Hi Tamara,

We chose to use the Drupal content management system (www.drupal.org) to manage the public view of our retention schedules (records.unt.edu).  At the time we chose this path, we did not have a budget for additional RRS software and needed a user-friendly, web-based retention schedule (previously our schedules were PDFs linked off of a website).  Making the RRS available via a Drupal site allows the user a single site to review retention policies.  As we approve changes to the RRS, Drupal makes the update(s) available online.  Back when we distributed a PDF, even small changes pushed users into printing a completely new copy of the RRS - which essentially wasted paper, toner, time and caused a versioning nightmare for me.  

We have had great success with Drupal, as we can easily integrate other web-based aspects of our functions into the Drupal RRS.  We are also always coming across open source Drupal modules (additional functionality) that help us improve our site. Additionally, we use an issue tracking system known as JIRA (http://www.atlassian.com) to manage changes to our retention policies.  We have found that Drupal and JIRA work well together.  JIRA allows us to receive, research and respond to change requests through a single interface.  We also make use of JIRA's ability to push items through designated workflows (for instance a request may come in>go through a research queue>need more information from the user> and so on).  

Please feel free to contact me with any questions or if you would like further explanation on our process.

CF

Chris Foster
Director of Institutional Records Management
University of North Texas


-----Original Message-----
Tamara Tegeler
Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2011 12:00 PM
Subject: Retention Schedule Publishing & Change Management

Good Afternoon,

I am working on a records retention schedule project and am reviewing options for tools or software used to publish schedules and manage changes.  I would appreciate hearing from the ListServe community on the following topics:

1. Publishing:  What does your organization do to publish its retention schedule?  Do you use any particular tools or types of software in publishing?  
Do you distribute your retention schedule or how do employees access it?  
What are the pros and cons of your method?
2. Change Management:  When you receive requests to make changes to your organization’s retention schedule, how do you manage the process?  Again, do you use a particular tool or type of software to track the requests, the changes and the approvals?  How do you accept, record and respond to requests?  

I would appreciate any information you can share.  If you would prefer to contact me directly, I would be happy to receive emails outside the
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Best Regards,

Tamara Tegeler 

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