Understanding Record Management Feature Part 2 - Labeling

Hi All,

Here I am back with continuing part of understanding record management feature in MOSS. Here in this article we will take up the labeling.

In an organization and in a business, documents are maintained with proper handling. Each document stands for some purpose depending on it is of accounts department or project specific or HR Specific. Many companies have policies defined saying that each documents should follow certain rule. When we say rule that means like properties (Understanding Record Management Feature Part 1 - Document Information Panel) that we discuss in our earlier post.

Understanding Record Management Feature Part 3 - Barcode

Record Management Feature Part 4 –Expiration Policy

Understanding Record Management Feature Part 5 – Auditing

If I put this in other way then it is like each document has specific header which might indicate something. Some instructions and some conditions and terms are applied to the document. When you open that document or take a print out those things are also printed automatically. They are the information that sits on top of the document just like company logo, may be unique code for document and any other terms.

Some documents have fixed set of terms and Conditions defines which appears at the top of the page but there are certain parameters that are replaces after filling up the properties for the document, Header automatically sits at the top of the page. It’s just like you have fix statement but you have certain tokens to be replaced by some properties.

Labeling appeals for the maintaining the consistency across the organization not only to the organizer of documents and creator of documents but for anybody who works in the organization comes to know about this as soon as he opens document. It helps management to keep track of the same technique to have same quality work across the organization.

We can call it as a Labeling with metadata of your document library.

Ok, let's dive in this to understand it in a better way.

(1) To get the Labeling enable in your document library, the first step to be taken is to go in document library settings -> under permissions and Management "Information management policy settings
" ->Define Policy -> Press OK.

(2) Name of the Policy will be document and it will be disable. Do not worry about that for a moment. Go ahead and write down the description and also write down your policy statement. Let me write the policy statement. I will explain you one by one feature here. This policy statement will appear at the top of the Page. We will see when we demonstrate the same.



(3)Go ahead and check Enable Labeling.



(4) Now as you can see many options are available now to play with. So let's play with them. Very first options say that prompt user to insert a label before saving it. When you want this as an optional one then you can leave this option or else if you want that labels are required then it is must for every user to insert a label and I suggest keep it as a required because it gives a consistency in each document.

(5) Next option tells you about Prevent changes to labels after they are added. Means if you do not want any user to disturb your label once it is created, then select this option. I am keeping this option uncheck.

(6)Then comes the section Label format. Observe the examples given below. It says that you can write anything here which will appear as a label in the document. If you want a newline you will have to enter \n and if you want to have tab then you have to enter \t here.

Before giving an example I would like to tell you that labels are metalabels. When I say metalabels that means that you can use the metadata inside the labels. You can write simple statement as a label or you can create label which includes any column of that document library which act as tokens which are replaced with the actual value of the label. But be careful because even if you missed anything like misspell or write token which is not the field in the document library, it will give you an error.

Document belongs to project Name {Project Title} \n Document used by team {Team Title}. (Keep in mind that "Project Title" and "Team Title" are two columns defined in my document library.

(I am referring same document library which I had used in my first post for record management feature - Document information panel)

That means on the First Line I want Document belongs to project Name {Project Title} where {Project Title} should be replaced by the actual value of that field in the ListItem.

And in the next line I want this. Document used by team {Team Title} where {Team Title}s should be replaced by the actual value of that field in the ListItem.

But just to demonstrate that if you don't give proper name of the field in label it will give you error like the below one. To demonstrate the Error I am changing my label line to this so that it will produce error as {TeamTitle} is not a column in my document library.

Now Label is Document belongs to project Name {Project Title} \n Document used by team {TeamTitle}.

Write this kind of line and press refresh button below to see the preview, but because this column is not there in my document library it will give error like this.



(7) Ok, back to the correct track. Define the correct label now. You can select Font, size, height, width, style and justification and all. Define accordingly and press refresh to see how it will look like when it will insert the label really. Field Names will not be replaced. They will be replaced at real time when you'll work with the document. See the figure below.



Other Options like Auditing, Expiration and Barcodes we will cover in different parts of this series.

For now, it’s time to press OK button and go back to the document library and experience the labels.

(8) Crate a new document in this document library now. When you are writing and creating the document. You have to fill the properties as I have defined mine. Like project Title and Team Title. I have selected the properties and moment I will try to save the document it will prompt me the message.



(9) Press Yes and see the magic. Tokens in the label are replaced by the actual value and label is placed at the top of the page as we have defined the label in the policy.



(10) Save the document and when you again open that document you can find the same label there.



You can also see labels in print preview and when you take out a print, you'll get that label also on page.

But before putting this thing in to work you also need to know the following facts about labeling.

(1) Labels can refer only up to 10 columns from document library and each column will be of maximum of 255 characters.

(2) Label height can be set from .25 to 20 inches. Label width can be from .25 to 20 inches. Default height is 1 inch.

Keep these points also in mind.

(1) All columns that are used in Labels must exist in document library.

(2) Label content is not longer than the length of the label.

(3) If Formatting parameters refer to a font which is not there on client machine then office will replace it with default fonts.
Here we conclude the learning of labeling in record management feature. I’ll continue with this series in my next article.