01 05 aiim ecm p4 · has run into in early releases of sharepoint is that it lacked any workﬂ ow...

THE AIIM GUIDE TO ECM PURCHASING 2009 www.aiim.org/solutionlocator48

Ready. Aiim. MOSS.ch3

CH3_48_59_AIIM_ECM_P4.indd 48CH3_48_59_AIIM_ECM_P4.indd 48 2/2/09 4:49:41 PM2/2/09 4:49:41 PM

www.aiim.org/solutionlocator THE AIIM GUIDE TO ECM PURCHASING 2009 49

Microsoft is fi rmly in the enterprise content management space with

the success of its SharePoint offering—odds are there is an installation

somewhere in your organization (you may even be lucky enough to know

about it). However, like any technology, SharePoint is only a tool and NOT

a strategy for getting a handle on your information. While it does bring

valuable document management and collaboration tools to the table,

allowing SharePoint to go unchecked in your organization can lead to

more risk and ineffi ciency than you are prepared to allow.

Like any tool, you need to understand SharePoint’s role, what it can

(and can’t) do, and how you can use it effectively. Properly planned for

and implemented, SharePoint can boost your users’ productivity and

effectiveness. Done poorly, SharePoint can just as easily become

another failed IT project.

GATHERING MOSSSHAREPOINT IS, OR SEEMS TO BE, NEARLY EVERYWHERE. HOW DO

YOU EFFECTIVELY MANAGE THIS TOOL SO AS TO ALLOW GREATER

COLLABORATION FOR YOUR EMPLOYEES WHILE SLAMMING THE DOOR

ON INCREASED RISK EXPOSURE?


MICROSOFT’S SHAREPOINT IS a very powerful tool for storing and retrieving all types of information and collaborating on projects. It also works well for setting up company blogs, wikis, and training pages. I work as a consultant to the City of Char-lotte. One of the main problems Charlotte has run into in early releases of SharePoint is that it lacked any workfl ow functional-ity. The latest release MOSS, or Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007, has added some very basic workfl ow functionality. You can route documents and collect signatures fairly easily with the new built-in features.

You can even create some mildly complex workfl ows—if you’re willing to jump through a plethora of hoops—but it’s like feeding lions steak with you bare hands. At some point, you’re bound to get at least nipped—if not bit. Therefore, we are forced to open the lid to the Pandora’s Box of MOSS-integrated workfl ow toolkits and business process management (BPM) software. This article discusses lessons learned during the City’s evaluation, testing, and implementation of MOSS-integrated workfl ow suites.

BPM ADVANTAGESThird-party integrated BPM tools offer many advantages over the MOSS

built-in workfl ow tools. A few of these advantages follow:• One can send out workfl ows in parallel so

that several workers can receive the task at the same time. The decision can then be made whether one worker completing the task will be suffi cient or if all workers must complete the task.

• Workfl ows that are built once can be used in several Web applications, sites, or libraries without having to rebuild them each time.

• Several common workfl ow items are pre-built out-of-the-box.

• Reporting and auditing is built-in. • A sub-process can be added to a workfl ow. • Security can be set at the workfl ow level.

These features are typical of MOSS-inte-grated workfl ow tools and will improve an organization’s business processes by auto-mating the processes the way they should be.

SELECTING THE TOOLAs with any software selection initiative the most important initial steps are to determine requirements based on user needs and evaluate your environment to ensure compatibility. In this case, the City needed a workfl ow tool that would leverage

Workfl ow and MOSSLessons learned from integrating

MOSS and third-party workfl ow tools.

BY DENNIS DRURY


ch3


its current SharePoint- and Microsoft-based environments as well as meets several requirements across the organization’s divisions. In defi ning the requirements one must be certain to understand who is going to create workfl ows. Many products would be fi ne for IT workers, but not end users. One should pay extremely close attention to those software packages that require a pro-grammer to complete workfl ow design. City requirements are to train skilled knowl-edge workers to adjust and add items to workfl ows, but the initial workfl ow will be created and managed by a BPM IT person.

The requirement and environment evaluation allowed the City to sift through several different vendor products quickly and come up with the three best candidates to evaluate and test. All of the software products in this area are fairly new so try-ing to fi nd proven and established software was the fi rst major challenge. Many of the companies that the City was referred to by vendors were in the early stages of using the product, which didn’t allow for a lot of com-parison to the City’s situation. After vendor demonstrations and contacting the vendor’s referrals, we were able to narrow the search to two highly competitive products.

THE TESTING ENVIRONMENTPrevious experience has shown that prod-ucts work well in isolated environments. The vendors immediately made virtual server installations of their products avail-able for testing. The City testers found that these virtual installations worked perfectly. The City made the decision early on to install and confi gure the products in a staging environment that mirrored the City's production network and MOSS

environment. This proved to be the most valuable decision the City made. While this helped the City choose between the two products, what made this decision so valuable is that it allowed the City to fl ush out many of the issues and idiosyncrasies they needed to overcome to successfully implement the product.

PROOF OF CONCEPTThe second most important decision was to insist on a proof of concept. The City was able to take a manual vehicle requisition pro-cesses and submit it to both of the vendors to be returned as a workfl ow proof of concept. Once the proof of concept was completed by the vendors it was delivered to the City and installed in the testing environment. This showed the power of both workfl ow suites and allowed the City to compare the software packages side by side in equivalent terms. In addition working with something familiar and real gave the BPM knowledge workers a jump start on training.

TRAININGTraining can be benefi cial even before a software product is installed. A small amount of training can be benefi cial prior to fi nal selection (not just after a fi nal decision has been made). The City was able to get one of the vendors to come in house for two days and work with the knowledge workers and IT staff. The training consisted of com-pleting the simplest tasks in the software application giving the users just enough knowledge to make testing more successful.

ISSUES AND RESOLUTIONSSince MOSS is relatively new so are the products that integrate with it for workfl ow.

Each of the vendors we evaluated had issues with their installation documentation being incomplete. Some were more incomplete than others and it was very challenging to fi ll in the gaps. With the two fi nalists' products the City was able to get temporary support from the vendors to assist in fi lling in the gaps. They even found several new issues dealing with the testing environment that the vendors had not previously experienced.

The most important part of the instal-lation documentation is the prerequisites; detailing things such as which version of windows needs to be on the machine, which version of .net, which versions of different software programs need to be installed, and the specifi c security confi gurations.

All of the vendors evaluated required Kerberos network authentication to be setup with very specifi c service principal names (SPN). This was a particularly diffi cult obstacle to overcome because the organization was in the process of switching to Kerberos authentication at the same time the City began the software evaluation. The best advice I can offer on this is to make sure the organization has allotted time for all the members of the installation team to work together as nec-essary. This isn’t easy since the installation team will be made up of MOSS adminis-trators, database administrators, server administrators, and more. The security confi gurations must be exact—given the number of components involved in run-ning a workfl ow this becomes challenging.

There were several software packages that could have met the City’s require-ments list, but the processes for creating the workfl ows based on complexity and functionality were very different between



them. I would recommend choosing a product that leverages as much of your current environment as possible. For example the City wanted the product to integrate seamlessly with Microsoft Visio. Because most of our workfl ows are designed and diagramed in Visio, this will save the City time and effort.

Another issue was reporting on the completed workfl ows over a specifi c period of time. All of the workfl ow software suites contained out-of-the-box reports that offered a minimal amount of fl exibility and scalability. The City needed to leverage existing SQL reporting services software to create custom reports.

Additional differences evaluated between the products were in the number of objects contained out-of-the-box for creating workfl ows, what forms engine they supported, were there easy to follow wizards or was everything done by hand, steps for metadata collection, steps for add-ing attachments, and knowledge required to create custom features.

PRICINGFinding a product that fi t the budget was also a priority. Many BPM companies

have several pricing packages or offer features a la carte. This gives the customer fl exibility to purchase what is needed to get started. My advice: start small. Purchase enough licenses and features to successfully complete one or two projects to use to champion the organizational-wide initiative. Choose small projects where the organization is experiencing the most pain, return on investment will be realized short term, and the implementation will be successful.

The City found that the main challenge was in the installation and confi guration of the products. Once the workfl ow tools were confi gured properly the workfl ow tools worked well. As the products become more mature the diffi culties we experienced will diminish. In the meantime, the advan-tages of BPM tools integrating with MOSS far outweigh the disadvantages.

DENNIS DRURY ([email protected]) currently works for the City of Charlotte in North Carolina as a Business Process Consultant and Account Manager. In this role he manages electronic content management and document management initiatives across the enterprise. He also writes a monthly online column for www.infonomicsmag.com.

The requirement and environment evaluation allowed the City to sift through several different vendor products quickly and come up with the three best candidates to evaluate and test.


ch3



BY RUSS EDELMAN

ECM Project TriagePlanning an enterprise content management rollout has always been diffi cult. The prevalence of SharePoint makes it even more important to plan well. Start with the most dangerous spots fi rst.WHEN ECM IMPLEMENTATIONS go well, the demand for ECM services, access, and functionality quickly exceeds the supply. For those familiar with this challenge, read on. For those who are not; there is another fundamental problem at hand. Assuming you are with the former group, it is diffi cult, if not impossible, to discern which projects should take precedence and how a rational decision process can be established to prioritize and staff ECM projects. This concept is not necessarily specifi c to ECM; however, the widespread success of SharePoint has heightened the demand for ECM services across many companies. Because of this shift in demand, it is important to introduce an ECM Project Triage process.

The demands for managing informa-tion, as many of you know, are growing out of control and if you are the responsible party for making decisions, it is a heavy burden to bear. With many companies employing multiple ECM systems, reduced budgets, reduced staff, “vocal” clients, and changing priorities, it is understandable that chaos can result. ECM Project Triage is a formulaic and generally accepted pro-

cess that allows IT shops, project/program management offi ces, and/or executives to ease that burden.

As a starting step, the formulation of a Triage process should include the fol-lowing factors and these should be refi ned (removed/changed/added to) to refl ect their respective business requirements:

• Which ECM platform to use• Business case justifi cation• Political impact• Complexity• User acceptance

WHICH ECM PLATFORM TO USEFor many companies, a number of ECM technologies are being used in a production capacity. As a result, a deter-mination needs to be made regarding which is the right ECM technology to use for the project. In the ideal world, one would align the business, func-tional, and technical requirements with the appropriate ECM tool and pursue it accordingly. Unfortunately, it isn’t always as simple. New ECM technolo-gies are being introduced, standards

ch3



ch3

change, and there is always the promise of new features in the next version. To address this issue, we recommend the creation of a feature/capabilities matrix for the ECM systems employed within your company. Once in place, project requests can be vetted against the matrix to determine which ECM product is the right fit. Where gaps exist, or when overkill is obvious, it makes sense to call these out as they represent costs that need to be considered.

THE GOAL: WHICH ECM TOOL SHOULD BE USED?Business Case Justifi cationFor those of us who’ve been in the ECM fi eld for a while, the business case is often undesirably elusive. The reason for this is that the concept of a business case means so many different things to so many different people. For some, it is a one paragraph explanation explaining why the investment is sound. For others, it is a rigorous exercise that requires an in-depth hard and soft cost analysis of key savings. For most, it is someplace in the middle. Regardless of where you stand on the dial, it is helpful to have a consistent approach to determining the business case for ECM systems and this should include some type of quantitative assessment. For example, in-depth ROI justifi cations may dictate that it is appropriate to look at a “hurdle rate” based upon the internal rate of return (IRR). Alternatively, business cases may be addressed by calculating how many happy customers will result, or reduced business response times. The key is to include this if it is important (or exclude it) as part of your triage process.

THE GOAL: QUANTIFIABLE MEASURE OF BUSINESS VALUEPolitical ImpactUnfortunately, the political stature of a project often trumps other more impor-tant, value-oriented considerations. So, rather than avoid it, we recommend bring-ing it into the Triage equation. Assign a rating scale that provides an indicator of a high-profi le project. For example, a CEO-sponsored new public website is going to carry more weight than a team site used by three people. Even if these three people are the chief scientists of the company!

THE GOAL: PROVIDE A RATING FOR THE POLITICAL IMPACTComplexityClosely linked to the ECM platform of choice is the complexity of the project. If the project calls for integration touch points with a variety of line-of-business systems as well as complex workfl ow automation processes, these factors should weigh into the Triage process. For this purpose, it is recommended that a complexity rating be considered. The level of granularity in determining the complexity is going to be specifi c to each company and will need to be developed, often in a matrix-oriented capacity.

THE GOAL: COMPLEXITY RATINGUser AcceptanceUsers tend to have a wide span of interest in accepting or evangelizing new technolo-gies and their opinions can often change on a dime if they are unhappy with the project’s progress and results. Conse-quently, it is important to fi rst gauge the users’ interest level in participating in the project in addition to its business applica-bility. When interest is strong, it sets the stage for higher tolerance levels for change management and unexpected complica-tions. These factors and others, which may be specifi c to your user community, are important factors as you assess user acceptance for the targeted community.

THE GOAL: USER ACCEPTANCE RATINGWhen linked together, these factors and others that may be specific to your orga-nization’s IT practices, can aid greatly in your decisions about project priori-ties and sequencing. Once these factors are established, it is recommended that all project requests are queued for evaluations based upon your selected factors. Finally, it is recommended that a comprehensive escalation process is considered to accommodate shifting priorities. The combination of a defined Triage program along with the escala-tion process can provide effective project sequencing for both users and IT professionals alike.

RUSS EDELMAN ([email protected]) is president of Corridor Consulting (www.corridorconsulting.com) and co-author of Nice Guys Can Get the Corner Offi ce.



MICROSOFT’S SHAREPOINT is receiving a lot of attention these days. With that attention comes some confusion about the different SharePoint products, including how they are named and com-monly referenced. Happily, there are not too many SharePoint products and there is a lot of commonality across them. Each product supports an extensive set of repository and document management functionality including:

• Sites and sub-sites• Document libraries (repositories)• Customizable lists• Document versioning with check in/

check out• Metadata and metadata validation• Basic workfl ow• Basic search• Web Parts (Modular placement of

components/functionality)

With any of the SharePoint products, users have a place to store, find, edit, share, and publish many types of docu-ments including all Microsoft Office documents as well as virtually any other type of digital asset.

But there are differences. The primary categorization of SharePoint products is

• Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (aka WSS 3.0 or “WSS”)

• Microsoft Offi ce SharePoint Server 2007 (aka MOSS 2007 or “MOSS”)

There are two versions of MOSS 2007: Standard and Enterprise. The table provides an overview of the product line1. Note that the functionality increases (additive) as you move from left to right.

A few additional points on the “Name Game”:

• All three products are referred to correctly as “SharePoint”

• The services available in WSS are also available in MOSS

• As you see in the table, it is not correct to use the term “MOSS” to include all the SharePoint products

Most of us who focus on SharePoint for their work consider WSS to be a sub-set of MOSS 2007 functionality, albeit a very powerful and useful one. An example will help to explain.

SEARCHAll SharePoint products include a full-text search engine supported by crawl and index services. For example, if you enter “McDonalds,” the “results set” will contain list items, documents, and folders where “McDonalds” is in the fi le name, in the text of the document3, or in the associ-ated metadata. Great—nothing can elude you as you dig for the critical document right before the big meeting. But, what if

you only want those documents in which “McDonalds” is a customer? Or a supplier?

MOSS extends Search in two dimensions:

• First, it is possible to do metadata searches. That is, if you have set up a property such as “Customer” or “Supplier,” you can look for matches on “McDonalds” in just that property. Using something called a “Managed Property” you can fi nd matches in either Customer or Supplier but still not return any other matches on “McDonalds.”

• Secondly, with MOSS, the search scope can be broadened to include other Share-Point sites, network drives (fi le shares), websites, Exchange Public Folders, Lotus Notes, and even databases.4

There are other powerful features which are available only in the MOSS SharePoint products. The following is a representative sample. Here are some examples of the various SharePoint products’ usage.

WSS 3.00• Document repository for smaller

The Microsoft SharePointProduct Line

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

MOSS 2007 Standard

MOSS 2007 Enterprise

POSITIONING/HERITAGE

LICENSING

EDITORIAL COMMENT

Enables CollaborationEntry point for enterprise features

All features

Requires server and user (CAL) licensing

Additional specialized features add appeal for increased scale and complexity

Requires server and user (CAL)2 licensing

Several key features align this product with broader enterprise needs

Ships with Windows Server 2003 (or later)

This functionality enables the team and collaboration support in Office 2007

BY MIKE DWYER



ch3

organizations or those having more homogeneous document types

• A group of independent sites, e.g. HR, operations, technology, where there is limited need for cross search

MOSS 2007 Standard• Multiple repositories with federated

search capability• Document/records lifecycle management• Extensive metadata, workfl ow, and other

functionality to provide application-like features for one or more sets of enterprise documents

MOSS 2007 Enterprise• Dynamic enterprise intranet with aggre-

gated reporting and information sharing• SharePoint as the universal storage and

collaboration platform

Our view is that all SharePoint deployments are most successful when planned and coordinated to

support the intended purpose. This approach becomes increasingly important as you move up the SharePoint product ladder!

MIKE DWYER ([email protected]) is a solution architect

with Corridor Consulting (www.corridorconsulting.com).

MOSS 2007 Standard

ADVANCED SEARCH

ENHANCED WORKFLOW

SINGLE SIGN ON

RECORDS CENTER

ENTERPRISE PORTAL

Property (“Fielded” search) and increased search scope

More out-of-the-box (OOTB) workflows and more activities in SharePoint Designer

Access to backend applications credentials integration

Records Management: Information Management Policies and Records Repository

My Sites (user personalized sites), User Profiles, Site Portal Templates, etc.

MOSS 2007 Enterprise

INFOPATH FORMS

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

Electronic Forms: creation forms for information capture, storage, workflows

Excel Services: Publish for global, interactive use such as pricing models

Report Center: libraries and services to publish and share reports, data connections, and dashboards

Business Data Catalog: access to external and back-office system data

1 The inevitable caveats: Microsoft has new offerings which allow customers to host SharePoint using a “Software as a Service”or SaaS model. Also, there is a separate licensing component to supporting external, anonymous access or “Internet Sites.” But this is the mainstream product line.

2 Client Access License

3 There is no text matching for scanned images unless they are run through an OCR engine

4 MOSS Enterprise onlyNO

TES



LET’S SET THE STAGE. Enterprise con-tent management (ECM) began in the mid-1980s as bit-mapped imaging. In the 20-plus years since then, it has added and refi ned an array of technologies and techniques that produce the pro-found capabilities we enjoy today. ECM continues to evolve as an assemblage of complementary capabilities that expand and improve our ability to exploit unstruc-tured information.

By contrast records and information management (RIM) is a discipline or method that developed over thousands of years. Despite media-related variations, its practice is essentially consistent whether dealing with paper or electronic records. It employs technology but, it is not defi ned by technology.

When Microsoft Corp. released its SharePoint Server 2007 platform, RIM practitioners found potentially useful tools tucked into the ECM pillar, one of six main components. This caused a mur-mur in RIM circles that grew to a lively conversation. The volume rose again when Microsoft announced that SharePoint 2007 records management was certifi ed as compliant with DOD 5015.2, an important and exacting government standard. Mere months after its Version 1 release, Micro-soft announced that there were 100 million SharePoint licenses in the fi eld. Clearly the software could not be ignored.

First and foremost, SharePoint 2007 is a collaboration tool and, by all accounts, it excels as such. Upon its release, Microsoft Offi ce users rushed to add SharePoint to their software tool belts, and collaboration sites sprang up like mushrooms after a warm rain. By the time most records man-

agers became aware of SharePoint’s RIM functions, users had made SharePoint col-laboration an integral part of the workplace.

Today, many records managers scramble to understand SharePoint’s value to their work. They want to know its strengths, weaknesses, and potential value; given its seeming ubiquity, they want to know how it infl uences their primary missions. Where SharePoint is not yet installed, records man-agers need to know the software’s potential impact well enough to know whether they want to introduce it or not. Where SharePoint is already established, records managers need to know how to manage any records it creates and how to integrate it into existing or developing RIM programs.

This is diffi cult. Objective information on records management in SharePoint is rare and confusing, even contradictory. Microsoft presents SharePoint RIM as full-featured, scalable, and interoperable. Microsoft’s business partners/developers/integrators agree—given enough cus-tomization. Industry pundits suggest the product is limited, diffi cult, and risky at the enterprise level, and potentially expen-sive despite its dollar-store sticker price. However, all sources agree: SharePoint is not going away. Whatever its current short-comings, Microsoft will improve it with successive versions.

WHAT’S A BUYER TO DO?Two axioms instruct the potential buyer of SharePoint for RIM:• SharePoint 2007 is a platform, and

SharePoint for Records Management is a tool: a collection of functions and capabilities with varying effi cacies.

• No two organizations share the exact

same RIM needs. Each is unique; hence RIM tools rarely produce optimum results without customization, tuning, and optimization.

Records managers must understand their needs, risks, challenges, and budgets before deciding whether SharePoint is appropriate, either in part or in whole. Even where Share-Point appears to be a good component of a RIM program, it is not a panacea. In build-ing RIM, organizations must match needs with the tools that can meet those needs. They must consider their history as well as the current situation, available resources, knowledge base, organizational politics, and change management.

WHAT SHAREPOINT RECORDS MANAGEMENT DOES WELLGiven an appropriate situation, SharePoint for Records Management functions superbly, according to several industry observers.

It is eminently affordable, and its bargain-basement price-point is forc-ing longtime RIM software vendors to re-compute their rate cards. This is important, since RIM budgets are rarely expansive. SharePoint enjoys such wide-spread popularity that many records managers discover that their organizations are already licensed for the platform. Cus-tomization is available through Microsoft’s Consulting Services, and the Microsoft partner program has certifi ed many tal-ented tech fi rms (including HP and IBM Global Services) to help end users install and confi gure SharePoint.

In organizations where Microsoft products are standard, records managers may fi nd they have instant allies in their IT departments. Similarly, in organizations

Match Game: SharePoint for Records & Information Management

BY GORDON E.J. HOKE



ch3

The analysts agree that with SharePoint as a development platform, almost any integration is possible. But then they refer to case studies where customization costs greatly overran the product price and development budgets while delivering limited success.

where Microsoft Offi ce is the standard offi ce productivity suite, records managers will fi nd great staff acceptance of SharePoint. The user interface is comfortable and famil-iar to Offi ce users, and the learning curve is short and fl at. For organizations doing gov-ernment work, the DOD certifi cation helps.

The core function of SharePoint for Records Management is to be a repository for MS Offi ce documents, including those created at SharePoint collaboration sites. “You can set up folder structures and apply retention rules to specifi c folders,” states

Howard Loos, director at KPMG and mentor coordinator for the ICRM. “It is reasonable for a retention schedule.”

Microsoft makes numerous claims for SharePoint RIM, but these could not be inde-pendently verifi ed. According to Tony Rizzo, senior director for SharePoint at Microsoft, his product’s strengths include functions for information security, retention schedules, disposition, ediscovery, legal holds, informa-tion rights management, search, and audit/controls. In addition, he holds out expanded capabilities through integration, such as MS Exchange for email management and Offi ce Communication Server for VoIP and instant messaging. “They are an integrated stack,” Rizzo states. “We can do records manage-ment with any media, including Lotus.”

FROM A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVEWhether SharePoint for records manage-ment is single-featured or full-featured is

partly a matter of perspective. The way it performs certain functions can be seen as a strength or weakness. For example, as a buyer, do you have resources for develop-ment and integration? Is the ability and/or necessity of customization an obstacle or a freedom? Is simplicity a boon or an impediment? Is interoperability valuable or meaningless? How many security fea-tures are worth paying for?

“[SharePoint records management] is both a problem and an asset,” explains Richard Medina, principal analyst at

Doculabs. “If it is not used correctly, it is a problem. You must control its risk and leverage its capabilities.”

SharePoint records management is a software tool, not a RIM program. An orga-nization without established governance for records management may quickly fi nd itself in a records morass. For example, consider the exponential proliferation of SP collabora-tion sites. If those sites were not subject to RIM policies, the documents they produced were outside the records management program. Even when fi nal versions of docu-ments were designated as Offi cial Records, many times the collaboration sites were not taken down. Consequently, even today they may remain derelict and discoverable in legal proceedings. Their existence threatens organizations as much as any unmanaged documents or records. It can be risky.

In its current release, SharePoint for RIM has notable limitations. “For



technical reasons, it is not good for long-term retention because it doesn’t clearly separate the content and the metadata,” explains Alan Pelz-Sharpe, principal at CMS Watch. “If you take a record out of SharePoint, you can lose a lot of the his-tory and, in some cases, you can’t open it because it is dependent on other areas, such as Active Directory. Similarly, it is not well suited for Microsoft Exchange and email. They are completely different systems. There is some integration, but it is not for records management purposes. The two are essentially different.”

Several industry analysts suggest that SharePoint for records management works best at the departmental level, not the enterprise. “There are scalability issues,” notes Don Lueders of The Gimmal Group. “Microsoft suggests that you have one records center per server farm, and to me, that is not practical. You can’t have an enterprise program with multiple records centers because of the huge volumes.”

“We fi nd that our customers using SharePoint are not looking at the records management capabilities to manage their enterprises,” reports Loos. “They may use it to manage the SharePoint pool, the documents created and stored in their SharePoint site. But from a RIM per-spective, SharePoint is one more area of uncontrolled information. The larger the organization, the more they see SharePoint as another silo of information that needs to be managed. Some companies do not even turn on the retention capabilities.”

Analysts point out that retention is limited to Offi ce repositories, and federa-tion or integration with other systems is diffi cult. Zealous Microsoft partners con-tradict this, touting their successes with interoperability. The analysts agree that with SharePoint as a development plat-form, almost any integration is possible. But then they refer to case studies where customization costs greatly overran the

product price and development budgets while delivering limited success. “The channel has oversold the product,” one analyst opined.

A middle ground comes from Tina Torres, senior litigation consulting manager for Thomson Reuters and, formerly, corporate records manager at Microsoft. “Overall, SharePoint 2007 has good records management functionality that integrates well in Microsoft platform environments. It was designed specifi cally for companies that don’t have other RIM functionality in place and want to include RIM as a starting point. It falls in the spectrum of fairly straight-forward retention management applications.”

A GOOD FITRecords management with SharePoint is most successful when it is used in support of an existing RIM program, complete with governance, policies, processes, and controls. Retrofitting from software to a RIM program has not proven effective.

“The important thing is the match,” Torres advises. “Start smart; looking at how the tool can fi t your business, not how the business can fi t the tool, otherwise you end up with a backward implementation that is not easily adopted.”

Lueders agrees: “If you implement SharePoint, from the very beginning you have to have a records manager involved, providing a taxonomy and policy. Other-wise, it will be chaos."

When asked where SharePoint for RIM is a good or “natural” fi t, analysts identify fi ve pre-conditions:• Governance and controls are in place. In

particular, policies must govern collabo-ration sites: their creation, use, storage, and dismantling.

• The organization’s size is small to mod-erate. SharePoint 2007 works best at the departmental or workgroup level.

For the enterprise, it needs serious development work.

• The software environment is homoge-neously Microsoft. This eases integration and customization. It also encourages user acceptance through a familiar interface.

• The information system architecture features centralized repositories. This avoids problems and issues that affect search, ediscovery, records production, disposition, and others.

• DOD 5015.2 certifi cation, a standard for government work, is required.

IMPROVEMENT ASSUREDExpect SharePoint’s records management capabilities to improve with forthcoming versions and service packs. Microsoft has a long history of releasing incremental improvements to its products.

Notably, Microsoft recently acquired the FAST search engine, and industry observers expect that when FAST is integrated, SharePoint’s search capabilities will improve.

Redmond expects to bundle SharePoint into the next version of the Offi ce suite, giving it even wider distribution. “Micro-soft is very serious about making records management functionality in SharePoint robust, useable, and enterprise ready,” states Lueders, who helped the software giant qualify for DOD certifi cation. “They are active in it now.”

Rizzo makes no secret of SharePoint’s direction: “We believe in ECM for the masses. We want to commoditize the entire market. Now everything is a record. We want to make sure we can support all the content types in any organization. We have a scale-out archi-tecture, so we can support any number of servers. We are in business to win, so we are investing."

GORDON E.J. HOKE ([email protected] and (507) 534-2293), a veteran analyst for both ECM and RIM, serves on Infonomics editorial advisory board.


01 05 aiim ecm p4 · has run into in early releases of sharepoint is that it lacked any workﬂ ow...

Documents