Specifying mandatory metadata

Prior to being declared as a record, it is first required that all mandatory metadata for an undeclared record be completed. This is a requirement of the DoD 5015.2 specification, and the reasoning behind doing it is understandable. It wouldn't be a good idea to allow records to be declared when some critical pieces of information about them are still missing.

Note

The DoD 5015.2 specification can be found on-line at http://www.js.pentagon.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/501502std.pdf. We will also discuss it in more detail in Appendix A (which is available for download from the Packt Publishing website) of this book.

However, unfortunately, the need to specify mandatory metadata can complicate the filing process. Because of the need to first specify metadata, there are, in effect, three steps needed to file and declare a record: first file the document in a File Plan Folder, complete the mandatory metadata, and then declare it as a record.

If there are many records...