All about managing records and information especially in Microsoft 365
Category: Microsoft 365
(Updated 17 March 2023 with further details about Microsoft Entra settings and B2B Direct connect, see below). By default, external sharing and access is (mostly) enabled by default in Microsoft 365. Unless the settings have been changed in the various locations described below, end users can usually: Click the 'share' icon next to a folder … Continue reading The complex world of external sharing and access in Microsoft 365
Office (later Microsoft) 365 (M365) Groups were introduced to Office 365 in 2014. Although Microsoft Teams was introduced in March 2017, there has been a general lack of understanding about the relationship between Teams and M365 Groups on the part of both records managers and IT. This post explains what both records managers and IT … Continue reading Why records managers and IT need to understand Microsoft 365 groups better
Email mailboxes have long been the primary repository for work-related emails (and attachments) and calendaring information. Some of these emails may have been copied to electronic document and records management (EDRM) systems or saved to network drives. Very often some form of mailbox archiving was introduced to help reduce storage by moving inactive content to … Continue reading What is stored in an Exchange Online mailbox?
Microsoft 365 Exchange Online (EXO) mailboxes and OneDrives assigned to individual end users have one thing in common - they may contain the only copy of corporate records (and other content) that cannot be easily accessed or managed as records. Organisational efforts to encourage end users to save emails (and other potential records) to a … Continue reading Delete or do nothing – retention policy outcomes on Exchange Online mailboxes and OneDrive accounts
As evidence of business activities, records should be authoritative. According to ISO 15489:2016, the characteristics that define authoritative records are authenticity, reliability, integrity and usability. These characteristics may be met by either: Securing or locking a record to prevent unauthorised changes ('declaring a record'). Recording the details of any events - the 'event history' - … Continue reading Audit trails for records in SharePoint Online
One of the consequences of the (relatively sudden) requirement to work from home from early 2020, was that Microsoft 365 - primarily Outlook and Teams (with 'Files' or SharePoint and OneDrive for Business behind the scenes) - became the de facto system to create and capture 'unstructured' records. Unlike centralised electronic document and records management … Continue reading Where are the records in Microsoft 365?
A recent (September 2021) Verge post titled 'File Not Found' by Monica Chin (@mcsquared96) noted how pre-defined storage locations for digital content have become mostly redundant for the younger generation that grew up using Google to find content - 'the concept of file folders and directories, essential to previous generations’ understanding of computers, is gibberish … Continue reading Changing patterns of office work
One of the difficulties for many records managers new to Microsoft 365 is that they may not know or have access to everything they need to know to manage records in that environment. This post provides an overview of the accounts, licences and roles that may be needed to manage records in Microsoft 365. As … Continue reading What licences or roles are needed to manage records in Microsoft 365
This post is dedicated to the memory of my former colleague and good friend Walter de Ruyter who passed away on 4 October 2021. The text is based on Walter's many presentations and our close collaboration over almost 10 years. Henri Fayol (1841 – 1925) was a French mining engineer who developed a general theory of … Continue reading Crossing the gangplank – How Microsoft 365 supports the capture of tacit knowledge
In my previous post about managing inactive Teams, the third option listed was to apply retention policies to those Teams. It included the graphic below. This post provides more details of a basic retention model that can be applied to both active and inactive Teams. Key takeaways Key takeaways from this post for records and … Continue reading A basic retention model for Microsoft Teams
Records about the world 