Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Technologies

90 5.1 Document Management

In SharePoint Server 2007 ECM tools and technologies primarily surface

in four functional areas: document management, records management, Web

content management and electronic forms management. And all these func-

tional areas leverage common services, such as storage, workflow, security and

search. Let’s now look at some of these functional areas and highlight the

ECM features that can help you manage your enterprise content appropriately.

5.1 Document Management

Document management refers to all the things you can do to the content

you store in lists and libraries. In Chapter 2, Windows SharePoint Services

V3.0, we covered many of the key technologies that allow you to manage any

type of content that you choose to store in a site. Content types,site columns,

versioning, check-in/out, approval, security trimming are all involved in manag-

ing content, as is integration with workflow. All of these are available in the

base WSS 3.0, platform but MOSS extends the technologies to help you bet-

ter monitor your content, to help users better understand how content

should be used, to ensure your content meets specific requirements, and to

protect content when it is taken out of SharePoint. It does this via auditing,

information management policies and rights management integration. At a

high level, all of these technologies help you meet compliance requirements,

so let’s take a general look at that first.

5.1.1 Compliance

Compliance—be it legal, regulatory or corporate—is a major concern for

most businesses these days. You can read many horror stories of businesses

being fined billions of dollars for not complying with a particular regulation

such as Sarbanes-Oxley or HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and

Accountability Act). Regardless of the actual regulation, the root cause is usu-

ally a failure to manage digital content appropriately.

Being compliant needs to be a core business tenet, not just a separate

project that you embark upon and then deem complete. It needs to be

engrained in your common business processes, something that everyone

considers as they go about their day-to-day jobs. For example, users should

be aware of your policies with regards to retaining or deleting e-mail and

documents or know how to properly classify and secure information so that

it is not subsequently used inappropriately. As a business you need to first

decide what your policies are (some will be driven by regulations) and then

help your employees understand and comply with these policies. Ulti-

mately, these policies help ensure that information is handled appropriately,

stored appropriately and with the right metadata to allow its subsequent

discovery and retrieval.