Checking SharePoint Server 2013 for the Features of a Successful Records Management Program | Blogging Thoughts on SharePoint and Office 365

While SharePoint Server 2013 can be used to underpin a successful records management program, out of the box, it lacks a number of important features a successful records management program will require. The missing features include:

Support for building file plans. As John Holliday explains in a video tutorial titled Main Challenges for Records Management, the most important component of a successful effort to build file plans is to ” . . . identify a consistent methodology for specifying how different types of records should be managed.” This methodology is not included in SharePoint Server 2013 and must be built
A method of declaring records, meaning a procedure to ” . . . identify incoming documents as records . . . “. As John Holliday notes, the best solution for this requirement is to set up a “mapping” procedure, which can be seamlessly enforced, ideally without user intervention, to control how different types of records are handled. At a minimum, this system must safeguard documents (declared as records) from being edited.
Finally, a retention policy must also be included.

On the other hand, SharePoint Server 2013 does include some key features of a robust records management methodology, including:

Document Identifiers
Content Type Syndication
Content Organizer for Routing
and four other features presented by John Holliday in this video tutorial

The rest of this video tutorial is spent explaining how each of these 7 features operate, along with a rationale for using them within a records management program.
It’s worth noting John Holliday’s observation of some important improvements in SharePoint Server 2013, for example, better content type syndication across a farm.

Coincidentally, the type of successful records management program John Holliday presents, must include a centralized term store. This makes sense as a reliable method of ensuring a consistent, uniform set of tags for documents of the same type. Obviously the availability of the Term Store, Taxonomy, and metadata tagging make SharePoint Server 2013 particularly useful for this task.

Ira Michael Blonder