Create information management policies for records

Article
01/10/2017

Applies To: Office SharePoint Server 2007

This Office product will reach end of support on October 10, 2017. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see , Resources to help you upgrade your Office 2007 servers and clients.

Topic Last Modified: 2008-02-19

An information management policy is a set of rules for a content type. Information management policies enable organizations to control and track things like how long content is retained or what actions users can take with that content. For more information about content types, see Create content types for records.

Information management policies can help organizations comply with legal or governmental regulations, or they can simply enforce internal business processes. For example, an organization wants to automate compliance with government regulations requiring that they demonstrate adequate controls of their financial statements. To do so, they might create information management policies for a financial statement content type that:

Audit specific actions in the authoring and approval process for all documents related to financial filings.
Manage how long financial statements should be retained.

Each individual rule within an information management policy is a policy feature. Office SharePoint Server 2007 includes several predefined policy features that organizations can use individually or in combination to define information management policies for their sites. The following policy features are included in Office SharePoint Server 2007:

Auditing The Auditing policy feature can help organizations analyze how their content management systems are used. When enabled, auditing logs events and operations that are performed on documents and list items. Organizations can configure the Auditing policy feature to log events such as when a document or item is edited, viewed, checked in, checked out, deleted, or has its permissions changed. All of the audit information is stored in a single audit log on the server, and site collection administrators can run reports on it. Organizations can also use the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 object model to write and add custom events to the audit log.

Note

When a document is sent to a Records Center site, the document's audit history is sent with the document and stored in an XML file in the Records Center site with the document.
Expiration The Expiration policy feature can help organizations delete out-of-date content from their sites in a consistent, reviewable way. This policy feature helps organizations manage both the cost and risk associated with retaining out-of-date content. Organizations can configure an Expiration policy to specify that certain types of content expire on a date that is relative to a date column or within a calculated amount of time after some document activity — for example, creation or editing.
Barcodes The Barcodes policy feature enables organizations to track physical copies of documents or list items that have been printed from a site. The Barcode policy feature creates a unique identifier value. Users can then insert a barcode image of that value into the items or Microsoft Office System documents that they create. Users can also use a barcode on a physical copy of a document to search for the original copy of that document on the server. By default, barcodes are compliant with the common Code 39 standard (ANSI/AIM BC1-1995, Code 39). Organizations can use the Office SharePoint Server 2007 object model to install other barcode providers.

Note

Barcodes are generated when the document is added to the document library. If this policy is added to a document library that contains existing documents, the existing documents will not display the barcode. You must update the document or its properties to cause Office SharePoint Server 2007 to generate the barcode.
Labels The Labels policy feature enables organizations to track physical copies of documents or list items that have been printed from a site. The Labels policy feature automatically generates text labels based on document properties and formatting that a site owner or list manager specifies. When users insert labels into Microsoft Office System documents, the labels are automatically updated with the information from the document's properties.

Note

Labels are generated when the document is added to the document library. If this policy is added to a document library that contains existing documents, the existing documents will not display the label. You must update the documents or their properties to cause Office SharePoint Server 2007 to generate the labels.

Records managers should configure information management policies to align with the requirements that are contained in the file plan.

There are two recommended approaches for implementing information management policies for records:

Create individual policies for each content type.
Create individual polices for a library in the Records Center site if the content in a document library is unique to that library.

Note

You can also create site collection information management polices to cover an entire set of record types and apply them to more than one document library. However, we recommend you only do this if you have one policy that will be reused on multiple content types.

Within a document library, you can either apply a single policy to the entire document library or you can apply a separate policy to each content type. You configure the document library to allow multiple content types.

Task Requirements

To create information management policies for records, perform the following procedure:

Add an information management policy to a content type

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Create information management policies for records

Task Requirements

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