1 / 7

Organizing Electronic Records:

Organizing Electronic Records:. A Basic Approach. How you should organize your electronic records. No filing strategy: You create no folders, keeping all emails in the inbox.

tmayer
Download Presentation

Organizing Electronic Records:

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. Organizing Electronic Records: A Basic Approach

  2. How you should organize your electronic records. • No filing strategy: Youcreate no folders, keeping all emails in the inbox. • Filing system: You use a simple filing scheme based on topical areas. In this way, you can incorporate your office’s records retention and disposition schedule. • You use a combination of filing system and usage of inbox to store emails.

  3. Planning a Filing Structure • Deal with bad electronic filing systems now, the problem will only get worse as more records are created. • Plan ahead--coordinate with paper filing system. • Create a directory tree with primary subjects divided by secondary subjects. • Keep all files together in a central directory/ folder.

  4. Planning a Filing Structure • Each folder and each file needs a logical place in the filing structure, so arbitrary decisions are limited. • Filing structures must be easy to understand. • Focus on business processes, not records. • Define activities associated with each business process. • Determine how records are retrieved and accessed. • Use consistent terminology.

  5. Planning a Filing Structure While there are no limits to the number of sub-folders that you can create, your filing system may become confusing if you have more than 3 or 4 levels of sub-folders.

  6. Naming Electronic Files • Follow the ABC Rule; use titles that are: Accurate, Brief, and Concise. • Use default application file extensions. • Titles should have only one interpretation. • Avoid repeating the folder name in file name. • Determine subject content when naming. • Use version numbers, if necessary (useful for e-mail attachments) • Be consistent with case numbers, dates, upper vs. lower case

  7. Managing Filing Systems • As new projects are started and new records are created the filing system will need to change. • As some folders grow they may get too large and will need to be divided. • Eventually some folders may need to be eliminated or combined with others. • Managing a filing system is an ongoing process.

More Related