Book Image

Alfresco 3 Records Management

Book Image

Alfresco 3 Records Management

Overview of this book

The Alfresco Records Management feature set is so complete that it is one of the very limited number of systems, and the only Open Source solution, that has been fully certified for Records Management use by the US Department of Defense. Record keeping is important because accurate records are really the only way that organizations can demonstrate compliance with regulatory requirements. The amount of regulation that organizations must comply with has gone up dramatically over the last decade, and the complexity of record management has increased proportionally.Alfresco 3 Records Management is a complete guide for setting up records programs within organizations. The book is the first and only one that describes Alfresco's implementation of Records Management. It not only teaches the technology for implementing Records Management, but also discusses the important roles that both processes and people play in the building of a successful records program.Alfresco 3 Records Management starts with a description of the importance of record keeping, especially from a regulatory compliance perspective. It then discusses Records Management best practices and standards, and goes on to describe step by step how to identify documents that need to be managed as records, how to use Alfresco Records Management software to set up the File Plan structure for organizing the storage of records, and then how to manage the lifecycle of the records.The book provides detailed instructions for installing and configuring Alfresco Records Management. The topics covered include setting up a record File Plan, filing records, establishing record retention schedules, setting up security and permissions, assigning metadata, extending the content model, using advanced search techniques, and creating system activity audit reports. The book also provides "deep-dive" information from a developer's perspective about how the Records Management module was implemented within the Alfresco Share platform.Alfresco 3 Records Management covers features available in both the Community and Enterprise versions of Alfresco software. By the end of this book, you will be able to successfully develop a records policy and implement it within Alfresco Records Management.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Alfresco 3 Records Management
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Records Management

How does it work?


We've looked at the types of steps that can be performed on a record during its lifecycle. In this "How does it work?" section, let's look slightly more deeply at some of those steps.

The unique record ID

When a record container, such as the Series, Category, or Folder is created, or when a record is filed, a unique record identifier for the record is created. Many companies are already using an internal convention for creating unique record IDs.

The record ID naming convention within Alfresco is YYYY-SeqNumber, that is, the year followed by a unique sequence counter. An example of this is the record ID 2010-0000003909.

Ideally, it would be nice if the unique record IDs were easily configurable, but the code for generating the record ID is hardcoded in a Java file. That file is root\modules\dod-5015\source\java\org\alfresco\module\org_alfresco_module_dod5015\action\impl\FileAction.java:

// Calculate the filed date and record identifier
Calendar fileCalendar = Calendar.getInstance...