Information management policy settings (Office SharePoint Server)

Applies To: Office SharePoint Server 2007

This Office product will reach end of support on October 10, 2017. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see , Resources to help you upgrade your Office 2007 servers and clients.

In this article:

• Default information management policy settings

• Define or edit a policy setting

An information management policy is a set of rules for a certain type of important content. Information management policies enable administrators to control and evaluate who can access the information, how long to retain information, and how effectively people are complying with the policy. The most common creators and enforcers of policy are compliance officers, records managers, IT staff, and others with similar responsibilities.

With Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, you can apply policies that enable you to manage your content according to your business processes. Office SharePoint Server 2007 contains several policy features, which you can customize according to your needs, as well as an extensibility framework that enables you to create, customize, and deploy your own policies and policy features.

By using information management policies, you benefit in the following ways:

• Administrators can set and manage the rules for a content type from a single location, including both client-side and server-side policy features.

• Policies are applied to content, both within Office SharePoint Server 2007 and in downloaded Microsoft Office system content. Administrators can be confident that policies applied to content are always being enforced, wherever the content is routed within their company.

• Corporate policies are followed automatically and transparently, so they require little involvement from end users.

The following sections describe the custom setting for a Three-state workflow.

Default information management policy settings

Specify the policy

Specify the information management policy for this content type. If you need to use one of this site's predefined policies then select Use a site policy. Alternatively, you can directly create or edit the policy settings.

Define or edit a policy setting

The following tables describe the settings for defining and editing a policy.

Name and administrative description

The name and administrative description are shown to list managers when configuring policies on a list or a content type.

Policy statement

The policy statement is displayed when end users open items subject to this policy. The policy statement can explain which policies apply to the content or provide important information that users need to be aware of.

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, type the \n character sequence.

To prompt users to add a label to a document, select the Prompt users to insert a label before saving or printing check box.

If you want labels to be optional, do not select this check box.

To lock a label so that it cannot be changed after it has been inserted, select the Prevent changes to labels after they are added check box.

Auditing

The auditing policy feature enables organizations to create and analyze audit trails for documents and to list items such as task lists, issues lists, discussion groups, and calendars. This policy feature provides an audit log that records events, such as when content is viewed, edited, or deleted. When auditing is enabled as part of an information management policy, administrators can view the audit data in policy usage reports that are based on Microsoft Office Excel and that summarize current usage. Administrators can use these reports to determine how information is being used within the organization. These reports can also help organizations verify and document their regulatory compliance and investigate potential concerns.

The audit log records the following information: event name, date and time of the event, and system name of the user who performed the action.

Expiration

The expiration feature sets the retention period and the action to take when the content reaches its expiration date.

To set the expiration date based on a date property, click A time period based on the item's properties, and then select the document or item action (for example, Created or Modified) and the increment of time after this action (for example, the number of days, months, or years) when you want the item to expire.

To use a workflow or custom retention formula to determine expiration, click Set programmatically.

To enable a specific action (such as deletion) to apply to the document or item when it expires, click Perform this action, and then select an action from the list.

To start a workflow on the document or item, click Start this workflow, and then select the name of the workflow.

Bar codes

This option assigns a bar code to each document or item. Optionally, Microsoft Office applications can require users to insert these bar codes into documents.