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Alfresco Governance Services

Introduction to using Governance Services

With Governance Services you store and control all your records in a dedicated site. A Governance Services site is like other Alfresco sites, but with additional controls placed on its content.

Access a Governance Services site just as you would any other Alfresco site, from the My Sites dashlet or the Sites menu.

Instead of storing your files in a document library as you do in a “regular” Alfresco site, in a Governance Services site you file your records in the File Plan. And you can’t edit the content of records; once they’re in the File Plan record content is considered to be final.

You file records by adding them from your computer to the File Plan, or if you’re in another Alfresco site you can declare a file as a record and it will be added to the Governance Services site. Once files are added to the File Plan you can edit their metadata (properties) but you can’t edit their actual content.

Records management roles

Although Governance Services has a huge amount of functionality available, it’s actually pretty easy to learn the essentials and get up and running.

What you do in Governance Services will vary hugely depending on your role, and how your company is organized.

As a Records Manager you’re responsible for ensuring the Records Management site is properly organized and managed. The background configuration of the site should be managed by your Records Management administrator in the RM Admin Tools. This leaves you to get on with managing the site organization, devising and ensuring the implementation of retention and disposal schedules, and enabling appropriate access to information.

As a User of the Records Management site you need to file records and process them as easily as possible. Your Records Manager will have organized the site and set up retention and retention schedules, leaving you to get on with managing and processing the site records.

Life cycle of a record

You can create a record either by uploading it to the Records Management

File Plan
The File Plan is a container for records, folders, categories and retention schedules. It's effectively a virtual filing cabinet for storing records, and is the basic structure of Records Management. This structure lets you classify and group records with similar characteristics. The top level of the File Plan is created when you create a Records Management site.
, or by declaring a file in another Alfresco site as a record.

When you have added all required metadata to a record you can mark the record as

complete
A completed record is one that has all the information (metadata) present for it’s business context to make sense. A record can't be disposed of until it's complete. Usually a record can only be completed when all the mandatory metadata has been entered.
. This makes it an active part of the File Plan, and subject to the rules of the
retention schedule
A schedule of actions, events, and rules that determines how records are managed throughout their lifecycle. The actions that can happen in a retention schedule are the following. Retain – for a period or until an event, Cutoff – retention schedule triggered, Transfer – move to another location/system, Accession - record moved to another authority, Destroy - removed from the system
 it is associated with.

It then goes through various time and

event
The life cycle of a record is controlled by either time-based or event-based triggers that are set in the retention schedule. Events are triggered when actions occur on a record or folder, such as it being versioned, cut off, closed, superseded, or obsoleted.
based steps such as
cut off
This is the first step in a retention schedule. Once a record or folder is cut off this triggers the records retention period. Cut Off or inactive records can't be edited. Cut off or inactive record folders are closed.
 and retention, until it is eventually transferred elsewhere, or destroyed, according to its retention schedule.

Record Lifecycle

Further information

If you’re new to Alfresco then take a look at Using Alfresco to help you get started.

For more details on setting up and administering Governance Services see Administering Records Management.

Note: It’s recommended that you use the File Plan for Governance Services actions rather than going through the repository.

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