Information Management Guidance...Information Management Handbook Version 1.0 Page 10 of 40 Creating...

Information Management Guidance

Version 1.0

Information Management Handbook

Version 1.0 Page 2 of 40

Forward by Malcolm Cornberg – OBE

As the Senior Information Risk Owner and Chair of the Information Governance Committee, it is my duty to ensure that the College complies with Information and Records Management legislation and best practice.

As we move to develop our role as a world-class professional body, our collection and use of information continues to grow significantly. We need to encourage this growth to secure our successful future, and in doing so we need to ensure that we are effective in managing all of our corporate information assets. We must build trust throughout our membership communities by demonstrating our standards to be of the highest quality.

Information Management for the College of Policing is about setting, achieving and maintaining a high standard in relation to the creation, management, maintenance, archiving and deletion of Information. All staff play a crucial role in ensuring the College’s compliance with the Information Management Strategy and Policy.

The College of Policing, as the professional body for all in Policing manages significant volumes of personal and potentially sensitive data. It goes without saying that the use, protection and governance of our data is fundamental to the College retaining credibility with our members and partners. In addition, we need to protect our Intellectual Property Rights and Copyright which can only be done through tight control of our assets. Your role in this aspect is vital to the College both in its day-to-day operations and in its future growth.

Thank you for your contribution.

Malcolm Cornberg



Identification

Policy Title: Information Management Handbook

Version: Draft 0_

Document Location:

Ownership Directorate Responsible: Information Services

Department Responsible: Information and Records Management

Policy Owner: Chief Technology Officer, Diane Downey

Revision History Effective From: (Date inserted when policy approved)

Next Review Date:

Revision Date

Previous Revision

Date

Summary of Changes

The IM handbook replaces the previous College and

NPIA branded guidance/



Approvals and distribution This document requires the following approvals:

Name Title Date of

Approval

Version

Jane Baker

Diane Downey

Chief

Technology

Officer

Sent for review

DD Comments

provided and

incorporated

0_2 reformatted

0_3 comments provided

0_4 comments absorbed and

revision history added

0_5 Reformatted to make a

clearer distinction between the

management of records and the

management of information.

Added more detail on the

management of records within

Churchill

0_6 Reformatted and checked

by Jane Baker. Copy placed in

Review folder for consultation

with critical readers

Information

Governance

Committee

January 2016

Information

Services SMT

January 2016



Contents Identification ......................................................................................................... 3

Ownership ............................................................................................................ 3

Revision History ................................................................................................... 3

Approvals and distribution .................................................................................... 4

Introduction ............................................................................................................ 7

Objectives ............................................................................................................ 7

What are Information Risks? ................................................................................ 8

What’s the difference between information and records?...................................... 8

Example of Information ..................................................................................... 9

Examples of records .......................................................................................... 9

How to use this handbook .................................................................................... 9

Creating and managing documents, emails and records ................................. 10

Documents Management .................................................................................... 10

Filing Structures/File plan ................................................................................ 10

Setting up new work streams/projects ............................................................. 11

Creating/Naming folders .................................................................................. 11

Creating/naming documents ............................................................................ 11

Naming Conventions: ...................................................................................... 12

Version Control ............................................................................................... 12

Where do I save documents? .......................................................................... 14

Saving final copies .......................................................................................... 14

Sharing documents ......................................................................................... 15

Audit trails ....................................................................................................... 15

Scanning ......................................................................................................... 16

Email management ............................................................................................. 17

Using email folders .......................................................................................... 17

How do I save emails? .................................................................................... 18

Records Management ........................................................................................ 20

Managing paper records ................................................................................. 21

Reviewing, archiving and disposing of documents, records and emails ........ 22

Documents and emails ....................................................................................... 22

Email - The four Ds ............................................................................................. 23

Records Retention Schedule .............................................................................. 24



Leavers ................................................................................................................. 25

All staff ............................................................................................................... 25

Line Managers .................................................................................................... 25

Useful tools to help you manage information.................................................... 26

Adding document shortcuts to your desktop ....................................................... 26

Hyperlinks .......................................................................................................... 27

Zipping files ........................................................................................................ 29

Zipping large files to save space on the network ............................................. 29

Zipping emails for security purposes ............................................................... 29

Turning email alerts on and off ........................................................................... 30

Email popup windows: ..................................................................................... 30

Email message alerts ...................................................................................... 30

Sending emails ................................................................................................... 31

Cleaning up conversations ................................................................................. 31

Mailbox clean up ................................................................................................ 32

Warnings on mailbox size................................................................................ 32

Mailbox clean up – gives you a number of options.............................................. 33

Rules (automatically route emails to where you want them) ............................... 33

Using tasks ......................................................................................................... 34

Using Categories ................................................................................................ 35

Flags .................................................................................................................. 35

Urgency and priority ........................................................................................... 36

Changing the subject header/title of an email ..................................................... 36

Shared email accounts ....................................................................................... 36

Read and receipt ................................................................................................ 37

Delay sending ..................................................................................................... 37

Further Advice and Guidance ............................................................................. 38

Appendix (a) Scanning ........................................................................................ 39



Introduction

The College generates and uses a vast quantity of information which is vital to the successful delivery of our strategic intent and business objectives. It is essential that the College maximises business benefits from our information assets, and reduces any risks arising from ineffective management.

This handbook is designed to help all College staff understand and apply the basic principles and rules on Information Management. It builds upon the new Information and Records Management Policy (available here) by providing guidance on how the Policy can be applied in the work place. It covers the high level principles relating to:

Where documents should be stored and what can and cannot be stored on desktops and hard drives

What can and cannot be stored on external media

Scanning

Naming standards

Paper records

Retention of documents

Objectives

The purpose of establishing an Information Management handbook is to ensure:

greater efficiency for all staff – save time in finding, using and sharing information

consistency in practice across the College

all staff are aware of their responsibilities for the information that they create, manage, share or use and have an understanding of the information lifecycle

that management of information within the College is business-led

that the College has the right governance in place to ensure compliance with Information Management law and compliance; this includes, but is not confined to, Data Protection Act (DPA), Authorised Professional Practice (APP), Freedom of Information Act, One3M annual returns to the Home Office

costs of electronic and paper storage is reduced

information, advice and guidance is available on how the policy relates to working practices.

https://collegenet.college.police.uk/collegedocuments/How%20do%20I%20documents/IS%20Information%20Management%20Policy.pdf



What are Information Risks?

The risks associated with the mismanagement of information are significant:

reputation of the College can be damaged through loss / mishandling / inappropriate sharing of information internally and externally

reputation of the police service through guidance and services the College is creating or supporting

loss in trust and increased challenges in accountability via the FoI and Data Protection Acts

security breaches

penalties imposed by the Home Office for non-compliance with standards, and the Information Commissioner

financial penalties

public safety can be compromised through the loss of sensitive training and guidance material.

Loss of trust from our members

These are just a few of the risks but suffice to say it is critical that the College mitigates these risks by following best practice.

What’s the difference between information and records?

Information is a generic term that can be applied to all of the electronic data and paper-based material that the College holds.

Information becomes a record when it has a specific relevance to a deliverable of the College or a decision made by the College. They need to:

be authentic; that is, they are what they say they are;

be reliable; that is, they can be trusted as full and accurate record;

have integrity; that is, they have not been altered since they were created or filed

be useable; that is, they can be retrieved, read and used1.

1 Section 46 Lord Chancellor’s Code of Practice on the Management of Information



Example of Information

A database of suppliers contacts – required for reference purposes only

Emails such as agenda items, notification of meetings and general business as usual.

Examples of records

Documents associated with a specific project - this might include spreadsheets, documents, images, emails to and from project staff and any other form of records.

A database of related information such as a Human Resource (HR) system that is shared across the organisation.

Contract records.

How to use this handbook

Look out for the following symbols that indicate the following:

This symbol provides a warning that you need to take into account:

Best practice is identified by the following symbol:



Creating and managing documents, emails and records Documents Management

Filing Structures/File plan

Churchill 03 WIP was set up with a standard set of folders

In some cases, the top level filing structure can be adapted to meet the business needs. For example, you may require a finance, HR or management folder at this level that needs to be restricted to a specific number of people. Putting folders such as these within the group area can cause issues with the security permissions.

Group area folders: As you can see from above, the main working areas for each business are within these Group folders. The folders within the Group area should reflect the main activities that your business area is involved in – try asking yourself the following questions:

Can the team quickly and efficiently locate records needed for business decisions?

Do the folders and documents adequately reflect your business requirements?

For use by Configuration Librarians

For collaborating with College staff outside of your business area

For ease of access to reference material the business needs

Team working area, allowing the access and sharing of documents within the business area. This is where security permission groups are usually applied, controlled by a Configuration Librarian.

Final records should be transferred to this folder, ready for filing in ’02 REC’



Will it be able to apply retention periods at folder level?

Setting up new work streams/projects

Before you set up any new folders, especially for a new project or work stream, it is worth considering what is required from the outset. If folders are created as an afterthought, it often gets confused and there is no clear oversight on access, use and disposal.

It is recommended that the structure is agreed by the team, and that clear guidance is available on its use e.g. what the folders should contain and who is responsible for them.

Creating/Naming folders

A golden rule is not to create too many folders – so the documents you need are not buried too deep!

Do not create any folders using someone’s names – ‘Bob’s documents’ for example. This makes it extremely difficult to identify ownership once that person has left.

Think about high level activity folders that then drill down into processes e.g.

Churchill 03 WIP/Finance/Group/Budgets/Planning/2016

Creating/naming documents

Documents titles should prompt users to understand the contents – always think:

Will I be able to identify my own document a few weeks after creating it?

Would anyone else be able to understand what that document is about?

Also consider the following:

Use a naming convention – A single naming convention applied across the College will assist with cross team working and document identification (see below for more information)

Don’t use punctuation. If you require a separator within the title, then use an underscore.

Try not to use too many characters. Keep the file name as short as possible – for example, don’t use a full course title. Folder and document names all form part of the 254 characters that Windows allows. Exceeding the character limit can cause problems with opening and deleting the document.

Be consistent: ask yourself whether it would be difficult for other staff to find work in your absence?



If using dates use the format yymmdd, this will ensure that the documents can be ordered chronologically

If using names –use the Surname followed by the First Name to assist sorted mechanisms

BE CONSISTENT: Make sure other team members can understand what the document is and all save to the same format.

Naming Conventions:

Any agreed acronym e.g. the same acronym for a project or business area such as IaRM for Information and Records Management, FIN for finance or APP for Authorised Professional Practice

A document descriptor – e.g. Board Minutes, Update, PID, the date created. If your date is written in reverse, numeric format – yymmdd- it will provide a clear and chronological order for the ordering of information

The version number – see section below for full details

Example of the Application of the Naming Convention:

Version Control

Drafts

‘In progress’ documents. Draft versions of a document must be clearly marked as such, so that there is no possibility of confusion as to its status.

A draft document can be given a version control number and a date so that everyone is aware of what copy they hold of the document and in that way the document owner can keep control of changes more easily.

A watermark can be applied to a document 1) Open the document 2) Click on Design 3) Open the Watermark menu 4) Chose the horizontal version



Approved/completed documents

A final version is a complete document, where all data is deemed to be accurate and all relevant parties have viewed and agreed to the document.

A final document should be clearly marked as such and given a final version number and date. This should not change unless the document is changed or updated at any time in the future. In this case, a brief outline of the update should be kept at the end of the document.

The College standard to be adopted is

Drafts:

Minor versions: 0.1, 1.1, 2.1 etc

Major versions: Whole numbers such as 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 and so on.



Where do I save documents?

Churchill 03 WIP is the recommended area in which to save your ‘work in progress’ documents. Most Churchill folders have a ‘Group’ working area for your team. It has been designed to enable consistency and sharing across business areas and the College. Each folder has a designated ‘Configuration Librarian’ to manage the permissions and provide/support information management guidance. If you do not know who your Configuration Librarian is, or there is no area on Churchill that reflects your business area then please contact the College Information and Records Manager.

If you have been reluctant to save documents to a fileshare as it takes too long to browse to the document through folders, please go to section ‘useful tools to help you manage information’ which contains instructions on how to add a shortcut to a desktop.

Your Configuration Librarian can also advice/assist with the transfer of documents from ‘Work in Progress’ to the 02 REC area on Churchill. This is the College’s electronic archive for final records that need to be retained e.g. completed projects, minutes of Senior Executive meetings, major decisions and College leavers. It is worth bearing in mind their operational value, and in their residual value for historical research. For more information, please see the section below on ‘Records Management’.

Please be aware that is it is not recommended to save documents to your desktop. This should only be used as an area for temporary storage e.g. working on documents on a train. Any documents stored in this way are not backed up by Information Services and if corrupted or lost there is no way to recover them. Home drives (H:) should only be used for personal data such as PDRs.

It is not recommended to apply passwords to specific documents within any location. Document specific passwords when creating and storing documents on the fileshares – if the passwords are lost the document cannot be recovered. It also means no one else can get access which could cause significant issues for College business. If you want to work securely on the College fileshares then it is possible through the use of security permissions. Further advice can be sought from the College Information and Records Manager or your Configuration Librarian.

The only exception relates to the sharing of documents via non-secure email addresses. As per advice from the Information Security Team. Further information can be found here:

How do I understand more about Government Security Classifications (GSC)? | CollegeNet

Saving final copies Please see the section below on

https://collegenet.college.police.uk/howdoi/security/Pages/GSC.aspx

https://collegenet.college.police.uk/howdoi/security/Pages/GSC.aspx



Records Management.

Sharing documents

As mentioned above the purpose of the College’s file structure is to facilitate the secure sharing of documents between your team and other business areas across the College – who can see them depends on what security settings have been applied to the folders where the documents are located so it is important to ensure you are storing the documents in the right folders.

Also consider the implications of sharing documents externally (either draft or final copies) outside the College. It is important to be aware that it is difficult to control who sees the data, how they use it and who it can be passed onto. It is your responsibility to ensure you are familiar with the Government Security Classification rules and have correctly marked the document when required.

Before sharing, be aware of the following responsibilities:

Ownership of a document – the 'Owner Author' should be in control of the document and monitor and manage all changes and revisions, regardless of how many people are contributing to its progress

Final versions - If a number of people will be revising/making changes to your document, always keep a master copy which you incorporate those changes into, rather than accepting changes on copies as they come in.

The best way to collaborate on documents is using hyperlinks – see the section below on Useful tools to help you manage information.

Audit trails

Whilst a document is in development, such as policy/strategy/report, it is recommended to have a revision history at the beginning of the documents. This should provide a clear audit trail of alterations, circulation, and approval and so on.

This is especially significant as there is no requirement to retain drafts once the final document has been approved. The proviso is that the final document has the audit trail included within it, so if the author/s/College are ever challenged on what decisions were made and why then the audit history is available within the document itself. For an example of a document audit trail, there is one at the beginning of this handbook.



Scanning

Scanning can provide significant benefits if done properly and for the right reasons. It can:

make it easier and quicker to access information;

reduce the amount of office space taken up storing records;

make it easier to transmit paper records by electronic means, whilst still allowing you to print a hard copy.

make historical paper based information readily available

increase the security of information;

However, scanning also has its disadvantages:

Scanning is costly (if the records are rarely referred to, off site storage can be a cheaper option – for information on the Colleges off site storage service contact the Information and Records Manager.

It is unsuitable for a series of records which you are still adding to;

It may make records less reliable as a source of evidence (a scan is a copy and not the original document). It is a good idea to consider who you may need to present the scanned documents to and whether they would accept scanned copies as evidence of a transaction before commencing on a scanning project;

It makes it harder to access records for a long period of time (continued access to digital records is not a guarantee and requires additional time and expenditure for checking media and migrating records);

It can be expensive to make scanned records accessible (indexing increases accessibility to your records but is one of the most costly aspects of scanning work).

Appendix (a) Scanning acts as a useful guide when considering whether to start a scanning programme and provides a useful checklist. It is important to carry out the scanning in such a way that the scanned images can be relied upon as true copies of the original paper records. An effective way of doing this is to ensure that your scanning process complies with the British Standard specification for evidential weight and legal admissibility of electronic information (BSI0008:2008) and one of its supporting Codes of Practice concerning information stored electronically (BIP0008-1).

The College’s contractor for the storage of paper records is also able to scan records to the appropriate standards. Further information could be provided if this is deemed the more appropriate and resource saving option.



Email management

The vast majority of emails that we hold are ‘ephemeral’ – for information only, general use and are not critical to our business. Guidance on how to approach the management of your inbox, and Outlook tools that can be used can be found in the section “tools to help you manage information”. This includes:

Turning email alerts on and off

Cleaning up conversations

Mailbox clean up

Rules

For the purpose of this section, it is critical to note that not all emails are for information purposes. Emails can be records within their own right (for example, replying ‘yes’ to an email asking whether weapons could be deployed). Or, emails could form part of a record. For example, evidence has recently been supplied to the Home Office on our Information Assurance and Information Management audit. All emails have been saved in the same file location on Churchill as the documents that were sent to them.

It is also worth remembering that retention criteria will apply to emails that are, or form part of, a record – in the same way as a document on Churchill. In addition, all emails (and documents/databases) are subject to the Freedom of Information, Data Protection Acts and Environmental Protection Regulations.

Using email folders

Using folders to group email messages of a similar nature or subject together so that they can be dealt with consecutively.

Only keep email emails in folders for short term purposes…. Emails that are required for long term value need to be transferred to a shared drive

Email folders count towards your allocated Mailbox size so they should only be used as working storage for active items and not considered to be long term storage for filing purposes



How do I save emails?

The same basic rules apply to e-mails in respect of the meaningful title. However, version numbering is clearly not applicable with e-mails as there will seldom be occasions where an e-mail is created and saved in draft and is incremented to a final, agreed version. Generally, even with an ongoing e-mail correspondence, it is only necessary to save a single copy of an e-mail once the discussion has finished or a decision is made as this will usually include the entire email chain.

The best thing about saving emails to Churchill is that it is then held with all other related information e.g. Word documents, Excel, PowerPoint all on a specific subject or project. Churchill then becomes the ‘one stop shop’ for all relevant information and enables sharing and retention of data much easier.

In Outlook:

1) Open the email that you want to save

2) Go to file and ‘save as’ – it will also save any attachments with the email

3) Choose the folder on Churchill which contains other related information e.g. all information in relation to a specific project.

4) The saving format defaults to ‘Outlook Message Format’ (msg) which is fine.

5) If you only want to save the attachment you can go to file, save as and chose the save attachment option.

It is recommend that when naming an e-mail, the first part of the meaningful title should be the date in the YYMMDD format described above so that e-mails can be displayed in chronological order.

e.g.



For example, save all documents and emails in relation to the development of a policy all in one folder:

You could save a batch of emails from Outlook into Churchill – for example, all emails on the same subject… such as an audit trail of a policy decision.

1) Highlight the emails in Outlook

2) Minimise the screen so that the Churchill folder can also be seen

3) Drag the emails over

You may get the blue circle appear whilst the emails are reformatted. Try not to press or click anything until the circle disappears and the emails appear in the folder.



Records Management

If any of the documents or emails that you hold fall into the following three categories then it is highly likely that these are important College records:

Vital-- would it prevent the College from functioning properly if it was destroyed/deleted? Costly to replace?

Essential – evidence/decisions that are crucial to the College and are accessible, managed and held in accordance with agreed retention periods.

There is another category which is just as important, but separate to the College’s current business needs:

Historical and legacy – records describing the history of the College and/or previous related organisations (where functions have been transferred to us, such as training undercover officers) that demonstrate the ‘corporate memory’ of the College and Police development.

It is important that any documents or emails that fall into these categories are not deleted, amended or destroyed. For example, final copies of a document could be saved to ‘pdf’ format so that it cannot be altered.

All staff have the ability to move records into the ‘For filing’ area on Churchill 03 WIP – please talk to your Configuration Librarian before doing so.

Taking into account the following rules above on naming conventions, management of the filing structure, version control, access controls and disposal (see below for the latter) will all help in making sure these records are held and managed appropriately.

Ineffective Records Management is a huge risk to the College!



Managing paper records

There are some College documents and records which are created electronically but are held in paper format. An example of this are contract records and HR Leavers files. The principles above on the creation, management and disposal of paper records are the same. Make sure the following is taken into consideration:

Format of records e.g. A4 files, plans etc

How often they will need to be accessed

Security classification.

As an agile workforce and with restrictions on storage space, it isn’t always possible to hold paper records in the office. If it is needed on a daily or weekly basis then it is advisable to retain them within your working environment – with appropriate security controls applied i.e. locked cabinet.

For anything that needs to be retained in accordance to the retention schedule, but doesn’t need to be retained in an office environment, the College has a contract with TNT for the storage of paper records (such as personnel leaver’s files, financial accounts and exams/assessments records).

It is important that the inventory of the College TNT references is made available to the appropriate College personnel.

The service is fast and efficient so don’t worry about a delay in getting any records returned to you. Further details can be found on the following document:

https://collegenet.college.police.uk/howdoi/itanddigitalservices/Pages/Archiving-paper-records.aspx





Reviewing, archiving and disposing of documents, records and emails Documents and emails

Most emails and documents do not have a legal requirement to be retained, but retention periods can be agreed upon, and adhered to. They tend to fall into the following two categories

Important- necessary to fulfil most of the day to day operation and strategic work which could be, relatively easily, be recreated if lost or destroyed

Useful- documents that serve little purpose to the operation of the college of have little value to the team or department. Cost and effort replacing such records negligible

It is still good practice to put a retention on documents and emails and can mitigate against any challenges on why the College may or may not hold information that is requested by any of our stakeholders or members of the public. For example, press releases, document drafts and internal communications.

A record is defined as “Information created, received and maintained as evidence by an organisation or person in the transaction of business regardless of media’. Most of the College’s information is electronic – and only a small amount of that information become formal records.

Be aware that even emails become a record when it contains information that relates to a business purpose e.g. a final decision on grievance, expenditure or policy change.



Email - The four Ds

Essentially, to manage email more effectively consider the four Ds:

Delete it: If the content of the email does not relate to a meaningful objective you're involved in or working on, does not relate to you, is not required to be kept for later action or contains information that can be found elsewhere on the system, then it may be recommended to delete it at processing stage.

Do it: If you find yourself unable to delete the email message, ask yourself, "What specific action do I need to take?" and "Can I do it in less than two minutes?”. If you can, just do it. There is no point in filing an email or closing an email if you can complete the associated task in less than two minutes. You could file the message, you could respond to the message, or you could make a phone call.

Delegate it: If you can't delete it or action it in two minutes or less, can you forward the email to an appropriate team member who can take care of the task? After you have forwarded the message, delete the original message or move it into your email reference system.

Defer it: If you cannot delete it, do it in less than two minutes, or delegate it, the action required is something that only you can accomplish and that will take more than two minutes. Because this is your dedicated email processing time, you need to defer it and deal with it after you have completed processing your email.

Do not use deleted or sent folders for the long term storage of emails. Additional rules on mailbox sizes and deleted items will be introduced so there is no guarantee that you will be able to access them in the future if you are using them as your archive.

More information on managing emails can be found in the following document on CollegeNET:

Managing email

https://collegenet.college.police.uk/howdoi/itanddigitalservices/Pages/managing-email.aspx



Records Retention Schedule

As seen above, it is necessary to apply careful consideration to College records. Retention periods are agreed between the business area and the College Information and Records Manager, which takes into account any legislative requirements (established in law), and also their value to the business. The College has a retention schedule which it is currently being updated. The previously agreed version is available here:

https://collegenet.college.police.uk/howdoi/itanddigitalservices/Pages/retaining-records.aspx

If you can’t find what you are looking for then please get in touch with the Information and Records Manager.

It’s always worth knowing that when the retention period has expired, then it can either be automatically destroyed or reviewed for further action – which may be to keep for longer or transfer to archive.





Leavers All staff

Review the documents and e-mails you hold to determine relevance to ongoing business:

in your Team's 03-WIP area on Churchill' including the Group area;

in your H:\ Drive;

in any other areas where you store documents such as the shared drives at Bramshill' Ryton etc; in Outlook or any e-mail archives such as Enterprise Vault.

Delete any documents/e-mails that are personal or do not need to be retained for future reference.

Pass on any documents you are working on or e-mails that require attention to whoever will be taking over your work.

Arrange for your Configuration Librarian to file in the 02-REC area on Churchill any documents/e-mails that will be required for future reference or long term preservation.

Consult your Configuration Librarian for advice and assistance in selecting and filing documents.

Line Managers Notify HR Operations of the leaver

Notify your Configuration Librarian of the details of the leaver.

Ensure that the person leaving is following the guidance outlined above.

Please be aware of the retention of leavers’ home drive and email accounts. The Information and Records Management Policy established a retention of three months for Tier 3 managers and above, and one month for all other staff.



Useful tools to help you manage information Adding document shortcuts to your desktop

If you’re working on a document regularly and find it frustrating to keep browsing through folders on the fileshares you can set up a shortcut on your desktop:

1) Right click on desktop space and chose new and then shortcut 2) Choose browse and then go through ‘this PC’ to the location of the document

on the fileshare 3) Press O.K. – this takes you back to the create shortcut page and press Next

This provides easy access – and makes sure everything is backed up by Information Services.

More information and options on setting shortcuts can be found here: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/182161-shortcut-create-file-folder-drive-program-windows.html

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/182161-shortcut-create-file-folder-drive-program-windows.html

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/182161-shortcut-create-file-folder-drive-program-windows.html



Hyperlinks

We all know how annoying it can be to send out an attachment asking for comments. Not only does it become confusing when people reply but it also means even more emails!

The best way to share documents that others need access to and comment on is by using a hyperlink and the comments/track changes functions:

Insert

Chose the fileshare location where the document is held e.g. Churchill, S: drive

Browse to the folder and document



When working on a project it is important to ensure the right file structure is in place with the right people having access to ensure people can be given access to the right documents. Make sure that the people you need to share the document with have access to the folder that you have saved the document in. If not, most Churchill folders have a ‘review’ folder that is open to everyone across the College so the document could be stored in there. Use of this folder should be considered very carefully as any documents stored in here will be visible by everyone.

Highlight your document and press OK



Zipping files

Zipping large files to save space on the network

Information Services are currently writing a guide on ‘Zipping’ large files. Please

search CollegeNET for further information.

Zipping emails for security purposes

The following instructions have been taken from the GSC_Guidelines_and_Responsibilities document on CollegeNET.

“Any content deemed OFFICIAL (secure) must be zipped and encrypted when

emailing outside of a secure network. The password must not be transmitted with

the email, but should be shared via another medium, i.e. text message or phone call.

The usual considerations must be given to password construction, i.e. mixture of

upper and lower case, numbers and special characters.

a) Locate one or multiple documents, saving in one location if required.

b) Right click on file(s).

c) Scroll down to ‘WinZip’.

d) Select ‘Zip and Email Plus’.

e) Keep file as currently named or rename if required.

f) Tick the box ‘Encrypt Zip File’.

g) Click OK.

h) Under Encryption method, ensure 256-Bit AES (stronger) is selected.

i) Enter password as prompted and note it down to pass on to recipient, this should be sent via an alternative means where possible.

j) The file will embed itself in an email and is ready to send. Provide sensible handling instructions if necessary and apply the appropriate drop down box option.

Remember, always mark OFFICIAL – SENSITIVE irrespective of who or

where you are sending it, in document or email format.”

https://collegenet.college.police.uk/collegedocuments/How%20do%20I%20documents/GSC_Guidelines_and_Responsibilities.docx



Turning email alerts on and off

It’s very easy to get distracted by the new email pop up window appearing on your screen or even the yellow envelope at the bottom of the screen which alerts you to an incoming message. The default is that they appear and the following instructions tell you how to turn them off.

Email popup windows:

1) Click on the file tab

2) Click options

3) Click mail

4) Under message arrival select or clear the Display a desktop alert check box

Email message alerts

1) Go to File

2) Options

3) Mail

4) Message arrival

5) Uncheck boxes under ‘when new messages arrive’



Sending emails

To save time for you and your colleagues receiving your emails, only send emails to people that really need to receive them and make sure that they are as clear and simple to understand as possible.

Don’t use email like a long chat session. Any important or complex communication is best done face-to-face or by phone. Keep email messages short and don’t include too many complex messages.

Don’t copy colleagues unnecessarily into your email. If you copy in too many people, you run the risk of starting an unmanageable number of conversations and waste time.

Proofread emails before sending them and take the time to answer every question to prevent future, unnecessary emails.

Double-check you are sending the email to the right person in order to avoid mistakes.

Don’t send emails to College-wide distribution lists unless you have permission to do so.

Include a title in the email subject line to help your colleagues understand what the email is about.

Don’t send emails to your colleagues you know are on leave if you can avoid it.

Cleaning up conversations

It’s very frustrating after a few hours out of the office, or when coming back off holiday, to find a large number of emails in your inbox. There are a number of features within Outlook that can help clean up your inbox.

1) On the tool bar go to clean up

There options to clean up conversation, folder or folder and subfolders. The latter two can be used to clean up specific folders but if you want to clean up your inbox of related conversations click on ‘clean up conversation’



2) Outlook will then retain the final email of a conversation and remove the related emails to deleted items.

More options on this feature can be found in:

File – Options – Mail – Conversation clean up

Mailbox clean up

If you’re new to Outlook or want to understand basic functions on setting signatures, additional mailboxes, calendars and ‘out of office’ then the following guidance is available:

Introduction to Outlook 2013

The following hints and tips can really help you focus on work and not get too distracted or overwhelmed by emails.

Warnings on mailbox size

Mailbox clean up rules can also be set from your settings profile by going to file and ‘account information’ view.

Options are provided for:

Mailbox clean-up – further information below

Empty deleted items folder – useful if you want to clear everything with one click

Auto Archive – not recommended. It creates PST files and the issue with those is that if they are being opened in Outlook, it causes the backup to back it up every night. If the archive is static, and not being opened its fine and will not

https://collegenet.college.police.uk/collegedocuments/How%20do%20I%20documents/IS%20Introduction%20to%20Outlook%202013.pdf



be constantly backed up. It only becomes an issue when the file is opened in Outlook, even if the data does not change.

o PST files cannot be shared or searched by others o The files can corrupt resulting in loss of data o They can make the local site fileshares slow

Mailbox clean up – gives you a number of options

Rules (automatically route emails to where you want them)

Rules can be great for dictating where you want emails to be viewed. For example, you may want to provide a rules for the following:

Route all ‘cc’d emails into a reference folder so it’s easier to see emails in your inbox that are sent to you directly,

Route all emails from a specific person into a folder

Route all emails on a specific subject into a folder

Delete all emails in the inbox, sent box or deleted items after a specific time

Guidance is already available on CollegeNET on how to set up rules:

Introduction to Outlook 2013

This can be useful to find the oldest or biggest emails – can be very useful if running out of mailbox space

https://collegenet.college.police.uk/collegedocuments/How%20do%20I%20documents/IS%20Introduction%20to%20Outlook%202013.pdf



Using tasks

Outlook can let you make to-do lists of tasks – and you can set those tasks with due dates, reminders, categories and more. If you want to have tasks open on the same screen as your inbox:

1) Go to View on the top task bar 2) Click on ‘to do bar’ in the layout menu 3) Click tasks

If you want to view your tasks on their own then simply highlight the icon at the bottom left hand corner of your Outlook account:



Using Categories

It can really help to apply categories to emails so that you can bulk together emails on a similar topic.

1) Right click on an email

2) Go to categories

3) Go to all categories

4) Click new and call your category something meaningful

5) Click o.k.

If you arrange your inbox by categories it will still display incoming emails first but then you can see categories that you have created further down the inbox.

Further options and instructions can be found here:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Assign-a-color-category-to-an-e-mail-message-dd8132fb-0170-4e4c-bfeb-4dde5f3a7450

Flags

Adding a flag can give a visual clue that you want to return to the message later.

You can either add the flag from your inbox view

Or from the message

Flagged items will be shown in the tasks area. You can also set reminders to alert you about something.





Urgency and priority

If you want to highlight to someone that the message requires urgent review or action:

1) Create the message

2) Go to the same view as above for flags

3) Highlight the ‘high importance’ section

The message received will look like this:

Don’t mark it is urgent unless absolutely necessary – and follow up with a phone call if it is as it may still get lost amongst other emails. It may even be delivered at a time when emails are not being monitored.

Changing the subject header/title of an email

If you receive an email and the subject header doesn’t reflect the content – or you want to change it so that it fits in with a naming standard then you can change it.

1) Open the message

2) Click on the subject area

3) Overtype the text

Shared email accounts

The most important advice is to establish responsibility for the incoming inboxes.

o One person should be responsible overall for a shared mailbox and to make sure that it is being managed and used in accordance to agreed and communicated processes.

If the shared email account is attached to your own, then any replies or sent items will appear in your own account. It is critical that decisions are taken on whether these are transferred back to the shared account and if so, where.



Read and receipt

It can sometimes be really useful to know if someone has read or received an email. To do so:

1) Create your email

2) Go to options

3) Tick ‘request a delivery receipt’ or ‘request a read receipt’

It is not recommended to use read receipts for every email that you send (from within default settings). If you email people regularly it can get frustrating for them see so many acknowledgements. Send on an ‘as required’ basis.

Delay sending

It is recommended that if you are working out of normal office hours that you use the delayed read receipt function within Outlook.

1) Write your email

2) Go to options

3) Go to delay delivery

4) Within delivery options go to ‘do not delivery before’ and chose the date/time that you wish to delay the time of the message for.



Further Advice and Guidance

E-learning – effective email by emailogic

“A Pace Not Dictated by Electrons”:

An Empirical Study of Work without Email

https://www.ics.uci.edu/~gmark/Home_page/Research_files/CHI%202012.pdf

The Information and Records Manager, and the members of the Information Governance Committee (representing Security, Information Assurance, and Information Access) are available to help provide guidance, advice and support.

There is a range of information available on CollegeNET

Reference / Supporting documents

Information Asset Owners handbook

Risk Management Policy and Process Guide published July 2015

Risk Management Policy

Information Assurance Policy

Information Records Management Strategy and Policy

Security Incident Reporting/Handling

GSC Policy, when published

GSC Guidelines

https://www.ics.uci.edu/~gmark/Home_page/Research_files/CHI%202012.pdf



Appendix (a) Scanning

Checklist

1. Is the records series closed, or will records continue to be inserted into it?

Yes No

Scanning may be an option, continue to question 2. Scanning is unsuitable for these records.

2. How long do the records need to be kept?

2-5 years 6-7 years Over 7 years

Scanning is unlikely to be cost

effective, consider storing the

records off site.

Scanning may be an appropriate

option, continue to question 3.

Scanning could be an option BUT

you will need to seriously consider

digital preservation issues and

factor in additional costs, continue

to question 3.

3. Are the records duplicated elsewhere in hardcopy or electronically?

Yes No

It is unlikely that scanning will be a cost effective

solution as the records are already accessible

elsewhere.

Scanning may be an option, continue to question 4.

4. How often are the records looked at?

Rarely Sometimes – frequently

Scanning is unlikely to be cost effective,

consider storing the records off site.

Scanning may be an option, continue to

question 5.



5. Will these records need much indexing to make them retrievable?

Yes No, they are already in a sequential order

Scanning may be an option, but the cost

of extensive indexing should be factored

in, continue to question 6.

Scanning may be an option, continue to

question 6.

6. Will the records need to be produced as evidence of the University’s activities to sponsors/external

auditors who will not accept electronic copies?

Yes No

Scanning is not an option. Scanning may be an option.

If you have read through the checklist and are sure that scanning is the appropriate solution for you, as mentioned, it

is advisable to comply with the British Standard specification for evidential weight and legal admissibility of electronic

information (BSI0008:2008) and one of its supporting Codes of Practice concerning information stored electronically

(BIP0008-1).

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