Smart Records FAQ's

Recording the disposal class under which disposal takes place / retaining minimum metadata

When any rule runs a summary entry is added to the Smart Records log recording the name, class, date/time, number of records that meet the rule filters etc. Entries are added to the log detailing each item and action applied.

If one of the actions is destroy then for each item an entry is added to a logging list. In its most basic setup this has two columns, Title and FieldValues. Title will contain the original name of the document with its extension and FieldValues contains all of the metadata, including hidden/system metadata.

This means that minimum metadata is easily retained e.g. Function, Activity (for business activity being undertaken) will also be automatically populated from the metadata as well as appearing in the FieldValues column.

Data is written to a logging list rather than held in Smart Records is so that it is always available in your tenancy in a standard format. If in future, you were to stop using Smart Records you would still have a complete record of deleted items.

Managing records using aggregation versus at document level

We approach this from two directions, firstly in Smart Records itself but perhaps more importantly in the way we implement metadata inheritance in our designs.

(i) Designed inheritance

A fundamental part of any IL implementation is the automatic application of taxonomy/record keeping metadata to documents. If a user creates or adds a document in a particular location then, without them having to do anything, it is automatically tagged with the appropriate metadata. We normally refer to this as FASC - short for Function, Activity, Subactivity and Case, though obviously other columns like Project may be part of this design.

This metadata may match the structure of SharePoint, so the site title may be the Activity, the library name the Subactivity, etc. But in other situations this may not be the case, for example a PMO site may have numerous projects under it each belonging to different Functions and Activities.

By tagging the documents directly with this data it allows search and aggregated views in both SharePoint and Smart Records.

(ii)  Smart Records

There are four main ways we control 'aggregation' in Smart Records in both views and rules, going from smallest to largest:

Metadata

Because we use the inherited metadata approach detailed above it is very easy to create rules and views that can filter on the FASC columns giving us the required aggregation. In addition, we do record the site and library names against the records and this can be used when filtering.

The only thing missing is the folder names. In sites where Smart Case Files or Smart Metadata is being used folder names will be recorded as metadata. We exclude normal folder names because of the problems with multiple levels and meaningful naming.

OOTB Labels and Smart Labels

Smart Records supports filtering, sorting etc on Retention Labels for both views and rules, it can also use rules to set Labels. We have recently introduced Smart Labels to enhance the OOTB Labels functionality.

Classes

Classes are applied to libraries in Smart Records and define what rules can be applied to those libraries. So you may have a class called Financial that is applied to all libraries containing financial records and only the rules class of Financial will be applied to those libraries. Classes are only used for rules not views.

Sites and multiple instances

You can choose which sites are indexed/managed by an instance of Smart Records. So you can choose to exclude sites that you don't want to be visible or managed.

Taking this one step further, for some customers we have setup more than one instance of Smart Records with different sites associated with each instance. For example, an organisation may have one instance for HR and Financial sites, one for Property related sites, and a third for everything else. The property sites one has been separated because the views and rules needed are different. The HR/Financial one is because they want to restrict access further than the other two instances.

Does iWorkplace Smart Records hold any data or compliance functionality?

No, Smart Records does not hold any data or compliance functionality.

Smart Records has been designed to respect out of the box (OOTB) Retention Labels and other OOTB records management functionality. Smart Records automates the compliance functionality by applying OOTB Retention Labels. If Smart Records is removed, the Retention Labels will remain in place and will continue to function as before. The only difference is, now the users will be responsible for the application of retention labels on new content rather than relying on Smart Records to do so automatically.

Additionally, Smart Records can be used for logging a record of disposed files. This data is captured on a SharePoint list, where each time an item is disposed, an item is added to the list. The list records all of the metadata for the file, including hidden/system metadata. This ensures no information about the item is lost. If Smart Records is removed, the existing data in the list will remain, however any new files disposed, will not be captured in the list.