Our Four Favourite Things in Collabware Version 4.0
Collabware recently launched Collabware v4.0, the DoD 5015.2 certified version of the popular Collabware CLM platform. Now that we’ve been working with it for a while we thought we’d highlight our four favorite things about the latest version of Collabware CLM!
Note if you’re looking to upgrade your current version of Collabware to Collabware 4.0, add Collabware to your SharePoint environment or just curious to learn more about Collabware CLM or Collabspace please email us at contact@gravityunion.com!
1. Interacting with workflows via search
Collabware had the brilliant idea of implementing retention policies as workflows – after all, retention policies are essentially a workflow (wait six months, declare, wait for eight years then move to a record center and then finally destroy).
Sometimes you may want to interact with workflows to test out workflow logic, send things for early destruction or perhaps to send things to a record center in order to clean up your SharePoint environment.
Previously, when manually interacting with workflows, one could work with individual documents through the lifecycle details screen or work with multiple documents in a document library. Or perhaps even engage with IT to write PowerShell scripts in order to interact with workflows en masse.
In Collabware v4.0, end users are able to interact with workflows via search. That is to say, Collabware allows for end users (with sufficient privileges) to search for documents and then interact with the workflows’ running on the documents returned in the search results.
Since Collabware CLM has a rich set of workflow actions like:
Declare Record
Classify Document
Set Security
Set Property
Mark as Vital
Send to Record Center
… and many more
Coupled with the fact that workflow actions in Collabware CLM are extensible (we’ve created a couple of custom workflow actions like “delete version history”) the possibilities are endless!
One could find a set of documents through search and declare them all as record regardless of their location. Or one could find all old policies that were never approved and published as official policies and reclassify them as non-records.
Management of your records just got a whole lot easier….
2. Editing metadata on declared records
Metadata is usually considered as part of the record itself, after all, it could contain important about emails (to, from, date) etc., who approved a contract or tell us if a contract was signed. That being said, there are valid instances when you may need to change the metadata after it has been declared as a record:
If any of the metadata is erroneous or missing
If the metadata has changed (for example department or vendor names)
If new metadata is added to your content type hierarchy
Previously one needed to run a script as in our previous blog post. Or one needed to undeclare the documents manually which was an extra step and would pollute the audit trail with low value information.
Lucky for us, Collabware v4.0 now allows users (with enough privileges) to change metadata on declared records through the lifecycle details screen of Collabware CLM.
3. Exporting Search Results
Collabware has invested heavily in search web parts for Collabware CLM to support the idea of a single source of truth within your SharePoint solution. The Information query web part is extremely useful as it allows you to provide a library-like feel – allowing you to group, search, sort and filter content that match your search criteria - regardless of their underlying location.
With such a powerful way to find content across your SharePoint environment, it made sense to also allow for end users to export their search results (either just the metadata or both the metadata and underlying content).
This is especially useful for exporting content for FOI, ATIP, litigation, internal audits or when transferring content to an external organization like regulatory agencies or partner companies without needing to engage with IT.
Every user even gets their own dedicated search page that surfaces this functionality!
4. Metadata Driven Security
To meet DOD standards, Collabware needed to add in the ability to manage security based on the Principle of Least Privilege. Collabware v4.0 now allows the security of a document to be driven by its associated metadata. When configured, a multi-choice column allows a user to apply one or more security levels to be applied to a given document. This differs from SharePoint out of the box as the document is only available to only to those users who match ALL the permissions assigned to a given document rather than at least one of the permissions as SharePoint behaves natively.
