Develop the file plan (Office SharePoint Server)

Article
01/10/2017

Applies To: Office SharePoint Server 2007

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Topic Last Modified: 2016-11-14

In this article:

About records, active documents, and archived documents
Determine what is a record
Complete the file plan

The file plan is the primary records management planning document. Although file plans can differ across organizations, they typically:

Describe the kinds of items the organization acknowledges to be records.
Describe what broader category of records the items belong to.
Indicate where records are stored.
Describe retention periods for records.
Delineate who is responsible for managing the various types of records.

About records, active documents, and archived documents

Before you can determine your file plan, you need to understand the differences among records, active documents, and archived documents.

Records These are documents or other physical or electronic entities in an organization that serve as evidence of activities or transactions performed by the organization. They must be retained for some time period so they can be produced if needed, such as for regulatory or legal discovery.

When an active document is declared to be a record, it is moved or copied to a protected place such as a physical vault or an electronic records repository, and it is assigned a retention period that specifies how long the organization will keep it. (Note that the retention period could be permanent, meaning that the record would be retained indefinitely.) When a record's retention period is over, it is either disposed of by a records manager or moved to an archive for safekeeping as a document of historical interest.
Active documents These are documents in use, such as the e-mail messages in an information worker's inbox, the printed product specifications on someone's desk, the documents in a document library, or the pages on a corporate Web site. It is expected that active documents will change over time, be copied and shared, and generally move about the organization.

Active documents may be declared as records if they serve as evidence of an activity or transaction performed by your organization. For example, if your organization provides a service that includes delivering content to a customer, then that content becomes a record of the delivery of the service and a copy of the document should be retained. Some types of active documents will never become records; for example, you might not classify an e-mail sent among coworkers to agree on where to meet for lunch as a record.

At some point in a document's life cycle, it stops being active. For example, when a deliverable document is presented to a customer, it might no longer be necessary to keep managing this content as an active record. But if the document is a record, it should be saved and protected for some retention period.
Archived documents These are documents that are no longer active but are not records (either because they no longer have to be retained or because they were never classified as records). Archived documents are kept by an enterprise for non-legal reasons such as for historical preservation.

Determine what is a record

Determining which active documents in your organization might be declarable as records requires the collaboration of records managers, lawyers, compliance officers, and content managers. Note that, even if your enterprise is not in a highly regulated industry, there are general laws (such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002) that your records managers need to be aware of that might obligate your enterprise to retain records. Along with general business laws, you need to evaluate legal requirements specific to your enterprise.

It is beyond the scope of this article to provide more than general information about how to determine what is a record in your organization. Most likely, your enterprise is already doing some form of records management and has filled most of the records management roles you need, and you might already have a taxonomy of records.

Generally, to determine what are records in your organization:

Understand your enterprise's legal obligations and business needs.
In a collaborative effort across the divisions of your organization, analyze active document usage.
Develop a list of active document types that should become records. For example, you may determine that the following should be retained as records:
- Contracts to rent corporate space.
- Documents related to employees' benefits.
- Documents related to product research and development.
Categorize the records.

Worksheet action
This is useful because records in the same category often have the same retention periods and might require equivalent treatment in other ways. You can use the Record categories worksheet (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=73300&clcid=0x409) to record the results of your research.

Here is a sample worksheet:

Records	Record category	Description	Sites
Benefit plans, insurance plans, pension plans	Employee Benefit Descriptions	Descriptions of all employee benefit plans.	http://example
Payroll timesheets, supplementary payroll information	Payroll Records	Summaries of hours worked, overtime, and salary paid.	http://example
Vendor invoices	Invoices	Records of goods or services purchased from vendors.	http://example
Product surveys, questionnaires, training manuals, training videos	Training Materials	Provides internal or external training.	http://example
Shipping forms, shipping reports	Shipping Records	Documents the shipment of materials.	http://example
Press releases, newspaper articles	Press Releases	Public relations information about products and services.	http://example
Emergency contact sheets, medical plan enrollment forms, resumes, benefits status reports	Personnel Records	Records of individuals' employment histories and related personnel actions.	http://example

Complete the file plan

After determining which documents should be retained as records and creating a set of record categories, complete your file plan by defining retention periods for each record category, indicating how to dispose of records when their retention periods have expired and supplying other information such as the primary records manager for each record type and the media in which the record is stored.

Here is a completed sample file plan:

Records	Description	Media	Record category	Retention	Disposition	Contact
401k plans	Description of employee benefit plan.	Web pages	Employee Benefit Plans	X years	None	Reshma Patel
Insurance plans	Description of employee insurance plan.	Print	Employee Benefit Plans	X years	None	Reshma Patel
Pension plans	Description of employee pension plan.	Print	Employee Benefit Plans	X years	None	Reshma Patel
Payroll timesheets	Summaries of hours worked, overtime, and salaries paid.	Electronic documents	Payroll Records	X years	Destroy	Reshma Patel
Supplementary payroll information	Summaries of sick time, vacation time, and other non-salary payroll items.	Electronic documents	Payroll Records	X years	Destroy	Reshma Patel
Vendor invoices	Records of goods or services purchased from vendors.	Print	Invoices	X years	Destroy	Eric Lang
Product surveys	Customer satisfaction survey.	Web pages	Survey Materials	X years	Archive	Molly Dempsey
Questionnaires	Questionnaire to determine customer demographics.	Print	Survey Materials	X years	Archive	Molly Dempsey
Training manuals	Hard-copy training content.	Print	Training Materials	X years	Destroy	Molly Dempsey
Training videos	Video training content.	Video	Training Materials	X years	Destroy	Molly Dempsey
Shipping forms	Configure the shipment of materials.	Print	Shipping Materials	X years	Destroy	Eric Lang
Shipping reports	Document the shipment of materials.	Electronic spreadsheets	Shipping Materials	X years	Destroy	Eric Lang
Press releases	Releases about products and services.	Electronic documents	Public Relations Information	X years	Archive	Molly Dempsey
Newspaper articles	News about products and services.	Print	Public Relations Information	X years	Archive	Molly Dempsey
Emergency contact sheets	Employee information.	Electronic documents	Personnel Records	X years	Destroy	Reshma Patel
Medical plan enrollment forms	Employees' sign-up forms for health plans.	Electronic documents	Personnel Records	X years	Destroy	Reshma Patel
Resumes	Resumes received.	Mixed	Personnel Records	X years	Destroy	Reshma Patel

Note

The above example is a sample and not a recommendation of any particular file plan settings. No retention periods are supplied to reinforce that this is an example and not a recommendation of any records management policy.

Worksheet

You can use the following worksheet with this article to help plan your deployment:

Record categories worksheet (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=73300&clcid=0x409)

Download this book

This topic is included in the following downloadable book for easier reading and printing:

Plan Sites and Features, Part 1

See the full list of available books at Downloadable content for Office SharePoint Server 2007.