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New York, NY June 8, 2008

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Using SharePoint for Document Management

contributed by John Herron

Historically SharePoint has been a minor player when it comes to document management. Limitations under SharePoint 2003, such as the lack of item level security, prevented it from being used for document management on a significant scale. With SharePoint 2007 the document management features have been improved (including addressing the item level security limitation) and with some customization, it approaches the capabilities of dedicated document management solutions.

Certainly SharePoint Document Management is a huge improvement over using shared folders. One reason is because it supports Version Control. A SharePoint Document Library can be configured to support both major and minor (draft) versions. User permissions can be configured so that certain users only see major versions, while others can see works in progress by giving them access to minor versions. Microsoft also makes it easy to compare versions by including a Compare (legal blackline) feature in Microsoft Word 2007.

In addition to versioning, SharePoint includes some basic document workflows. An approval workflow allows a document author to specify a list of approvers. The document remains a minor version, and only visible to a small subset of users, until all the approvers have signed off on the document. Once approval is complete, the document is updated to a major version and published to a wider audience. Another out-of-the-box workflow supports collecting feedback. In this case a document gets routed to a number of reviewers who are able to provide feedback, which is compiled for the author to incorporate into the final document. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) also supports Records Management, whose workflow supports setting document retention and expiration created in policies configured by an administrator.

More sophisticated workflows can be developed and applied using SharePoint Designer and Visual Studio. SharePoint Designer workflows can be managed by a business analyst, but has limited capabilities. Visual Studio has virtually limitless possibilities, but requires a developer to build and configure the workflows. Naturally there are a number of third party providers that offer more powerful solutions, without the complexity of Visual Studio, but those product costs need to be weighed against the development costs to evaluate when to use them.

Another key benefit to SharePoint as a document management tool is full text indexing. Any document stored in SharePoint is crawled and indexed to allow locating and retrieving documents based on text contained in the document. Document security is preserved, so users are only able to search documents that they have permissions to read.

Sometimes full text is not the only way that you want to be able to locate documents. SharePoint also supports metadata fields on all documents in the document library. So in addition to the default fields, such as Author, Creation Date, Last Modified Date, etc., you can create custom fields, such as Document Type (Memo, Contract, Presentation ...), Office (NY, LA, ...), Department (Legal, Sales, ...), Strategy or any other category that suits your organization. These metadata fields, or site columns in SharePoint lingo, can be combined into content types and multiple content types can be assigned to a document library. This way when a user saves a document to a document library, different metadata fields can be associated with the document, depending on which content type was selected. The metadata fields can be required to enforce categorization and when using MOSS 2007's Business Data Catalog (BDC) the selection choices and validation can be made against external databases. These custom fields can also be indexed and with a little customization the SharePoint Advanced Search screen can allow users to search on these fields, as well as full text. In a similar way the metadata fields can be used to create custom views, so that you can limit a view of documents to all contracts edited in the last week or all due diligence documents for Client X or any other view that users may desire.

Another nice feature of Office 2007 document management support is that you can maintain offline copies of documents in Outlook 2007. By connecting the SharePoint document library to Outlook you can edit documents offline and automatically synchronize changes back to the library when you reconnect to the network. There are also third party applications, for example from Colligo, that offer other offline options, including support for older versions of Microsoft Office. Microsoft's Groove is another alternative for managing offline updates to documents.

While all these features give SharePoint a solid document management foundation, there are some limitations. There may also be features that users have come to expect, having used other document management systems. One of these is the ability to automatically profile a document. If you configure required metadata fields for a document library, when a user saves a document from a Microsoft Office application, he is prompted with a form to fill out, so that the document can be appropriately categorized. Users can find this requirement to categorize a document annoying and may use generic values for the required fields in order to get through the profiling process as quickly as possible. Of course, if documents are profiled with miscellaneous values, it defeats the purpose of categorizing in the first place. Additionally, many non-Microsoft applications, such as Lotus Notes and Adobe Acrobat, are unaware of SharePoint and will save the document to the library without presenting a profile form to the user. In this case the document is uncategorized and unless the user submits or edits the document through the web interface, it never gets profiled.

Other document management systems have worked around this problem by adding auto profiling capabilities. In this scenario, an administrator can associate certain metadata with a folder. When a user drops a document into that folder, the metadata fields are automatically populated, saving the user from having to fill out a profile form. Fortunately SharePoint can be customized to provide the same functionality. SharePoint allows developers to build custom event handlers and Premier has built such handlers for various clients. An event handler can be triggered upon certain actions, such as when an item as added to a document library or an item is modified or moved to a new location. Using this technology, Premier has built custom event handlers that automatically profile documents based on which folder the user drops the file. Note that SharePoint document libraries can be viewed in the same way as file shares in Windows Explorer, so a user can simply drag and drop the file into the desired folder, completely unaware that he is even using SharePoint. Also note that the file save dialog within applications will also see this folder as just another Windows explorer location. This can solve the problem of profiling documents from non-Microsoft applications. When the user saves the document into the folder that is the SharePoint document library, the event handler is triggered, and the appropriate metadata is applied to the document, simplifying views and searching when someone is trying to locate the document.

Another fairly common feature of document management systems is the ability to create a specific workspace based on a template of desired features and permissions for each new project or matter. When a new project or client is introduced, a set of folders or features, such as a task list or event calendar, can be automatically created so that users have a place to file documents and other work related to the client or project. Premier has created automated workspace generation tools for SharePoint to facilitate creating a place to file work associated with new clients or matters. For example, adding a new client in your Customer Relationship Management system could trigger the creation of a new workspace. This workspace could have a folder for proposals where the sales team has write permissions and a folder for system documentation where the engineering team has write permissions. The CRM system can be the source for identifying the new clients or projects, as well as identifying the salespeople and engineers associated with this client. Using the SharePoint Application Programming Interface and the data from the CRM system, a new workspace is created and the appropriate permissions are set on each of the folders or lists within the workspace.

Hopefully from this relatively brief description, you can see the merits of SharePoint as a document management system and that with some custom programming, additional functions can be added that allow you to achieve the features seen in dedicated document management systems, as well as features customized to your organization.

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