Recently, Microsoft officially discontinued support for declaring a record directly within OneDrive. While OneDrive remains a powerful tool for personal document management and collaboration, its architecture is no longer designed to host content that carries the rigid, immutable characteristics of a formal record. This change impacts how records can be managed directly within that environment.

At AvePoint, we’re constantly working to ensure our solutions seamlessly integrate with the Microsoft ecosystem, providing you with the most effective tools for information governance. As Microsoft evolves its platforms, we adapt to continue delivering robust and compliant recordkeeping capabilities. As a result of some recent changes made by Microsoft, we have an important update regarding record declaration in OneDrive.

Your Path Forward: Declaring Records in SharePoint with AvePoint Opus

While direct record declaration in OneDrive is no longer supported, AvePoint Opus provides a powerful and compliant alternative: moving content from OneDrive to a SharePoint site and then declaring it as a record within that SharePoint environment.

SharePoint’s robust content management and governance capabilities make it the ideal destination for formal records. Its inherent features for versioning, auditing, and retention align perfectly with the stringent requirements of regulatory compliance. AvePoint Opus’s recordkeeping capabilities enhance this by providing the following features. 

• Seamless Content Moves to SharePoint: Opus enables you to efficiently and securely move important content from individual OneDrive accounts into designated SharePoint sites or libraries. This process ensures data integrity and preserves crucial metadata during the transfer. You can see how to configure this in the following screenshot.

Centralized Record Declaration: Once your content resides in SharePoint, Opus offers advanced capabilities to classify and declare it as a record, applying appropriate information lifecycle and ensuring immutability in line with your organization’s policies. The screenshot below shows the automated record declaration option – when going to configure this rule you will see the warning message below, however this is only relevant if you are moving content to a location in OneDrive. 

• Automated Governance: Leverage Opus’s powerful business rules to automate the transfer of content from OneDrive to SharePoint based on specific criteria, and then automatically declare it as a record upon arrival or at a predetermined lifecycle stage. This minimizes manual effort and ensures consistent application of your records policies.
• Auditability and Reporting: Maintain a complete audit trail of content movement and record declaration, ensuring transparency and accountability for compliance purposes.

This streamlined approach ensures that your critical information is managed as a true record, benefiting from SharePoint’s robust governance framework and AvePoint Opus’s advanced recordkeeping capabilities.

Looking Ahead

This adjustment underscores the dynamic nature of cloud platforms and the importance of having flexible governance tools that can adapt. We are dedicated to navigating these changes on your behalf, ensuring that AvePoint Opus continues to empower your organization with leading-edge information governance and records management solutions.

We encourage you to review your current recordkeeping strategies involving OneDrive. If you have any questions or require assistance in adapting your workflows, please don’t hesitate to reach out to AvePoint partners PMD Data Solutions.