Tracy van der Schyff

#Office365Challenge – Content Types in SharePoint Part 7. My next couple of blogs will be about the Content Types in SharePoint. Today we’re taking a look at Information Management Policies.

Related Blogs:

Around the Office in 365 Days: Day 128 – Content Types in SharePoint Part 1

Around the Office in 365 Days: Day 129 – Content Types in SharePoint Part 2

Around the Office in 365 Days: Day 130 – Content Types in SharePoint Part 3

Around the Office in 365 Days: Day 131 – Content Types in SharePoint Part 4

Around the Office in 365 Days: Day 132 – Content Types in SharePoint Part 5

Around the Office in 365 Days: Day 134 – Content Types in SharePoint Part 6

Around the Office in 365 Days: Day 134 – Content Types in SharePoint Part 7

So what exactly is an Information Management Policy? Let’s ask Microsoft as they know best:

An information management policy is a set of rules for a type of content. Information management policies enable organizations to control and track things like how long content is retained or what actions users can take with that content. Information management policies can help organizations comply with legal or governmental regulations, or they can simply enforce internal business processes.

For example, an organization that must follow government regulations requiring that they demonstrate “adequate controls” of their financial statements might create one or more information management policies that audit specific actions in the authoring and approval process for all documents related to financial filings.

There are four basic categories of predefined policy features that organizations can use individually or in combination to manage content and processes. Read more…

1. Retention Schedule how content is managed and disposed by specifying a sequence of retention stages. If you specify multiple stages, each stage will occur one after the other in the order they appear on this page.Note: If the Library and Folder Based Retention feature is active, list administrators can override content type policies with their own retention schedules.  To prevent this, deactivate the feature on the site collection.
2. Auditing Specify the events that should be audited for documents and items subject to this policy.
3. Barcodes Assigns a barcode to each document or item. Optionally, Microsoft Office applications can require users to insert these barcodes into documents.
4. Labels You can add a label to a document to ensure that important information about the document is included when it is printed. To specify the label, type the text you want to use in the “Label format” box. You can use any combination of fixed text or document properties, except calculated or built-in properties such as GUID or CreatedBy. To start a new line, use the \n character sequence.

These are the locations to use Information Management Policies:

• Create a site collection policy and then add this policy to a content type, list, or library
• Create an information management policy for a site content type in the top-level site’s Site Content Type Gallery, and then add that content type to one or more lists or libraries
• Create an information management policy for a list or library

Join me tomorrow when we’ll take a closer look at how they are configured.

Overview of my challenge: As an absolute lover of all things Microsoft, I’ve decided to undertake the challenge, of writing a blog every single day, for the next 365 days. Crazy, I know. And I’ll try my best, but if I cannot find something good to say about Office 365 and the Tools it includes for 365 days, I’m changing my profession. So let’s write this epic tale of “Around the Office in 365 Days”. My ode to Microsoft Office 365.

Keep in mind that these tips and tricks do not only apply to Office 365 – but where applicable, to the overall Microsoft Office Suite and SharePoint.