I’m happy to announce that my new book has arrived. It’s full title is: SharePoint records management and metadata: Digital archiving in Office 365. In my book I try to bring only material that is hard to find on the internet. Whether I succeeded in this is up to the reader.
At this moment there are no other books that are dedicated solely to records management and SharePoint. There are a number of thick Bible’s, that contain a chapter on records management, but unfortunately these merely present a list of the features that Microsoft has branded as ‘records management’. There is no translation of these features to your actual business needs and requirements.
In my book I try to do just that: I translate current records management practices to SharePoint. The starting points are the business needs and the user and from there on I come to records management theory, both of which are integrated to create a SharePoint records management solution.
An important part of the book is the design and practical configuration of a complete working environment. This includes, of course, the classical SharePoint records management features, but it is extended to include the entire records management life cycle (or maybe better: it maps to the records continuum theory). This includes the use of standard SharePoint functionality being applied in such areas as records management administration.
The key question is of course: can SharePoint be a records management system? I really do think so, if you are looking for a system that focusses on usability and simplicity, that needs to be practicable. If you require complex functionality that adheres to DoD 5015.2 or ReMaNo, then SharePoint is not the good platform. I get the impression however that more and more governments find that their records management has become much to complex. Within the commercial sector records management was required to be cost effective all along: the benefits of records management need to be higher than the costs. If this is the case, SharePoint can be a great solution. A good example of this can be found on the Presentation of General Motors on Channel9. They have a SharePoint based records management system for their 130.000 users. Much of what they do is also in the book.
The book can be ordered from Amazon. You can see a considerable part of the book when you use their Look Inside feature.
But of course you can also order a copy at your local bookshop, using ISBN-13: 978-1519202680