Policy Features Included in Office SharePoint Server 2007

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 includes four information management policy features to help you manage your content: Expiration, Auditing, Document Labels, and Document Bar Codes.

Expiration

As part of a company's records management process, Office SharePoint Server 2007 helps retain information for fixed periods of time. At the end of the content's life, the Expiration policy feature can dispose of content in a consistent way that can be tracked and managed. For example, you could set content that is assigned a specified content type to expire on a set date, within a certain amount of time after the document was created or last modified, or based on a workflow activity or some other event.

After the document expires, you can determine the actions that the policy control will take. For example, the policy can delete the document, or define a workflow task to have Office SharePoint Server 2007 route the document for permission to destroy it. In addition, the Expiration policy feature provides the capability for you to build and use a custom plug-in "action" to be performed on the item after it reaches its expiration date.

For more information about workflows, see Windows SharePoint Workflows in the Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SDK.

Auditing

Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides an auditable system of record. As such, Office SharePoint Server 2007 automatically logs events and activities performed by Office SharePoint Server 2007, custom solutions, and users. This Auditing feature is available for documents, as well as list items that are not part of a document, such as items in task lists, issues lists, discussion groups, and calendars. The Auditing feature addresses and logs information for events such as the following:

• Each access to an item

• Each view of an item within a list

• Each check-in and check-out of a document

• Any changes to permissions and settings

• The time a specified item was deleted and by whom

Users can query Office SharePoint Server 2007 and assemble reports of this and other event information as needed.

Programmatically, developers can use Web services to query the Office SharePoint Server 2007 object model for audit information.

You can also use the Auditing object model to write custom events to the audit log. For example, you might develop a custom-code solution that runs on top of Office SharePoint Server 2007, and write custom events that audit actions taken within that solution.

Document Labels

The Document Label feature and Bar Code feature are designed to assist you to organize your documents for systematic storage and retrieval. You can use either feature to assign a unique label to a document, whether the document is a physical copy or electronic file, which enables you to track it.

Document labels are text labels that you can have Office SharePoint Server 2007 generate automatically based on a content type's metadata. For example, a law firm might want to attach a document label consisting of client name, subject matter, and date assigned to each document of a given content type.

You can print and affix document labels to a physical copy of the document, or insert them as graphics into a 2007 Microsoft Office system document.

Document Bar Codes

Document bar codes are similar to document labels, but instead of text, they are a generated unique ID. You can print and affix the bar code to a physical copy of the document, or insert it as a graphic into a 2007 Microsoft Office system document. You can also extend and customize the format of the bar code.

See Also

Concepts

Introduction to Information Management Policy
Custom Policy Features Scenarios