Content Migration Tools

We recently launched a suite of awesome SharePoint Tools.  While using the tools internally, I came accross a subtle but cool technique to copy a SharePoint list with dependent content types to the right place in another site collection!

At first glance this task seems to be simple enough considering there are some tools on the market that can let user to grab a list and drag it / drop to the other site collections. Still, you must take into consideration the dependencies within the SharePoint architecture before doing this drag and drop; the list may have content types defined in the parent site, not within the source site itself.

Let’s, for the sake of simplicity, consider two sites: root site of the site collection (Publishing Portal in this case) and its sub-site (Hadrian's Site).

The tricky part is that the parent site (Publishing Portal) contains the definitions for content types. And the sub-site (Hadrian's Site) contains the list itself with all views and content.  We want to keep it that way in our new world to comply with our Content Migration Strategy.

If we continue with a simple drag and drop then we will end up with a list in our destination sub-site that has the content-types directly associated with it instead of the parent site. This is not ideal because acordding to our Content Migration Stragety all vehicle-based content types must be created in the site collection root with the intent to reuse them across the sub-sites.

A workaround to this dilemia would be to copy the list twice. First, to copy it to the root site of the destination site collection even if it ultimately should not go there. Unlike the first copy attempt, this time do not copy content, permissions, workflows or views related to the list. Instead just copy the list itself and all dependent content types. This way, all content types and fields will be automatically created together with the list in the right spot of the destination site collection. There are specific options in a Content Migration Tool like MetaVis Migrator for SharePoint to give the granular control to copy just list with content types.

After this, delete the list from the root site of the destination site collection. All content types created in the root site will still be there because they are defined outside of the list.

Finally to tie things up, copy the same list again but this time – to the right sub-site of the destination site collection. It will create the list and reuse all content types from the root site created during the previous copy. This time, select all options to copy content, permissions and views on the copy list wizard screen.  A helpful hint to preserve the architecture in your target site during your MOSS Migration.

This technique allows to preserve originally designed architecture of SharePoint site collection that involves complex taxonomies of site columns and content type hierarchies.  Make sure you also understand your architecture before you jump in; check out MetaVis Architect to get a complete view of your MOSS properties and build yourself a strong Content Migration Strategy.


 

Download the MetaVis Architect Suite Business Results Sheet
to learn more about moving and classifying content between SharePoint sites.




Content provided by MetaVis for Vamosa

If you use a Document Management System (DMS) to manage document based content you will already know that one of the key issues faced is how to move existing content into the new system.

On paper document migration looks relatively easy. A team of people could spend the next six months copying files and documents from their existing location into the DMS. However in order to achieve an effective document migration project it is essential that you consider:

•    How many files can one person move in one day? A document migration project of only 100,000 pages might take anywhere between 10 to 100 days to complete.
•    What happens during this move? Do you place a content freeze over all of the files and documents for the duration of the migration project? What about moving attached documents and handling internal and external links? How can you incorporate this functionality into your document migration strategy?

A document migration does not simply mean changing a few attributes and then placing the content into a slightly different information architecture. Document migrations involve the wholesale change of properties, storage, information architecture and content lifecycle, therefore document migration projects tend to involve hundreds of minor changes to very large volumes of data. This can potentially become incredibly time-consuming and frustrating. To reduce this confusion and to improve data quality, eliminate redundant, obsolete and redundant information and match the requirements of your new system, you really need a tried and tested method.

Vamosa Consultancy Practice, with their collective experience gained on over one hundred client projects, can assist in implementing best practice content quality processes; such as when selected to undertake the migration of the website and corporate Intranet for the UK’s Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

Working with integration partner, digital media giant Euro RSCG, Vamosa’s solutions and expertise was the obvious choice to deliver a web and Intranet content migration for Defra.

Gregory Roekens, Technology Director at Euro RSCG said ‘We were asked to provide a best of breed and best value solution to Defra’s business content migration problem and Vamosa’s tools and methods have the reputation as the Central Government standard’.

Vamosa Consulting was able to successfully bring control and structure to all documents across Defra’s content stores, providing, de-duplicated and clean content. As a part of an ongoing Enterprise Content Governance strategy, Vamosa ECoG Suite for Documents also uniquely pinpoints breaches of policy for all document governance areas, and offers an automated process to resolve each breach, allowing document stores to be kept up to code.

Organizations use SharePoint for a variety of things, from Intranets to Extranets, from Customer Portals to document management and for team collaboration.

Recently there has been a significant amount of discussion around exactly what SharePoint is and what it offers. For example, a recent AIIM article highlights 8 things SharePoint 2010 needs to be a true ECM system. A blog by the Microsoft Team describes SharePoint 2010 in 1 sentence, 8 categories and 40 features. The Rez's SharePoint blog provides a comprehensive comparison of features between SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010.

One element thats there has been great excitement around, is the SharePoint 2010 taxonomy implementation and management across sites and site collections. Organizations must spend time and effort building the appropriate foundation for utilizing the content taxonomy. That is all well and good when a green field project is started, but considerations must be given to data that is already stored in previous versions of SharePoint; how can that information be classified correctly when undertaking a SharePoint Migration? Microsoft does not provide a tool or utility which can be used to apply a new taxonomy and as a result many organizations may become stuck during a MOSS migration.

Vamosa recently announced a partnership with MetaVis to help both existing and new customers get a better ROI and increased value when moving into SharePoint 2010 from SharePoint 2003 or SharePoint 2007 environments, by ensuring the new taxonomy values can be applied to documents.

The MetaVis Suite does not simply help organizations migrate their existing content into the SharePoint 2010 platform; it also provides features such as  a graphical top down view of the web estate and it highlights dependencies between objects. This provides the administrator with a complete view of how their sites are structured. The 'Live Compare' feature of MetaVis provides useful functionality as it allows comparisons of two sites to be undertaken in real-time, listing the differences between sites at the granular level of identifying column differences between content types.

Synchronizing two SharePoint environments at the click of a button is only one of many features offered by Metavis that will help SharePoint Administrators perform their day to day tasks more effectively and efficiently, while ensuring their organization has an effective SharePoint Governance strategy.

As noted in a previous post  by Nic Archer it is anticipated that a third of organizations will in time employ a MOSS migration strategy and migrate to the new SharePoint 2010 platform. However in order to maximize organizational efficiency it is essential that all data is prepared prior to the SharePoint 2010 deployment to ensure a smooth content migration strategy.

By defining efficient content taxonomy structures prior to deployment, organizations are able to more easily move content into their new SharePoint environment resulting in improved site architecture and navigation within the new site. This task in itself can involve a significant amount of work before data is ready to be migrated.  If this stage is not meticulously carried out, the value of the content in the new store will be significantly depleted.

The suite of MetaVis tools for SharePoint, now allows SharePoint administrators to reclassify content by assigning new metadata values and new content types during a migration, allowing organizations to migrate more efficiently. Even post migration, MetaVis allows administrators to bulk update metadata, should this be required, further enhancing the findability of data for the user.

With MetaVis, SharePoint administrators can utilize the new Term Store, to graphically re-design and re-architect their content, significantly improving search and discovery of local documents for organizations that are located globally.
By utilizing the capabilities of the new SharePoint environment through MetaVis, administrators will be able transform the web experience, lower the cost of ownership of content management and deliver error free automated migrations, while creating effective content structures in SharePoint 2010 – the ultimate goal for all SharePoint administrators.

To learn more about the suite of MetaVis tools download the MetaVis Architect Suite Buisness Results Sheet.

Yesterday we announced our partnership with MetaVis to be the sole European distributor of MetaVis packaged software tools to help SharePoint Administrators. We will now provide tools that ease the daily task of organizing SharePoint environments for improved search, findability and e-discovery.

Our decision to partner with MetaVis was not made lightly. We evaluated a number of SharePoint migration solutions including Metalogix and AvePoint to ensure we would be providing out clients with the best out-of-the-box product on the market.

The most significant reason we chose MetaVis is because it was developed for the SharePoint 2010 market and therefore provides a more comprehensive solution. The MetaVis Architect Suite not only allows migration, but it allows SharePoint Administrators to graphically re-design and re-architect content so they get the most out of the features and functions of 2010: this is the major differentiation.

When evaluating Metalogix and AvePoint we recognized that they could do simple MOSS migrations, but being developed for SharePoint 2003 and 2007 means they have only been adapted for 2010. The products will not necessarily give you solutions for re-architecting your content and definitely do not provide an easy to use graphical representation of the your content. And as a result, you’ll end up migrating all your content to SharePoint 2010 without the ability to take advantage of all the new features and functions within SharePoint 2010. You’ll need to buy more tools in order to get around this problem, costing you time and money.

The bottom line is that if you need a SharePoint migration solution for 2010 and you are evaluating Metalogix and AvePoint, MetaVis should also be on that list.  We found it to be the far superior solution and we think you will as well.

You wouldn’t move house without taking stock of your content to decide what you need, what you can get rid of and what won’t fit in your new house. Or devising a plan for all the content to be cleansed, refitted and moved. So why would you do it with your enterprise content? It is essential you have a comprehensive content migration strategy.







To find out more about MetaVis,
download the MetaVis Architect Suite Business Result Sheet.

As an experienced Consultant, I find it’s difficult to say when considering a data migration strategy which step in the process is most important. The success of a data migration methodology really depends on all the components of a solution working well from beginning to end. But it’s certainly true that a successful data migration project cannot take place without a robust means to push content into its new home, whatever that might be.

Since virtually every content management system (CMS) on the market is different, there is no silver bullet for loading content quickly and dependably. Each application programming interface (API) is different and can vary greatly in terms of quality style and completeness. Some may require a custom web service, deployed on the target environment and called remotely.

But this solution isn’t quite optimal. What if the client’s target environment is completely inaccessible for some reason? Perhaps the client’s security model forbids deploying foreign services. Microsoft’s SharePoint 2010 CMS circumvents the necessity to deploy remote services with its client object model. After getting your hands on the required libraries the SharePoint 2010 API is suddenly at your fingertips. Using this technique, a data migration can be accomplished using a locally deployed custom service after supplying the required credentials!

While I found SharePoint’s client object model to provide a promising new way to connect to a CMS, I thought the API was incomplete and sometimes poorly documented. Luckily, the out-of-the-box web services packaged with MOSS provided the methods I required. I am excited at the prospect that more CMSs will start packaging up libraries that provide the tools necessary to connect to an environment with a remote machine. It simply provides a safer solution for the data migration and one that doesn’t require deploying anything on the client’s machines! The big upshot of the client object model implies that projects are less likely to face resource bottlenecks because additional access to secure systems is not required. A smaller gap between the development and testing periods allows more time for refinements and a better quality data migration solution.

It seems that Microsoft is leading the way in this regard.

  Download our Data Migration - Seven Steps to Success White Paper to gain a further understanding of the data migration best practices that should be considered when beginning a migration project.

In short: when its in a zoo… Bare with me. Common Eland in Zoo

A document is a record of something that has been observed. Such a record can be anything – a utility bill, an employment contract, a sculpture in a museum, or a painting on a wall. All are examples of documents describing something else. The utility bill records and describes your usage of gas and electricity. The employment contract records and describes the details of the handshake you gave at that final job interview. The sculpture or painting documents – there’s that word – a historical event. All these examples of documents are records of something observed by something or someone else.

Paul Otlet (1868-1944), the father of information science, is known for his observation that documents could be three dimensional. As examples of such “documents” Otlet cites natural objects, artifacts, objects bearing traces of human activity (such as archaeological finds), explanatory models, educational games, and works of art.

Suzanne Briet (1894-1989), also known as “Madame Documentation”, states her case through the enumeration of six objects:

•     Is the star in the sky a document? No.
•     Is the photo of the star in the sky a document? Yes.
•     Is the stone in the river a document? No.
•     Is the stone in the museum a document? Yes.
•     Is the antelope in the wild a document? No.
•     Is the antelope in the zoo a document? Yes.

Suzanne Briet rules: an antelope running wild on the plains of Africa should not be considered a document. But if it were to be captured, taken to a zoo and made an object of study, it has been made into a document, it has been made evidence. So there is a process involved in making “the something” into a document – we call it documentation.

As humans, we’ve invented all kinds of devices to aid in the process of documentation: library cards, folders, URLs, bibliographies, tags, taxonomies, reference documents. They form part of the discipline that is documentation and the basis for content management.

With the advent of content management systems we seem to have lost some of the high-level abstract concepts that were clearly laid out in the early parts of the 20th century. As an industry sector, involved in content management, we’ve become too focussed on the implementation details of content management systems and the limitations that these systems face.

Context

“What is metadata? What is a document?” These questions typically go hand-in-hand and are often naively answered by: “the document is a file or a blob that is stored in database but is difficult too manipulate, so the metadata, table rows and columns, are used to facilitate manipulation and describe the document”.

Metadata provides context with which to consume the document. You’ll have seen this in a zoo. You walk up to the antelope enclosure and there’s plaque containing the name, Latin name and a map of the world with a particular part of Africa highlighted describing the antelope and its origin – metadata. The zoo is giving you context with which to understand the antelope document.

The same holds true for documents in a content management system. Documents are stored in a particular context described by their metadata. The folder, the author, draft/publish status, tags, taxonomy are all pieces of metadata to aid the consumer in consuming the document.

That consumer may be the content management system itself as it responds to the query “give me all documents in the /marketing folder” on behalf of a web visitor. The consumer can also be a records management system archiving documents “in a published state and that are older than 24 months”.

Documents never exist without metadata, without context. For example, the print-out of sales figures that I’ve thrown in the wastebasket is a fully-fledged document of our company’s sales figures telling the person that picks it out the wastebasket to treat (read “consume”) the document as a discarded document.

I’ve seen this catch people out on a few content migration projects when they try and de-duplicate content repositories. They classify documents as duplicates based on their contents alone, without ever taking context into account. De-duplication is tricky business because in doing so you are destroying metadata that is right-or-wrongfully been created to help consume documents.

The accurate consumption or manipulation of documents is intrinsically tied to the accuracy and completeness of their metadata. Is the print-out of sales data in the wastebasket to be trusted? Is the sales data accurate? How should the reader consume the document? Look at the metadata! Its in the wastebasket. This opens up the possibility: did I mean to throw the print-out in the wastebasket? Is the metadata accurate? The reader can only make that decision with more metadata. The reader could phone or email me and ask: did you intend to discard that print-out? Thereby creating more metadata and a better context with which to consume the document.

Content management systems merely store metadata, human beings create metadata – often by hand, sometimes using automated tools. The process of generating metadata or maintaining its accuracy is a human process. Computers don’t care about accuracy or completeness.

Adriaan Bloem, analyst at CMSWatch, touches on this by labeling enterprise search as a “brute force” approach. Adriaan also points out that metadata or context is neccessary to communicate. He’s right – otherwise how do we make sense of a document ?

What if metadata contains a document, i.e. when one document describes another? Doesn’t this form of reasoning collapse in on itself?

What if you took a photograph of the antelope and attached it to the information plaque outside the enclosure? So when the antelope is having an off-day and its hiding in the undergrowth, passers-by can still learn about it by reading the plaque. Now you’ve got one document (the photograph) describing another (the antelope), haven’t you? Aren’t both documents? Wrong.

We can describe documents with other documents. Suzanne Briet would argue that the antelope in the zoo is the primary document and any scholarly articles written about it are secondary documents. They provide context around the primary document. There’s is a document and there is context with which to interpret that document – metadata. Nothing else. Document… Metadata… Document… Metadata.

In an English language sentence “things” can be both subjects as well objects, yet can’t be both at the same time. In one situation the photograph is a document, described by metadata from a digital camera (exposure, shutterspeed), in the other situation it is metadata describing the antelope.

Confused? What is metadata ? In any given situation, ask yourself what the document is and by exclusion all that isn’t is metadata.

So what does this means for content management systems ? Are they all broken? Do we need metadata management processes as well as content management processes? Do we need a separate metadata lifecycle to run alongside a content lifecycle ?

The answer to those questions is unfortunately – yes. Yes, we do need separate metadata management processes. Yes, we do need a separate metadata lifecycle. Unless… we stop building content management systems in the naive fashion of blobs for documents and table rows and columns for metadata. We need to start building these systems so that there is no technical distinction between the content store and the metadata store. Having separate stores for content and metadata causes us to duplicate our efforts, causing us to define duplicate processes to support the lifecycle of both document and metadata.

Ironic, since a promise of content management is the removal of duplication.

In a CNET Q&A with Microsoft Business Division President, Stephen Elop was asked how Microsoft will get businesses to upgrade from the older version of SharePoint they’re already using and ‘in a nutshell, what’s Microsoft’s pitch to large businesses this time around?’ Stephen replied by discussing productivity across the PC, the phone, and the browser and the focus on making sure that people can work better together, taking advantage of the social-networking capabilities, the rich cloud technologies and a variety of other things.

He was also asked about the specific features that the average productivity worker will get with Office 2010 that they couldn’t get in either Google Docs or a prior version of Office. Elop commented that for users of Microsoft’s Outlook product for e-mail and various forms of communication, there are all sorts of capabilities that have been introduced to help people more effectively manage their communications, whether it’s ignoring threads of communication that are annoying, whether it is the ability to work with advanced conversation views to deal with complex communication patterns, or the interoperability established between Outlook and a number of the social-networking environments, such as LinkedIn, MySpace, and Facebook.

The benefits of SharePoint are certainly there and according to Forrester, a third of big enterprises plan to upgrade to SharePoint 2010 within a year, and that in turn will drive the corporate success of the Office 2010. But while Stephen is thinking of ways to convince enterprises to buy, he’s not thinking about or being asked about how Microsoft suggests large enterprises conduct a MOSS migration and migrate all of their content including documents to SharePoint 2010.

Migration is often viewed as an obstacle to enjoying the full benefits of a new product, but it needn’t be and Microsoft should recognise this early or face low adoption.

There are a few steps that need to occur prior to the upgrade to make it smooth and ensure it is a success.  These include content analysis to understand exactly what exists and a process to clean that content up. SharePoint 2010 is being received well, but it won’t solve many of the issues faced by enterprises unless a clear content migration strategy for upgrade is adopted and the required process of content migration is carried out properly.







MetaVis MIGRATOR is a simple tool for migrating content and objects between SharePoint sites, site collection or servers. Whether you are consolidating, upgrading or simply re-organizing your SharePoint environment. Download the MetaVis MIGRATOR business results sheet of have a free trial.

Moving house is said to be one of the most stressful things to do in life. First, you need to find the new house considering the requirements you need. A 3 bedroom or 4? A big yard or small? Lots of storage or minimal? City or country? Next, you need to negotiate the terms of sale and close on the house. Then comes the actual move. This is the part of the process where you go through the years of built up stuff and decide whether to be rid of it or not. This process often brings to light stuff you haven’t seen for years, broken items you’ve saved ‘just in case’ and some keepsakes. Overall, you are cleansing your household contents.

This same process applies when a corporation approaches its Enterprise Content Management (ECM) decisions. However, it’s a constant surprise these decisions are made without having all of the facts at hand. Knowing answers to questions, such as: how much content exists; how often is content accessed in a week/month/quarter/year; who owns the content; what happens to old content; what content adheres to today’s standards; and when changes are made, how does the change impact on the other content; is the only way to truly understand what is in a corporation’s household content and is an essential part any data migration strategy.

Many ECM novices and veterans most likely have a question mark over what is in the content inventory, so getting to grips with this is often the main problem and is only done when a move is in sight. But content tooling is available and should be used to not just manage content (which most ECM systems already do), but govern it on an ongoing basis. These content tools provide answers to all of the questions that should be known before a content migration is even considered, as you’ll then be better placed to decide on the necessary requirements for the new system.

You wouldn’t move house without taking inventory of your household contents and you shouldn’t make ECM decisions without this analysis either.








Download the ‘Five Steps to Discovering the Real Shape of Your Digital Content,’ 
to learn more or check out the Vamosa Migration Methodology.

The issue of controlling content and privacy popped up in the news last week; as Facebook has reviewed its privacy practices after a new feature exposed private information and wrested control away from users as to what content was shown to whom.

Personally I find the amount of personal information on the public internet  astounding  and this is just the random non-sensitive information. If my birth date gets out on the web, at worst I might get an extra birthday card or two; but corporate entities cannot afford to let sensitive information become public without often facing heavy legal penalty; not to mention what it does to their reputations. Facebook is reported to be losing users as a result of their miscalculation. The more sensitive the information the larger the risk becomes. Structuring content leads to predictable data. Predictable data leads to predictable areas of sensitivity and predictable areas of sensitive material can be controlled and protected.

Now I am not saying that if Facebook had implemented a more cohesive content model and massaged their content into those structures that they wouldn’t have exposed this private information. But I am stressing the importance of understanding the content structure and which portions will be provided to whom. Content Management Systems are one part of this equation – they should control the content as expected so long as it is stored in the right place. That is the key; so long as it is in the right place.

Structure and predictability are cornerstones of any successful migration. Taking content that was once fragmented and moving all the like parts together into a common structure(s) is the first step. And it can be an undeniably complicated step. With complication comes the need for traceability/auditability; the need to understand where content is going and what that content is. This applies whether that content is within the content model or the content object itself.

Having an auditable process, addresses that need. The Vamosa methodology provides two reports, one of which audits where every object will end up and the second that details what content will exist where within each object. This became an invaluable tool even prior to the content migration for a recent project I was on. We used these reports to discover that two of the security parameters required to control user access to sensitive content were inconsistent in the source content! Without that insight we could have had a Facebook-like situation when it came to the migration execution.

Knowing where your information is, when and how it is being consumed and by whom is important and is an essential component in any smart content migration strategy.


To learn more about where your content may lie download the Five Steps to Discovering the Real Shape of Your Digital Content White Paper.

Stephen Elop, President of the Microsoft Business Division, announced the launch of Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 on May 12, 2010 at 8 a.m PST or 11 a.m. EST last week. As a result, there is sure to be a wave of organizations migrating from SharePoint 2007 to 2010 as there was when 2007 was released; but what issues should be considered before undertaking a SharePoint migration?

Gartner have urged enterprises to avoid the use of customizations as much as possible, since this was a real pain point during the 2003 to 2007 SharePoint migration surge. They also suggest that organizations should consider using one of the many content migration tools available; these tools will not nullify the labour costs involved when undertaking a content migration – they can however significantly reduce them, by ensuring that only the required content is migrated.

By undertaking a full content analysis of your content prior to migration, you ensure that content that is no longer required for the business is not unnecessarily migrated to your new repository. It is essential to prioritize content, authorize and make decisions as to deleting old, redundant files or creating new ones. This will ensure that all content meets both corporate and technical standards, while guaranteeing that content is not weighing down the data structures and back up abilities of your new SharePoint environment.

You may also want to consider companies with experience of SharePoint if you’re considering an enterprise-scale data migration.

Do you understand your content lifecycle? Do you even have a content lifecycle? A content governance model, such as Vamosa’s Enterprise Content Governance (ECoG) framework is built around control and governance of content from creation, through consumption and on to retirement/archival or deletion. Implementing a governance model will make a huge difference to overall content quality, with streamlined processes resulting in a high percentage of well tagged, standards-compliant and relevant content. There are other benefits too: including cost reductions from increased efficiency; and reduced maintenance and storage requirements. The big question for Records Managers, Web Content Managers, Librarians and other professionals is ‘How can I start to apply this framework and regain control of the information in my organization?’.

Content has always been difficult to control due to its diverse nature and it should be no surprise that it’s not going to get any easier. This article from the eDiscovery Journal raises some of the issues facing organizations in the Web 2.0 era. Not only is legislation being tightened around how information can be used and how it should be retained within organizations, but the number of ways that information can be created has increased dramatically. In addition to the content residing within Content Management Systems (CMS) and email servers, organizations now have to consider the new breed of collaboration and social networking tools that are growing rapidly within the workplace. User-generated content featured in instant Messaging, Blogs, Twitter, Google Wave, Buzz etc. all make it possible for information to exist in a wide variety of locations, yet still “owned” by the company. This type of information cannot be managed or controlled using traditional methods.

Failing to appreciate the need for governance introduces risk and is one of the reasons why enterprise organizations find themselves in a situation where they lose control of their content. There is often no real understanding of either the quantity or the value of information existing within the network. Misleading information can seriously damage a company’s brand and customer service, while duplication can result in increased storage and infrastructure costs. Ultimately, this lack of control leads to an increase in the so called “digital landfill” and the first thing to suffer is content quality and, in due course, the end user experience.

So, where do you start? The first stage of the ECoG governance model is “Initiate”. This really is the stage where you have to plan your strategy and think about the content you need – whose going to use it and when; what are they going to do with it – and also what you can live without. Retention of obsolete or irrelevant information is one of the biggest factors contributing to uncontrolled growth of content within organizations. The Initiate phase fits extremely well with the implementation of a CMS for the first time, or as a ‘take stock’ point ahead of migration into a replacement CMS, but it can also be undertaken on the back of a thorough analysis of existing content. This is the perfect opportunity to rationalize content and ensure quality and relevance are high before populating the CMS. A CMS will only manage content, it won’t deliver governance. For that you need a strategy and policies covering the end to end content lifecycle – ensuring that you not only obtain a high level of content quality, but maintain that level, in order to maximize the value of your information assets.

When you create content, what happens to it? Does it get uploaded to your website, to be forgotten about, or become redundant over time?

Content has a life – and one that doesn’t stop when published. This is an oversight often made by many enterprises and organizations. Enterprise Content Governance (ECoG) is the process of taking content through its lifecycle, from initiation to creation, control and consumption. In fact, there are sixteen stages in this lifecycle.

Phase 1 is to initiate, or in other words manage change requests. At this stage, you need to prioritize content, authorize and make decisions as to deleting old, redundant files or creating new ones.

Then you move onto Phase 2, creating the content: authoring, tagging and authorization. Phase 3 is where control is applied. Content is structured and migrated to a CMS. During this process, rules and policies need to be applied to ensure content adheres to both internal and external guidelines (such as branding and legislation).

The last phase deals with the usage of content: its findability, managing your assets, monitoring and maintaining content. At this point you might decide that changes need to be made. Perhaps your content is now out-dated or not needed, taking you back to Phase 1: requests to change content.

Throughout this journey changes must be authorized and rules and policies must be applied. You must be clear who in your organization holds the decision-making powers and what rules what is important for your organization to govern your content.

To help you indentify where you experience challenges managing the life of your content, we’ve created an Enterprise Content Governance Framework. It also conveniently shows where Vamosa tools can be used to automate tasks at each stage.







To understand further how you can achieve effective Enterprise Content Governance and  improve content quality in five steps download the Making Enterprise Content Governance a Reality White Paper.