Ten evergreen principles to help organise your document collections on your intranet.
If you have an intranet system, e.g. SharePoint or OpenText, you have powerful actions to manage your information. Not knowing how to use these actions is like not knowing how to operate turn signals in your car—you create problems for yourself and others around you.
This article describes 10 document management principles to help you and your colleagues achieve peace and happiness when managing and sharing documents on your intranet.
Whenever possible, create your content as web content, such as pages and lists, instead of putting it into Word or Excel documents. This applies especially to content that many people will frequently change.
For example, if you want to create a list of contacts' email addresses in different countries, don’t create it in Excel. Instead, a web list feature can create a simple three-column list that stores the country, contact, and email address.
If you create folders or documents, ensure their names resonate with others accessing your information. If they don’t, your document may never be found.
For example, use common organising principles such as events or processes:
The idea is to use conventions that stand the test of time, even if you leave the organisation.
You don't have to make multiple copies if you want to create different document versions. Most intranet systems support versioning. That is, you can have only one document with different versions under it, not multiple copies of documents.
For example, if you have a document titled HR Handbook.doc and want to update it, you can simply edit and save it, and the system will automatically add a new version. You don't have to do anything else. The system also keeps a version history that people can use if they want older versions.
You may not want to share your document with others just yet, or you may want to share it only with specific people. You can specify who can and cannot see your document by setting access rights.
With access rights, you get to specify who has access to your document and what they can do.
For example, if you want your team to comment on a document, give them edit rights. If you want other departments to reference the document, give them viewing rights.
If many people are working on a document and want to edit it but don't want others to edit it simultaneously, you can ‘check-out’.
For example, if you and your team are working on the minutes-of-meeting document and want to make a significant update, you don't have to take it down. You can just check-out the document. Only you can edit the document now, but your team cannot. However, they can still view it. When you are done making changes, you can check-in the document.
Let’s say there are three people responsible for documenting the minutes of a meeting. Usually, someone starts a document and emails the group for their input. Multiple versions and many emails later, the minutes of the meeting document are complete. There is a better way to do this without playing email ping-pong!
Intranet systems offer a feature called co-authoring, where everyone responsible can work on the same document simultaneously. This means there is just one document with multiple authors working on it in a truly collaborative fashion. No more email ping-pong or multiple versions floating around.
Let’s get back to the minutes of the meeting document. This document has a particular format. It has a table with different headers such as Date, Time, Attendees, Actions, Follow-ups, etc. You’ll need the same document format for each meeting. The traditional way to do this is to take the last minutes of the meeting document and create a copy of it. You then spend time deleting the unwanted stuff or deliberating on what should stay and what should go.
Many intranet systems offer a better option called templates. Templates are structured documents that you can use to create a document. The template automatically gives you the correct structure you need.
For example, when you create a document using a ‘minutes of meeting’ template, you get a document with the correct table structure you can use immediately. You don't have to tinker with anything. The good part is that if the template changes, everyone immediately gets access to the improved version!
Workflow is routing a document to others for review or approval before final publication. For example, you may be responsible for an important policy document that is scheduled to be published next week. You have done your part, but before you publish it your supervisor needs to approve it.
Traditionally, you would email your supervisor and start playing email ping-pong. But with an intranet system in place, you just need to trigger a workflow. The system will notify your supervisor to take action and send reminders if they fail to acknowledge it. It will also publish the document if everything is OK or reroute it to you with comments for changes. Cool, huh?
Say you want to monitor an important document. To do this, you visit the document occasionally or tell the author to email you if there is a change. However, with an intranet system, the system can remind you whenever the document changes. All you have to do is subscribe to the document. Once you subscribe, the intranet system will automatically notify you when there is a change.
Yes, many intranet systems will enable you to work on a document offline (not on the corporate network).
You work offline just as you would work online, except the system saves your document on your personal computer when you’re offline. When the system detects a connection to the corporate network, it automatically saves it to the right place on the intranet. It is all done automatically.
The ten principles described in this article are elementary but necessary for intranet users to know, especially if they regularly share documents with others. Advanced principles such as metadata and archival exist, but let's leave that for another article! We can improve knowledge sharing and collaboration on our intranets only when most staff know how to use and manage documents effectively.
I enjoy helping organisations achieve their potential in an ever-changing and complex world. I lead product and transformation conversations.
