All about managing records and information especially in Microsoft 365
Category: Training and education
OneDrive is a standard feature in Microsoft 365 licences. OneDrives: Provide a 'personal' space to store content, with up to 1 TB of storage, that cannot be accessed by anyone except the relevant admins (no different from their previous ability to access 'personal' or 'home ' drives). Can be accessed by end-users directly from File … Continue reading Understanding OneDrives – for records managers
Teams chats and channel posts are a bit of a problem to manage as records because it is not easy to capture them - either individually or as a thread. The most common solution is to screenshot them but this is hardly ideal. End-users may be able to delete or edit sent chats and posts. … Continue reading What happens when you delete or edit sent Teams chats and posts
Microsoft 365 has become one of the world's most accessed products for office collaboration. Jeff Teper, the 'father of SharePoint' at Microsoft, tweeted on 27 April 2021 that Teams had 145 million daily active users. (As reported in by the team at Office365ITPros.com.) According to the website 'Microsoft Office Statistics and Facts (2021) | By … Continue reading Ten things to consider when managing records in Microsoft 365
One of the first things to understand, when managing records in Microsoft 365, is where the records are stored. Generally speaking, most records will be stored in either (a) Exchange mailboxes (which also store the 'compliance copies' of Teams chats) or (b) SharePoint sites (including sites linked with MS Teams). Some emails may be copied … Continue reading A decision tree for managing records in SharePoint and Teams
SharePoint Online (SPO) is the primary location to store digital objects and documents in Microsoft 365. In this sense, it replaces on premise network file shares and drives as a location to store information although a bit ironically, it can also be accessed from File Explorer. In Microsoft Teams channels, SPO sits behind the scenes … Continue reading Different ways to access content stored in SharePoint
The international standard for records management, ISO 15489-1:2016 (‘Information and documentation – Records management – Part 1: Concepts and Principles’), defines records as 'information created, received, and maintained as evidence and as an asset by an organization or person, in pursuit of legal obligations or in the transaction of business'. Among other things, the standard notes that … Continue reading Microsoft 365 – Options for collating, grouping and aggregating records
Office 365 is sometimes referred to as an 'ecosystem'. In theory this means that records could be stored anywhere across that ecosystem. Unlike the 'old' on-premise world of standalone servers for each Microsoft application (Exchange, SharePoint, Skype) - and where specific retention policies could apply (including the Exchange Messaging Records Management MRM policy), the various … Continue reading Planning for records retention in Office 365
The third part of my recent series of posts, titled Setting up SharePoint Online to manage records, included an example architecture model with several Office 365 Group-based sites, shown in green in the graphic below. This post describes how Office 365 Groups, with their associated mailbox and SharePoint site, can be useful when there is … Continue reading Using Office 365 Groups to manage (some) records in context
On-premise versions of SharePoint were standalone systems, usually administered by a trained and qualified SharePoint Administrator. Records managers may and may not have had access to or a role in that environment. Generally, the only other group that would typically have access to SharePoint on-premise were the DBAs who managed the (SQL) database. SharePoint Online … Continue reading Understanding SharePoint Online in the context of Office 365 admin
There are, broadly speaking, two 'bookend' options when it comes to creating new SharePoint Online sites and the document libraries in those sites: 'Controlled' model: The creation of new sites is restricted to a small group of individuals with admin rights, who also oversee the creation of document libraries and application of metadata. A combination … Continue reading AI curated chaos or control – the equally valid but opposite ends of the SharePoint spectrum
Records about the world 