Records can help to prove innocence or lack of intent. In order to use them, it is important to make sure that the control, storage and use of the record occurs in the normal course of business and to demonstrate that the records accurately reflected a particular state in time. Records can also prove to be a liability and poor record keeping can have serious consequences.

Traditional Records Management

Traditional records management systems are often disconnected and inconsistent with existing repositories. These may include document management, web content management, email and imaging repositories. Information is “transferred” to the records management system for long-term storage and ultimately disposition. This legacy approach has a major impact in areas of:

• Lack of Adoption – Too difficult to use for most users
• Inconsistent Adoption – Across document, web content, email, images and faxes,
• “Broken Records” – As Information is transferred inconsistently or incompletely
• Inconsistent Information – Inconsistencies between multiple repositories and records management
• Out-Of-Date Records – As information is not transferred in a timely manner
• Increased Cost – Support multiple repositories
• Increased Exposure – To risk associated with audit, regulation and litigation

Alfresco Records Management

Alfresco offers one integrated repository to manage all formats of content across document management, web content management, email and imaging repositories. The repository is a modern platform with:

• Designed to meet DOD 5015.2 Requirements
• Drag-and-Drop Records Management Capture from Desktop Tools - Support for Microsoft® Office, Microsoft® Exchange and Open Office desktop tools though a standard Windows Explorer interface
• Automatic Metadata Extraction and Classification
• Complete auditing and workflow integration - Service Oriented Audit of every service invocation to a database table with dashboard access
• Extensible Records Management Rules Support
• Automatic Long-Term Archival Format Conversion – Automatic conversion from proprietary office formats to long-term vendor neutral formats such as Open Document Format (ODF) and Portable Document Format (PDF)
• Simple Export for Archival
• Zero Footprint on the client in both web and client server environments
• The industry’s most scalable, standards based JSR-170 content repository
• High-Availability, Fault Tolerance and Scalability – Any number of machines, auto failover and clustering
• Simple to install, use and rollout

User Functionality

Users get the functionality they expect from high-end Records Management tools as a transparent, out-of-sight set of services. They have:

• Fileplans - Automatically classify and schedule records based upon pre-existing plans and standardized structures
• Type-Base Plans - Automatically classify and schedule records based upon pre-existing types
• Automated Lifecycle Management – Schedule, content and meta-data change activation based upon simple rules
• Automatic Document Numbering
• Retention and Archival Policies
• Disposition – Controlled and scheduled handling of archiving, holds, transfers, accessions and destruction using rules and automated processing
• Pre-population of Meta-Data – Impact management and automatic updates
• Dashboards – Pre-defined reports and metadata type definitions to search and screen records due for handling and handling exceptional cases
• DOD 5015.2 Administrator Templates – To support US Department of Defense records and filing requirement for metadata definitions, fileplans and functionality
• Rapid eDiscovery – Simply search across full-text content, fileplan structures, records management categories and types

Benefits

This new and first Open Source Records Management platform delivers significant benefits in the areas of:

• Increased User Adoption – For all users across systems
• Reduced Cost – One repository, simple to install, use and rollout
• Reduced Time to Deployment – Zero footprint client
• Reduced Risk – Consistent records management for all information
• Reduced Time - Reduce delays for regulatory submissions that are delayed by ineffective or limited records management
• Reduce Time – Reduce search and discovery time and cost for litigation support