good deal of groundwork required to fully implement Records Management in SharePoint.\u00a0 The foundation is the overall Information Architecture.\u00a0 SharePoint 2010 provides a range of capabilities and is very flexible.\u00a0 With this flexibility comes choices.\u00a0 Some of these decisions affect the manageability and extensibility and usability of SharePoint, so we want to plan carefully.\u00a0 Below are the primary facets of a SharePoint Information Architecture:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Hierarchy<\/strong><br role=\"presentation\" data-uw-rm-sr=\"\" \/>This includes Web Applications, the breakdown of Site Collections, the Site Hierarchy, and associated Document Libraries.\u00a0 Separate Site Collections that ride along managed paths allow a logical and granular division between content databases, allowing near endless scalability.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Navigation<\/strong><br role=\"presentation\" data-uw-rm-sr=\"\" \/>A good portion of navigation flows out of the decisions on Hierarchy combined with selection and standardization of navigation elements including tables of contents, left hand navigation, horizontal top level\u00a0global navigation, breadcrumbs, and optionally additional techniques such as MegaMenus.\u00a0 Best practice dictates security trimmed navigation, so users are only presented with navigation elements to which they have some level of access.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Security<br role=\"presentation\" data-uw-rm-sr=\"\" \/><\/strong>Best practice guides to the use of permissions inheritance wherever possible.\u00a0 This will make administration as easy as possible.\u00a0 If security is granted broadly at the top, and more restrictive as one descends the hierarchy, the user will have the best possible experience. This is because subsites will be reachable naturally via navigation, reducing the incidence of pockets and islands that can only be reached via manual bookmarks and links.\u00a0 Leveraging AD and\/or SharePoint groups further minimizes security overhead.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Metadata<br role=\"presentation\" data-uw-rm-sr=\"\" \/><\/strong>This is the heart of the Information Architecture, and the primary focus of this article.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Metadata can be assigned to individual documents and allocated within individual document libraries, however for a true enterprise-class Information Architecture, this needs to be viewed holistically from top down.\u00a0 To achieve this, the following should be viewed as best practices:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Leverage Content Types<\/strong><br role=\"presentation\" data-uw-rm-sr=\"\" \/>Content Types are the glue that connects data across the enterprise.\u00a0 The encapsulate the metadata, the document template, workflow and the policies that apply to documents.\u00a0 A single centrally managed content type can control documents in libraries within countless sites.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Content Syndication Hub<\/strong><br role=\"presentation\" data-uw-rm-sr=\"\" \/>Before SharePoint 2010, Content Types lived within the Site Collection as a boundary.\u00a0 \u00a0This was a significant obstacle to scalability and consistency across the enterprise.\u00a0 The Content Syndication Hub changes all that.\u00a0 From a single location, All Content Types can be defined and published across the farm.\u00a0 That includes the information policies, metadata and document template.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Content Type inheritance<\/strong><br role=\"presentation\" data-uw-rm-sr=\"\" \/>All Content Types must inherit from built-in SharePoint Content Types.\u00a0 However by structuring your content types to inherit is a logical and hierarchical fashion, management and evolution of your Information Architecture can be an elegant and simple affair.\u00a0\u00a0 An example could be\u00a0a Corporation Content Type, with sub-companies inheriting from it, then divisions, departments, and finally use-oriented content types.\u00a0 Imagine needing to add a new field (or site column) across an entire company.\u00a0 Adding it high in your hierarchy will propagate to all subordinate content types.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Build out enterprise taxonomies<\/strong><br role=\"presentation\" data-uw-rm-sr=\"\" \/>For the Information Architecture to be relevant and useful, it needs to map to the organization from a functional perspective.\u00a0 The vast majority of the naming of data in an organization, as well as the hierarchy and relationships need definition, to enable the SharePoint Farm to enable users to tag, search and utilize the documents and information in the farm.\u00a0 The larger the organization, the harder this is to achieve.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>One challenge is managing all the Content Types and Site Columns.\u00a0\u00a0 This is because on publishing, Site Collections actually identify these by name instead of a GUID (Guaranteed Unique Identifier).\u00a0 If you have an existing Site Column or Content Type locally defined in a Site Collection, this name collision will prevent the propagation of these conflicts into this Site Collection.\u00a0 The challenge is magnified by the Content Syndication Hub publishing the Content Types and Site Columns to all subscribing Site Collections.\u00a0 So even if your Site Collection only needs a few, it\u2019s an all or nothing affair.<\/p>\n<p>Given we are limited to planning to avoid naming conflicts, my recommendation is to add identifying information to the trailing end of Site Columns and Content Types, especially when defining a generic content type such as \u201cReference Document\u201d or a Site Column such as \u201cCompletion Date\u201d.\u00a0 Instead, perhaps add additional text in a consistent manner.\u00a0 Such as \u201cReference Document (AR)\u201d\u00a0 (for Accounts Receivable) or \u201cCompletion Date (PMO Task)\u201d.\u00a0 The reason to add the text at the end is in many situations the end of the text is cut-off in the user interface.\u00a0 While hovering over the text (such as in a grid column) oftentimes shows the full name, best is to make the title easily identifiable from a user perspective.<\/p>\n<p>The real challenge in setting up the Information Architecture is not the technical configuration.\u00a0 That\u2019s a walk in the park.\u00a0 The real hard part is gathering the experts to define the taxonomies and making the appropriate decisions is the hardest part in large organizations.\u00a0\u00a0 If you have an existing farm that has grown organically and has not taken advantage of content types, the syndication hub, it is actually possible to wrestle it from chaos to order, but it\u2019s not a cakewalk.\u00a0 I have created a range of scripts and techniques for publishing the components of the new Information Architecture, and reassigning documents and metadata to it, resulting in the structured farm that works within the defined Information Architecture framework.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is a good deal of groundwork required to fully implement Records Management in SharePoint.\u00a0 The foundation is the overall Information Architecture.\u00a0 SharePoint 2010 provides a range of capabilities and is very flexible.\u00a0 With this flexibility comes choices.\u00a0 Some of these decisions affect the manageability and extensibility and usability of SharePoint, so we want to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":2053,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-records-management"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poiseddevelopers.com\/reality-tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poiseddevelopers.com\/reality-tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poiseddevelopers.com\/reality-tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poiseddevelopers.com\/reality-tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poiseddevelopers.com\/reality-tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2050"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/poiseddevelopers.com\/reality-tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3020,"href":"https:\/\/poiseddevelopers.com\/reality-tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2050\/revisions\/3020"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poiseddevelopers.com\/reality-tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poiseddevelopers.com\/reality-tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poiseddevelopers.com\/reality-tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poiseddevelopers.com\/reality-tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}