Electronic Clean Ups

Electronic Records Clean Up

Shared Drive Clean Up

If you're planning a move from a shared drive to Teams or a SharePoint site, cleaning up before you move makes the process much easier. Go forward in a systematic way to stay organized and avoid creating more work.

Start Here

Begin with support from department leadership before launching a project to at a staff meeting. From there, create a committee with representation from all work areas who will actively complete the work. It helps to involve your local support partner (LSP) from Information Technology Services.

First Meeting

At the first meeting, project the drive on a screen to look at the current state as a group. 

Decide what areas you'll review and clean-up first, and divide the drive into work areas based on subject matter expertise. Don't move or delete anything yet before you have a full understanding of how the drive is used and organized currently.

Make a Plan

Identify what you have on the drive and assign sections to team members. Set deadlines to review each section and report the plan at a staff meeting.

Start Deleting

It's time to start deleting! Delete files that you know are available elsewhere or are a duplicate or obsolete.

Remember to submit a certificate of records destruction (RM3 form) for records that have met retention. Do not delete records until the RM3 is approved and returned by RIM. 

Finally, remember to empty trash.

Organize Files

Create an inventory of the remaining files and develop new folder structure. Do not go more than three levels deep. From there, map the new structure in your inventory to the existing structure. 

You may identify duplication across sections at this point.

Rename Files

Use inventory to rename files. Go section-by-section and create new folders and subfolders as you go.

Use consistent naming. Think about how files were named in a paper-based system and follow that.

Always communicate changes to staff along the way.

Tips

You must manage electronic retention the same way as paper. This is easier to do when you use dates in folder names.

Don't create miscellaneous folders or folders with employee names as titles.

Talk to your LSP if you need to control access to sensitive data.

Teach new employees how to file records and review the shared drive regularly.

TreeSize

In collaboration with department personnel, RIM can review records stored on shared drives, in M365 (OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams), or other cloud services (Box, Google Drive) to:

  • Provide a detailed file-level report of contents (shared drives only).
  • Review records to determine retention requirements.
  • Identify records that are eligible for destruction.
  • Advise on transfer of records to different storage medium.
  • Complete the certificate of records destruction (RM3).

RIM may also be able to automate some deletion processes on behalf of the department (shared drives only).

Learn more about this service by watching the 20-minute presentation delivered during the 2021 RIM Month Forum.