Microsoft 365 offers organizations many opportunities to create, share, and collaborate on documents. But more opportunities also mean more choices. What should be saved in Teams? What belongs in OneDrive? Which documents does the organization need to be able to find and use even years from now—and who is responsible for ensuring that the information is accurate, secure, and up to date?
Without shared principles, different work practices can easily emerge. Documents end up in different places, copies begin to circulate, and it becomes difficult to know which version is the correct one.
That is why the organization needs clear guidelines for document management.
Start with a few simple basic principles
Effective document management isn’t just about where a file is saved. Document management needs to be centralized and structured so that the organization’s important information is easy to find, use, and manage over time. The structure should also be adaptable to change and, as far as possible, independent of the organization—it should continue to function even when people change roles, the organization changes, or new work methods are introduced.
Some good basic principles are:
- The right documents should be available to the right people
- It should be clear where different types of documents should be stored
- Important documents must be able to endure regardless of individual personnel and organizational changes
- Unnecessary copies and duplicates should be avoided
- Documents should be easy to find through a logical structure and relevant metadata
- Sensitive information must be protected and made available only to authorized personnel
- There must be clear principles governing the entire lifecycle of a document—from its creation until it is archived or disposed of.
What should be saved, and where?
One of the most important issues to clarify is what role the various components of Microsoft 365 should play.
OneDrive: for personal work
OneDrive is suitable for personal work documents, notes, and early drafts. However, information that the organization needs to be able to find, share, and manage over time should not be dependent on an individual employee’s personal storage space.
Teams: for collaboration and dialogue
Teams is, above all, a collaboration space. This is where we communicate, meet, and work together. Naturally, documents are also created during the course of a collaboration.
However, not all documents created in Teams are temporary working documents. When a document has long-term value for the organization, it must be subject to the organization’s common structure and rules for document management.
SharePoint: For the Organization’s Shared Information
SharePoint is Microsoft 365’s platform for collaborative document management. A good starting point is to determine which SharePoint sites will be used and what specific set of documents each site will manage. Each SharePoint site then needs to have a well-thought-out structure that clearly defines where different documents should be managed.
This allows the organization’s documents to be managed in a structured manner, using, for example, access permissions, metadata, and common work practices. What matters is not just the technology, but that the organization determines what information should be located where and what principles should apply to it.
Metadata makes information easier to find and manage
Within each SharePoint site, documents need to be organized in a way that is logical and sustainable over time. Instead of basing the structure solely on folders, documents can be described using metadata.
Metadata describes what the document is—for example, document type, customer, project, contract type, or person in charge. This makes it possible to search, filter, and create different views of the same information based on the organization’s needs.
A well-designed metadata structure reduces the reliance of document management on the user’s knowledge of a specific folder structure. It also creates better conditions for managing and reusing information over time.
Share the link—not the document
A simple rule of thumb is to share a link to the document whenever possible, rather than sending a copy as an attachment.
This reduces the risk of multiple versions of the same document circulating. It also makes it easier to control who has access and to ensure that the recipient is working with the current version.
At the same time, how a document may be shared should be determined by the sensitivity of the information. Some information may be shared externally, other information only internally, and particularly sensitive information may require significantly stricter access permissions.
Don’t forget about responsibility and management
Technology and guidelines aren’t enough if no one is responsible for ensuring they work in everyday life.
The organization therefore also needs to determine who is responsible for the structure, who ensures that the guidelines are kept up to date, and what responsibilities managers and employees have.
In addition, the guidelines need to be reviewed and updated as operations, regulations, or technology change.
A Simple Checklist
When you develop or review your document management guidelines, you can start by answering the following questions:
Which documents should be handled, and where should they be stored? Have you identified your various document collections and decided which storage locations to use for each type of information?
How should the documents be structured? Should documents be organized based on processes, functions, information groups, or other consistent principles—and which model is most sustainable for the organization in the long term?
How can documents be found? What metadata, tags, or classifications need to be used to ensure good searchability, filtering, and access to information?
What are the information security requirements? Do you handle sensitive or business-critical documents that need to be classified, protected, or subject to special security measures?
Who should have access to what? How should permissions, roles, and responsibilities for documents and storage locations be structured to ensure proper access?
What laws, regulations, and internal requirements must be followed? Are there any requirements—such as those under the GDPR, NIS2, industry regulations, or internal policies—that affect document management?
How should the document lifecycle be managed? How long should documents be retained, when should they be weeded out or archived, and what rules apply in this regard?
How should document management be handled over time? Are there clear guidelines, document owners, administrators, and procedures for training, monitoring, and improving document management?
From Guidelines to a Working Method That Works
Effective document management is fundamentally about making it easy to do things right. With clear guidelines, a consistent structure, and the right support in Microsoft 365, information becomes easier to find, safer to handle, and simpler to manage over time.
MetaShare helps organizations put these principles into practice. Using metadata as a foundation, MetaShare brings structure to SharePoint and makes it easier to find, manage, and secure documents in Microsoft 365—without requiring users to navigate complex folder structures.
MetaShare
Would you like to see how MetaShare can make document management in SharePoint simpler and more structured?