Certificates of Specialization
With AIIM+ Pro, you can earn certificates of specialization in these popular practice areas and more that have been bundled for you! More information with a full listing of certificates of specialization can be found here.
M365 Outlook & Exchange: Tools and Practices for Good Governance
Nearly every organization on the planet uses email. If your organization has standardized on the M365 suite, then you likely spend a good portion of your workday living in Outlook. As a result, that's where much of our content lives too. Like all other sources and repositories of content, Outlook and Exchange need to be considered in your information governance strategy.
You might already be familiar with items such as messages, calendar invitations, contacts, notes, and attachments, which are stored in visible folders. But Exchange has some hidden and powerful deletion opportunities that you might not be taking advantage of yet. Because Exchange serves as one of two software development kits available in 365 – the other being SharePoint – it stores other applications’ content as well.
Balancing Value and Risk Using Intelligent Information Management
It is often said that in a digital world, information is the key asset of any organization, it’s digital lifeblood. With such great importance put on the creation, management, distribution, and use of information to add value, as information management practitioners we must be able to recognize the inherent business risks of poor information management practices, and the impacts those could have on our organizations' ability to create value for its customers and other stakeholders. It is important to harness the value that can be generated by information while factoring in the inherent risks of that information and having a plan for mitigating those risks.
Conducting a Baseline Assessment
A baseline assessment starts with the questions: “Where are you now, and where do you need to go?” Think of it as a way to “get located” and establish a point of departure as you map your digital transformation journey. By understanding the business strategy of your organization, the needs and pressures it must manage every day, and the hard numbers that measure its success, you will uncover the most pressing problems that challenge organizational performance and the most important opportunities for improvement and innovation. This lesson will prepare you with the information and perspective you need to ensure that your strategy is on point and will receive the support, funding, and executive sponsorship you need.
How to Analyze an Existing Business Process
Do you have a business process that has to be changed? Perhaps this is due to a new legal requirement or piece of technology that you've implemented. Or maybe you've identified inefficiencies in the current process and want to optimize it.
No matter the reason, there's a right way and a wrong way to go about it. The first step in changing a process is to analyze how it's currently being done. Sometimes steps that seem illogical are there for good reason. And sometimes, changing a process has a downstream effect on other processes. It's important that you get this first step right to set yourself up for success.
How to Capture Digital Documents
If your organization is like most, you have digital documents pouring into it from a variety of sources, including office documents such as Microsoft Word and Excel, as well as email and instant messages. These documents need to be managed.
Capture is the process of getting the information assets you have created or received into a central information management system and recording their existence so that you can track them. This task involves removing duplicates, backing up your files, collecting files in a repository, and adding metadata.
How to Capture Metadata Automatically
When it comes to capturing metadata, people are just not very good at it. They transpose digits, select the wrong values, and misspell things. Sometimes, they just don't do it at all because they forget or simply don't care.
When it comes to mundane and repetitive tasks, machines do a much better job than people. They're quicker, make fewer mistakes, and are much more consistent with classification and decision making. You’ll probably agree that capturing metadata qualifies as a “mundane and repetitive task,” so why not give that job to automation tools?
How to Conduct a File Share Cleanup Initiative
Most organizations use file shares or network shared drives to store and collaborate on documents. The challenge with file shares is that solid information management practices are rarely applied. This often leads to messy environments full of redundant, outdated, and trivial information.
If you shudder every time you think about retrieving a file in your organization's shared folder, it's probably time to conduct a file share cleanup initiative. Doing so will help reduce risk and improve operational efficiency.
How to Conduct a Successful System Migration
A lot of planning goes into a system migration. You’ll need to identify the purpose of the migration, the stakeholders involved, and any issues that may affect the migration. To plan for the migration, you’ll need to consider some general logistics – such as communicating with stakeholders, drawing up a schedule, and establishing the scope of the migration.
If you're gearing up for a system migration and want to avoid all of the common pitfalls, you're in the right place.
How to Conduct a System, Information, and Process Inventory
When you’re aware of the systems, information, and processes in your organization, you can minimize risk and make sure that everything is running smoothly. When you're not, it's time to conduct an inventory! After all, you can’t optimize and secure things you don’t know about.
The last thing you need is a rogue or shadow IT system that was put in place by some well-meaning employee, exposing you to unnecessary risk.
How to Create and Nurture a Digital Workplace
The working world is rapidly changing, with more and more of us working in distributed ways. With that comes an increased need to be able to collaborate across locations and time zones.
Creating a truly digital workplace means using tools that allow knowledge workers to be more effective, no matter where they are physically working. So, what’s the best way of setting this up, from an information management perspective?
How to Decommission Legacy Systems
Do you have a system that no longer meets your organization's needs or isn't being supported by the vendor any longer? Legacy systems can cause all sorts of headaches. Perhaps it's time for it to be decommissioned.
Before you pull the plug, let us show you how to create a decommissioning plan and decide what to do with all of the information on the system.
How to Determine The Appropriate System of Record
Your organization’s system of record is its single source of truth – the authoritative place where your core information is held and kept up to date. If there’s ever any doubt about the accuracy of a piece of information, one should only need to consult the system of record.
Your organization probably has dozens of systems storing information. So, how do you choose the most appropriate system of record for your unique use case?