Best Practices in Repository Design

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Presenter

Daniel Ryan
Presales Engineer
Laserfiche
Presales@laserfiche.com

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 Agenda

01 Establish a Foundation

02 Planning a Folder Structure

03 Managing Security
04 Using Automation Tools
Re-Organizing an Existing
05 Repository
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 Audience
• Administrators
• Repository Architects
• Users with some experience

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 Objectives
• Establishing good design
• Creating design structure
• Getting the most out of your repository
• Guidelines for automation
• Reorganizing an existing system

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Metadata

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 What is Metadata?

• The most important

information about your
document
• Foundation of the
repository

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 What is Metadata?

• Artist: The Beatles

• Album: Abbey Road
• Genre: Rock
• Released: 1969

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 Fields

• Store extra information

• Help organize data
• Search and retrieve
• Required Fields
• Value Constraints

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 Field Types

• Text
• Number
• Date
• Time
• Date/Time

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 Using Metadata
• Enables automated naming
conventions
• Prevent duplicates
• Take advantage of options!
• Lists, restraints, required, etc.

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 Field Types

• Dynamic Fields
• Autofill fields based on other fields
• Ensures data accuracy
• For example: when “Purchase Order” is entered, fill in
the rest of the metadata from the database

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 Templates

• Groups of fields we
always want to appear
together
• Ensures correct fields
• Helps categorization

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 Templates
Template Names:
• Identifiable
• Not necessary to
add more fields

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Metadata

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Metadata

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Metadata

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Metadata

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Metadata

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Metadata

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Planning for
Success

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 Structuring Your Repository
Where is everything going to be stored?
• How are your users going to be using these folders?
• Alphabetical? Steps in a process?
• Design for scalability
• Growing the repository should be seamless
• Don’t overwhelm
• Show only what the user needs to see, and no more

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 Logical Folders

•One logical folder

• Only one possible location
•Start with broad categories
• Scope should narrow
•Keep folder structure simple

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 Naming Conventions

Guidelines
• Be consistent
• Pick a naming convention and stick to it
• Be logical
• Make names searchable
• Make your names unique and identifiable
• Base naming convention on metadata

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Managing Security

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 Managing Security

Administrative Privileges
• High level administrative tasks for managing the repository
• For example: Allow a user to manage other users, perform records
management actions, or create metadata fields
• Usually restricted to only a few users
• Changed in the administration console

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 Managing Security

Feature Rights
• Allow a user to perform specific actions
• For example: Read or edit documents, import documents, or move entries
• Applies to the entire repository
• Changed in the Administration Console

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 Managing Security

Access Rights
• Controls what actions a users can perform on specific parts of the
repository, including documents, folders, and metadata
• For example: View an entry, Annotate a document, or see through
redactions
• Applies to specific areas, down to individual documents and folders
• Changed in the repository

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 Managing Security
• Groups groups groups!
• Best practice
• Easy to manage roles
• Inherit rights
• Don’t give more rights
than needed

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 Organizing Users
• Use Windows authentication when
applicable
• Organize users by role with Groups
• Adjust universal settings with the
"Everyone" user
• Carry over settings like views, search
settings, saved searches, etc.
• You can copy from individual users to
the “Everyone” user and vice versa

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 Designing for Scalability
• Be Consistent
• Be Logical
• Searchable
• Make your names unique and identifiable
• Based on metadata

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Guidelines for
Automation

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 Tokens
%(Last Name), %(First Name) - %(Document Name)
• Burns, Nick – Employment Contract
• Potter, Ron – Employment Contract

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 Types of Automation Tools
• Workflow
• Quickfields
• Forms
• Import Agent
• Connector

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 When to use Workflow
•Business processes
•Interacting with entries in the repository
•Organize and name new content
•Reorganizing misnamed files
•Fill in missing metadata

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Sample Workflow – Routing and Naming

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 When to use Quick Fields
•Batch scanning tool
•Physical or electronic documents
•Extract relevant information
•Standardize naming
•New and existing documents

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Quick Fields - OCR

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Quick Fields - OCR

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 Reorganizing an existing repository
•Start with a plan
•Utilize automation tools to reprocess
documents
•Use tokens to rename files and folders
•Implement security settings to exert control

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Sample Workflow - Reorganizing

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 Let’s Review!

•Create an intuitive folder plan

•Establish standard naming conventions
•Use relevant metadata
•Goal: repositories should be intuitive and easy!

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 Next Steps
Recommended Classes
Tuesday, February 7 Time-Saving Tips and Tricks
4:00 PM – 5:00 PM RM 104B
Wednesday, February 8 Working with Documents in Laserfiche P1 (lab)
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM Grand Ballroom A
Wednesday, February 8 Getting Started with Laserfiche Forms P1 (lab)
1:30 PM – 3:45 PM RM 201

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 Next Steps
Recommended Classes
Wednesday, February 8 Overview of the Business Process Library
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM RM 102AB
Wednesday, February 8 Getting Started with Laserfiche Workflow (lab)
4:00 PM – 5:00 PM Grand Ballroom B
Thursday, February 9 Getting Started with Laserfiche Security (lab)
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM Grand Ballroom B

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Q&A

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 Getting Started with Searching

3545 Long Beach Blvd.

Long Beach, CA 90807
1.562.988.1688
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