Enabling Information-Management Policies

Many companies have policies about how to monitor report usage, how long to retain documents, and whether approval is required before a document is deleted. MOSS includes auditing and expiration features to help you implement these policies, but they’re disabled by default in your site collection. To enable either of these features, click Site Actions, point to Site Settings, click Modify All Site Settings, and click Site Collection Policies in the Site Collection Administration section. Click Create Policy, and select the applicable check boxes: Enable Auditing, Enable Expiration, or both.

When you enable auditing, you can specify which events to audit. You can limit auditing to edits or deletions, moving items to alternate locations, check in and check out events, viewing or downloading reports, or any combination of these events. You can also define these audit events by opening the Site Settings page and clicking Site Collection Audit Settings. This additional audit-configuration page lets you set up auditing for changes to a report’s content types or columns, searches of the site, and changes to users and their permissions on the site.

The expiration feature lets you specify a report-retention period based on a period of time following the report’s created or last-modified date or based on a workflow or some other custom application. When the expiration date arrives, the expiration configuration you define determines whether the report is deleted or a workflow is initiated.