A long, long time ago, our email system was completely unmanaged, except
for a space quota. As users bumped against their quota, they were
instructed to delete messages, which they did with no respect to RM
requirements.
A long time ago, we instituted an automatic 30-day retention for messages
residing within your 'in' or 'sent' boxes. Same quota. If users needed
to save messages for a business reason, they were to be saved into folders
that the users created. Still no RM on the created folders, but at least
stuff in your 'in' and 'sent' boxes got deleted, and users had 30 days to
decide wether or not to file messages into folders
Two and a half years ago we instituted, company wide, a new email
management system, which allows users to manage their email messages
according to our existing records retention schedule, with virtually no
extra effort on their part. We created five retention folders for the
users 1Y, 2Y, 3Y, 5Y and Record Hold (plus retained the 30-day in/sent box
deletion). Users were instructed to take each of their existing folders,
look up the appropriate retention period (via our retention schedule
linked to Notes) and move folder and all into the appropriate retention
group. Took 10 minutes to an hour or so per user to set up.... then they
could forget about it. Users were instructed to continue to file messages
into the folders as they always did. Only when users create a new folder
do they look up the retention group it needs to go into, then business as
usual. Users are not required to 'declare' a message to be a record. The
act of filing a message into a folder is the 'declaration' that the
message is a business record. Users are not required to 'classify' a
message. The act of filing a message into a particular folder is the
'classification' of the record. Users check messages due for disposal for
record hold status, and can move those to appropriate record hold folders.
Users have been declaring and classifiying all along. Sure, we created a
CBT to help users better understand the definition of a business record,
etc. And sure, its not a perfect solution... it allows several people
to save the same attachments, for example. But its easy to use - we had
virtually zero implementation problems; messages come up for disposal
according to our retention schedule; nothing is retained forever within
email; messages on Hold are being held; growth of email server space has
slowed, etc. etc. We've actually had users call and ask if it was OK if
they moved records out of their shared drives into Notes so they could be
managed! (answer was No, but we are working on a shared drive RM
solution...)
Regards,
Dan Jones
Honda of America Mfg.
Records Administrator
Records Information Center
937.642.5000 X61239
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