SharePoint 2010: Content Organizer Feature

For those of you who may not be aware, SharePoint 2010 has an interesting new feature called the Content Organizer. The Content Organizer feature is quite a powerful document routing solution that makes it easier to store documents consistently, according to administrator defined rules that can copy or move a document from one place in SharePoint to another place. I will get to the rules in a minute, but the content organizer feature is important for several reasons;

• It makes the saving of documents easier because users do not necessarily have to worry about knowing the destination when uploading new content.
• It is a highly flexible method for routing documents between sites and site collections around the SharePoint farm.
• It underpins a solid compliance and records management file plan capability.

So before anything else can be done, we need to turn it on. The Content Organizer feature has to be activated on each site for the functionality to be enabled. In other words, it is a site scoped feature. Below is an illustration of the feature to activate.

Once the Content Organizer feature is activated, SharePoint 2010 makes several changes to the site configuration.

• It creates a new document library called the Drop-off Library.
• It creates a new custom list called Content Organizer Rules.
• It adds two new Site Administration links in the Site Settings page to manage the Content Organizer for the site.

The description for the feature says “Create metadata based rules…” and it these Content Organizer rules that allow you to automatically route documents from the newly created Drop-off Library to some other location. It is important to know that the Drop-off Library is fixed – it is the first point of call for files that need to be moved or copied somewhere. Consider the drop-off library like a bellboy of a hotel. You give him your luggage and he will ensure it gets to its correct location (and unlike a bellboy you don’t need to tipJ).

So if the drop-off library is the starting point, where can documents are routed to? The location can be;

• A document library and/or a folder within a document library on the site.
• The Drop-off library of another site, which allows inter and intra site collection routing.

The Content Organizer rules are managed from Site Administration which is accessed via Site Settings. New rules are added in the same manner as adding new items to any SharePoint list. In the following example, we will create a rule where content types of invoice will be routed to a document library called Finance.

 

The conditions section of the rule allows for multiple conditions to be defined determining matching content and then, where that content should be routed to. The properties available are any columns assigned to the content type being routed. In the example below, we have added two conditions that have to be satisfied before the rule will fire.

Let’s take a closer look at this beast known as the Drop-off library. This is a special document library is added to the site upon feature activation, imaginatively called the Drop off Library. As stated earlier, this library is really a temporary staging area for items that do not have all required metadata to satisfy any routing rules.

The sequence of events for the Content Organizer is;

1. Documents with the correct content type, metadata, and matching rules are automatically routed to the final library and folder.
2. Documents that lack the amount of metadata required to match a rule or that are missing required metadata are retained in the "Drop-Off Library" so that the user can enter metadata to satisfy a rule.
3. After a user has edited a staging document with the appropriate metadata required to match a rule, the document is automatically routed to the target library and folder.

As an example, if we assume that a Content Organizer rule will route any document with “Finance” in its name to document library called Finance, the behavior will be as follows:

• If the file uploaded has the word “finance” in its name, SharePoint indicates that the document has been successfully routed
• If the file uploaded does not have the word “finance” in its name, SharePoint will indicate to the user that the content organizer has placed it into the Drop-off library.

Now, before you rush off and start to mess with the content organizer, I’d better tell you about a couple of caveats

1. The Content Organizer will only work on content types that are, or derive from, the Document content type. So it does not work for automatically organizing large lists.
2. When uploading documents via Windows explorer view, Content Organizer rules are ignored and the document will not be redirected to the Drop-off library. (through the browser if a document is uploaded to a destination library, SharePoint will move it to the Drop-off library for classification)
3. There is a limit of six conditions per rule. After six conditions are added, the "Add new condition" link disappears.
4. If you wish to route the document to another site, the Content Organizer feature has to be installed on that site for the Drop-off library to be created as that is the destination. Additionally, you need to add the configuration information in Central Administration by adding the destination to the list of send to connections for the web application (that is beyond the scope of this article, but easy enough to do).
5. There are also some potential risks around the fact that you can route files to any destination even if you do not have permission and potentially overwrite content. The content organizer will move content to the new location whether or not the contributing user has access to the destination location.