Professional SharePoint® 2007 Records Management Development: Managing Official Records with Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007

Chapter 5. Building and Configuring a Records Repository

In Chapter 4, we examined the structure of the Records Center site definition and explored its architecture and the components that together provide the core records processing functionality. That functionality depends on the proper configuration of the Records Center site. In this chapter, we'll look into the steps you should follow in order to achieve that goal, whether doing it manually or programmatically.

Creating the Records Center Site

It is a common requirement to set up a Records Center site, and there is a lot of information available for doing that using the SharePoint UI. We'll review those steps in this chapter as well, but then we'll take a slightly different approach toward building a semi-automated process based on a dynamic file plan. This process will allow us to set up a Records Center so that it supports a specific set of record types. Later in the book, we'll add more features so that the dynamic file plan becomes our central point of focus for managing official records throughout their life cycle. I like to think of this as a semi-automated approach because it still requires the creation of a document (the actual file plan) that describes the types of records that are being configured. It's also important to note that the automated part may not happen immediately when the Records Center site is created, but later on, after the site is up and running.

I've taken this approach because there are really two ...