Overview
Royal Borough of Greenwich decided to migrate from HP Trim to SharePoint online as the functionality of HP Trim no longer met the needs of the council. Content was cumbersome to add to the system requiring mandatory metadata and there was no search functionality available over document content.
Key Benefits
1. Remote access of documents
2. Simple scanning using Multifunctional Device (MFD)
3. Reduction in data entry when uploading documents
4. Nightly updates from iTrent
The Challenge
To convert and migrate Human Resources and Payroll documents for members of staff from HP Trim into SharePoint O365. The SharePoint environment had to integrate with scanners and other third-party systems while making a simpler user interface for HR and payroll users. Security levels on sensitive or personal documents needed to be maintained while keeping as simple a structure as possible. Staff information also needed updating including the archiving of staff who had now left the organisation.
The Approach
Initially proof of concepts in SharePoint were developed to show the customer varying structures, data associated with an individual’s documents and security grouping. This enabled the customer to visualise the SharePoint layout and provided confidence that highly sensitive documents could only be accessed by the allocated managers.
Analysis of the HP Trim database for staff data. The data entry forms in HP Trim had changed over the years so many entries did not contain all the data required and also contained typos. This required an iterative process of data cleansing through mapping of existing data types to the new data type structure and when unable to automate the entries required user intervention.
The Solution
A data driven staff folder creation process using nightly extracts from iTrent with new, modify or archive updates, SharePoint structure and metadata updated using PowerShell. Documents scanned in using MFDs were stored in a SharePoint Document Library with a script running regularly to file the documents into the correct staff folder location rather than users having to navigate to a specific folder. Users could search in SharePoint using a reference id and go directly to a staff folder, documents could then be uploaded by drag and drop with all metadata required being added automatically as Content Type fields retrieved their values from the Document Set staff folder being used. If a staff member changed department their folder was moved to the correct department Document Library with permissions modified accordingly. Archived staff member folders moved to archival area and documents converted to records.
Once the SharePoint environment was created and integrated into a production system HP Trim was set to read only and the new environment was used. At this point the migration could be started. All existing PDFs and images were OCR’d and then migrated into the appropriate staff folder using the transformed HP Trim data to define sensitivity.
The Result
The users of the system were very pleased with the simplification to uploading documents requiring very little data entry and the ability to search for documents easily. Navigation to a staff member was simple with only a reference number required to locate the right staff folder. In the same way scanning only required a reference number and the choice whether the document was sensitive.