Hello to everyone,

Although I haven’t been an active participant of the Listserv for some
time, I do read as many of the postings as time allows.  We are in the
beginning stages of implementing a process to move email messages off of
Lotus Notes and into Document Manager with records management being applied
to those that are considered to be official records.  (The recent
discussion about metadata was well timed for me.)

The dilemma I have been struggling with is what to do with the large volume
of email that is currently stored by some employees in their Notes archives
database, plus their folders within Notes.  Many of the people with the
biggest volume of messages in these two locations are part of our Senior
Staff (VPs and Directors).

The amount of time it will take these people to review existing messages
and move them into the appropriate Document Manager folders is potentially
prohibitive.  By the way, these are also among the first scheduled to use
the new system.  We are using the top down approach and they are supportive
of this.  However, they are very apprehensive of the time commitment to do
the review.  I don’t want this to hold up our implementation or to sour
their support.

It is always better to expand the pool of knowledge and experience.  So, I
decided to come to this group and see if there are some other ideas as to
how to proceed.  Here are some of the options being considered.
1.    Force them to do the review, but give them 4 to 6 months to get it
done.  The problem I foresee with this approach is that human nature says
they won’t seriously work on the review until they near the end of the
“grace period’’ and then want more time.  At my last meeting with Senior
Staff, they as much as said that is what will happen.
2.    Allow the current messages to remain in Notes unless they are opened
and then force them to be handled according to our new process.  This may
get some messages moved, but probably won’t get all of them and there is no
way of knowing how long it might take to get the remaining messages down to
a manageable number for manual review.  As a result, many official records
will still be outside of RM control.
3.    Move everything to CDs.  This would be for only those employees with
large volumes of emails.  To me this is just a dumping ground.  It also
removes the ability to apply RM and to easily search the emails when
needed.  I really don’t see anything but problems with this option.
4.    Move everything into Document Manager.  Many of the people already
have their email in some sort of file structure in Notes either in their
archives or their folders.  We may be able to determine some type of
retention for these folders as they are moved into DM.
5.
I am hoping that some of you may have other ideas that we can explore or
real life experiences you are willing to share (i.e., don’t do it this
way).  At this point, we have not started testing our options, so if there
are other we haven’t thought of I would be delighted to hear about them.

Thanks.

***********************************
Janet Nelson CRM
Manager Records
Dairyland Power Cooperative
3200 East Avenue South
PO Box 817
La Crosse WI 54602-0817

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608/787-1218

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