How do you automate or apply records management?

asked on September 30, 2016

We have had Laserfiche for years, but I am just getting around to trying to apply our retention policy, and I just can't figure out the best way to accomplish this, or rather, I think I'm missing some key information/concepts.

When Laserfiche was set up for our organization, it was very simplified and not too effective. I have been working for the last few years to automate a ton of tasks, standardize our naming conventions, creating auto-naming workflows and just trying to clean it up and make it more user friendly.

Unfortunately, every time I try to cut off any records, I find myself needing to make a change to a field or a workflow and I have to un-cut stuff off in order to clean up the data in our repository and standardize our fields - remove redundant ones, etc.

What I am having trouble with is how to apply cut off to folders? If I apply an event date to make it eligible for cut off in the future, it still freezes the folder, even if the event has not yet occurred. Also, if I have a set of files that are eligible for cutoff at 7/1/16 and I want to hold them for 3 years after that, I cannot apply the cutoff because maybe we have not yet scanned and submitted everything for that time period yet. I will have to keep that folder un-cut off and open for the next 2 years to make sure that all stragglers have been submitted, and then cut it off, and then start the retention period, but now I am holding everything for 5 years instead of 3.

Also, I am trying to lump these together by year since I have to manually cut off the folders. This makes it so I have a ton of documents in one folder - if anything else needs to be submitted, I would have to un-cut off hundreds of files to file just one more. If I file them on a more granular level, like by month or by date, then I have hundreds upon hundreds of individual cut offs to apply, which is very inefficient.

I just had the idea of creating a workflow that will run quarterly and search for certain file types that I broke out into 3, 5 and 7 year retentions. Anything that it finds that has a date in the metadata that makes it eligible for one of those destruction periods, it will route to one of those folders. Within my 3 year retention folder I have year folders, so at the end of that year it will be eligible for destruction - as a way to minimize the cutoffs that I have to apply.

I feel like I'm missing something though. Should there be an easier way to do this? How are other people doing this? How do you deal with cutting something off and continuing to file documents that need to route to a cut off folder? Are we unique in that we don't file everything exactly on time? How is your "back end" set up so that you don't run into these issues, or so that you optimize the process of applying cut-offs?

Thank you for any insight!

0 0

replied on September 30, 2016

That's an interesting concern Danielle. How are you choosing the cutoff dates for these folders?

Normally, if changes are still being made to the folder or the contents within the folder, it wouldn't be considered cutoff from a Records Management Life-cycle perspective. Cutoff content is supposed to be unchanged until the disposition event since its active stage has past, the period of time when people are normally working with the folder. If you are regularly changing the information within cutoff content, then the retention plan might need to be revisited.

Unless I'm missing something regarding your specific use case, you shouldn't need to utilize workflow to assist the records management aspect. Record folders inheriting the record properties from record series should be sufficient.

0 0

View 2 previous replies

replied on September 30, 2016

I'm not sure what you mean when you say "Record folders inheriting the record properties from record series should be sufficient." From the record series we designate everything under that folder to have the same retention policy/period, but we cannot dynamically assign event dates or cutoff each individual series folder - all of that has to be done manually. Which is why I am trying to gather and migrate large chunks of eligible documents to condensed back end folders, so I only have to do manual tasks on a limited number of folders.

Generally, the only changes that are occurring that necessitate the folder being re-opened is to 1) file another document for that time period 2) We also have an audit process where files can be tagged for review, and then reviewed and commented on.

I guess we will have to keep them live until they are eligible for destruction though, if we want to be able to audit the files up to the point of destruction. We perform this action to make sure that files are filed properly, so that we trust that what we destroy is actually meant to be destroyed - was filed and classified properly in the first place. So, something might be a month from destruction, and that might be even more of a reason to perform an audit and tack that history onto the metadata prior to its destruction.

Are there implications for leaving things live up until their point of destruction?

0 0

replied on October 4, 2016

Are you able to account for the dynamic nature of your retention policy with alternate retention schedules?

The major implications for leaving things live up to the point of the destruction is how that matches up with your compliance/records management policies. Normally, cutoff documents are ideal for auditing purposes since it keeps records unchanged until destruction or permanent archiving.

0 0

replied on October 4, 2016

I'm not sure how an alternate retention schedule would really help. It seems it would possibly create more work, as anything that is already cut off that needs to be modified for some reason, I would have to navigate to the back end, locate where it is stored and manually do this.

And, I would not know which files needed this as our entire audit process would have to be scrapped, and everything recorded and communicated outside of Laserfiche, as I would no longer be able to store any audit data with the file - like if it needs a modification, etc. I'm not talking about LF audit trail, I'm referring to an internal, visual review/inspection to determine that the document is what it says it is. And, we like to capture the history of who audited the file, and when, and keep count of the files that are audited so we know if we have a decent sampling.

I will research this more and consult internally to come to a decision about what we want to do. Thanks.

0 0

replied on October 5, 2016

Hi Danielle,

I have two questions.

1. Do you own the Laserfiche SDK? Some of these Records Management actions can be automated using a combination of Workflow and the SDK. See: https://answers.laserfiche.com/questions/47302/How-can-I-automate-records-management-functions-such-as-having-workflow-enter-an-Event-date One that comes to mind would be a Workflow Business Process available to records managers that auto-files a straggler document in a closed (Event Date set) Record Folder.

2. Are you familiar with Records Management Searches? This additional set of search criteria can be used both in the Client/Web Access and Workflow and may allow you to more efficiently process records in batches: https://www.laserfiche.com/support/webhelp/Laserfiche/10/en-US/administration/#../Subsystems/LfAdmin/Content/RecordsManagement/Records_Management_Search/RM_Search_Types.htm

As an additional thought, if having new documents brought into the system 2 years into a 3 year retention period is a scenario you have to regularly deal with, it may be worth considering basing your retention schedules on filing date. This would completely eliminate the need to reopen or un-cutoff record folders when documents get back-filed, and only the back-filed documents would have "longer" retention periods rather than the whole set.

You could still use an "Original Document Date" metadata field to perform searches to retrieve documents based on when they were created rather than filed.

1 0

replied on October 5, 2016

1. Yes, we do have SDK, but I have never used it. I'm not too familiar with scripting, but I am trying to learn.

2. I am familiar with the searches, but since we don't have event dates set or anything cut off, I don't find them that useful - there's nothing eligible for cut off, etc because I can't even enter an event date. And my entire repository has to remain live for me to perform the audits that we do - which I think is going to be one of the hardest sticking points to making this work, aside from dealing with straggler files that need to be filed.

Filing by filing date might be a solution though - thanks for that suggestion. I'm still left with how to implement an audit process within Laserfiche though - as I use metadata and workflow to capture this information. Maybe I can prioritize some of these files before they hit their cutoff date. Thanks for the ideas. I will look into all of this.

I might do the following: Re-file certain documents on the back end lumped into their retention period folders, then by year of filing date - 3, 5, & 7 year retention periods with 2016, 2017, etc folders. Prioritize those files to select audits from - for example audit selections of 2016 filed documents from the 3, 5, and 7 year folders. Once those audits are completed, cut off the folder at the end of 2016 and retain until they need to be disposed of. This leaves me just 3 cutoffs to apply each year, which is totally doable.

I will explore these options and see what makes sense. Thank you for all of the suggestions.

0 0

Question

Question

How do you automate or apply records management?

Replies

Sign in to reply to this post.