Background:
Many documents in an organisation need to be managed as controlled documents, ensuring that they conform to policies governing their life cycle (creation, review, re-issue and disposal, archiving) and approval. It is also important to be able to demonstrate that key documents have been read by staff thereby transferring responsibility for the actions and policies embodied in those documents to staff.
Traditional paper or file and email processes are very weak and cumbersome at supporting this set of needs.
Solution description:
The Cloud2 Information Governance Add Ons provides a set of features within SharePoint that extend the native capabilities (check in/out, metadata, publishing etc.) in order to completely address the governance needs for documents such as policies, work instructions and other controlled documents:
Document Read Receipt Workflow
When this workflow is invoked on a document, the initiator can select SharePoint User(s) / Group(s) that are required to read the document. The initiator then enters an appropriate message to send to the users and selects the date by which the document must be read. Optionally the initiator can also select SharePoint User(s) / Group(s) to inform that the workflow has been started.
When the workflow is started, the initiator (and users that were selected to be informed) are emailed detailing the workflow that was started. Tasks are created for each SharePoint User prompting the user(s) to read the document.
When all users have read the document the workflow completes and the initiator is informed of the workflow completion.
Document Creation and Approval Workflow
This workflow can be configured on a document library / content type in one of two modes:
- Document Creation and Approval
- Document Approval Only
There are 5 phases to the workflow: Drafting; Formatting; Reviewing; Amending; Approving. When using the Document Creation and Approval mode all 5 phases must be completed. When using the Document Approval Only mode all only the final 3 phases must be completed, the document does not go through the Drafting or Formatting phases.
When the workflow is invoked the initiator selects the SharePoint User(s) / Group(s) that are to be involved at each phase of the workflow and sets deadline dates for each phase. The initiator also specifies SharePoint User(s) / Group(s) that should be informed should a user not complete a task for a phase by the assigned deadline date i.e. the escalation user(s). Optionally the initiator can also select SharePoint User(s) / Group(s) to inform that the workflow has been started.
When the workflow is started, the initiator (and users that were selected to be informed) are emailed detailing the workflow that was started.
For each phase, the SharePoint User(s) for that phase is each assigned a task to complete. When all of the tasks for a phase have been completed the tasks for the subsequent phase are then assigned. This continues until all phases are completed, and hence the workflow completes and the initiator is informed of the workflow completion.
Should a task fail to be completed by the assigned deadline date then the escalation user(s) are informed of this non-completion.
Document Expiry Notification
This functionality assumes that there is a metadata column associated with each content type (of type Date & Time – Date Only) detailing when the document is due to expire. A scheduled task on the server runs periodically, inspects this metadata field, and compares it against the utility’s configuration. Based on the outcome the following functionality takes place:
‘x’ days before a document is due to expire a group of SharePoint Users (known as the “Expiry Notification Group”) are sent an email, informing them of the upcoming expiration.
On the day when the document expires a group of SharePoint Users (known as the “Expired Notification Group”) are sent an email, informing them of the document expiration.
Every ‘y’ days following the document expiration the Expired Notification Group are again sent an email, informing them that the document is past expiry.
Document ID Generation
This functionality assumes that there is a metadata column associated with each content type (of type Single Line of Text) detailing the document’s unique ID. The format of the unique ID is a numeric number of ‘x’ digits.
An event handler can be configured so that when new documents are added to SharePoint a unique identifier is automatically generated and assigned to the document’s metadata column. This generated ID will be unique on a Site Collection basis and will increment each time a new document is added.
Document Archiving
This functionality assumes that there is a site and a document library within that site somewhere in the Portal that is configured not to be crawled by the SharePoint search service. This is the “Archiving Location” which is to contain old documents which need to be retained for regulatory purposes, but which should not be displayed to the user population when they perform search operations.
The document archiving functionality consists of drop-down menu item on each document allowing the user to move the document to the “Archiving Location”.
