In memoriam for the documents I knew before...

What did I do with that report?

I overheard a comment today from a colleague who was referring to an article from IBM, I don’t get all of it, just the memorable phrase “SharePoint; that document coffin…” which started me thinking. Is SharePoint where we send business content to die?

Let’s face it; SharePoint is a brilliant place to keep stuff you don’t really want to see again. Sure you might save a few drafts there now and then and sure you might even collaborate on a few things in there too but what do you do with things in SharePoint once you are done with them? What happens when “the business point” has moved on and the content or document turns from vibrant and relevant to mouldering record?

Now this is where things get tricky. If it’s mouldering old record you aren’t interested in it any more, not really. We all make vague attempts at records management, but it’s like housework, we know it’s got to be done, we know the place looks and feels better when we do it but it’s not like we enjoy doing it. So it doesn’t get done. We adopt a bit of a head in sand attitude to it, “ah leave it to the records managers” we might say or “it’s in the system isn’t it?” and we move on.

Well we move on, the content doesn’t, it sits there gently losing its battle with entropy as its context and meaning slow leach away. It might get looked at, it might not. It might have value, it might not. It might even be a risk and of course, it might not. There isn’t any way to know, it’s just there, like a big old content millstone hanging around your organisational neck. One we mostly ignore.

We’re tried so many ways to deal with this, and not just with content in SharePoint, but in shared drives, emails, other ECM vaults even paper files (see posts passim).

Not much of it has worked, records managers deal with it either by restricting access to the master files, the registry approach or by structuring how you enter content into the system, the file plan approach. Neither really work in the same way that you don’t really steam clean your cooker every time you use it. It’s a pain and who can be bothered with that?

So we don’t  bother taking the documents to the master file, we just bung them anywhere and we don’t wade through the thirty level deep file plan and just bung them where we always do (or for real quality, build a file plan with categories called “miscellaneous” at every level. I’ve been instructed to include these for more than one client and it’s always informative to work out if the project will really deliver the benefits stated if you build in shortcuts like that during design). Either way the content isn’t placed where it should be so the filing, the metadata is only partial or incorrect, either way it’s not much use.

There is a new way of looking at content, using analytics to remove the need for fiddly filing and repetitive searching of content which should finally help with the filing so where does that leave SharePoint? In this new world why use SharePoint?

If content analytics has a weak point it’s that it looks at data at rest, looks at content as the business point passes it by or whilst it’s quietly mouldering away. What it won’t help with much is live content, content still in flux and in movement between people. 

SharePoint is just about the best document collaboration and development platform we can think of. Users love it. They can create spaces to work in, create content and give it just enough flexible context to enable them and their teams to work with it whilst it’s still hot. Analytics won’t help here, complex filing doesn’t help either. SharePoint deals wonderfully with the content of the NOW. It’s a wonderful portal for moving that content into and past the business point. And once it’s in there, once it’s ready to become mouldering old records, SharePoint isn’t a bad place to access it through again. It’s just not the best tool to use to keep, file and retrieve it. Document coffin isn’t the right term, content shouldn’t go her to die but it is born there.

Document coffin? No, that’s just the way it’s too often used. SharePoint is the best content midwife we have. 

BTW, The article from IBM was this: Sharepoint is a document coffin says IBM