|Discussion
What's your archiving strategy?
Our community is 7 years old and has a ton of content that we manually cull once or twice a year, but I'd love to better utilize the archive feature Igloo offers. My only dilemma is that a lot of our content, while old, still offers value to our users...so how are you determining the length of time content lives before archiving it? Are you creating different archiving rules based on spaces or channel types?
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Rob Howell - Adding you to this discussion, as I know you are also in the process of working through this as part of your ongoing Governance plan.
Hi Lauren, We archive our Forums after 2 years. I found that people just weren't looking up old discussions that much. They reference old blogs more frequently, so we archive those after 3 years.
I don't archive wikis. Instead, every year, I check all posts that have had no views or activity for at least 12 months. I ping the authors on those posts and ask them to either update content or delete. I do this for all of our main knowledgebases. I DON'T do that for KBs in spaces...there are just too many! But when I do the main KB cleaning, I make an announcement about it and encourage all teams to follow suit. Some do, some don't.
Finally, when we archive a space, I take that space and convert it to a page and keep all other channels underneath it. That frees up the empty space, but also allows us to keep the content. I keep all archived pages hidden, but a user can request access to it by submitting a ticket. For example, we used to have a program in Tunisia that was cancelled due to low enrollment and security concerns in the region. So I archived that space content under a page. But later, when we needed some of that content to launch a program in Jordan, I gave the Program Manager access and she moved some of the content manually to a new space. Make sense?
Great advice, Jocelyn Flint! I hadn't thought about the space > page conversion. That's a nice alternative to deleting it altogether.
Lauren Baxter Here are some other Best practices for archiving, from our Playbook Resource Center.
Hi Lauren Baxter I'm hoping you found the advice above helpful. If anyone else in the community has words of wisdom to share, please feel free to comment below.
We, too, have years of data, dating back to 2011. Prior to migration Iast year I did a lot of cleanup to remove a LOT of content, but we still migrated more than 100K pieces of content. Also, it is diverse content so community-wide rules are tricky. After doing a lot of looking around at content and thinking through where we are, we are about to set up community rules for forum and event content. Those rules will be:
Forum = no comments for 180 days, archive
Events = one day after the event, archive
I don't think we can set community rules for other content types as the actual content varies in how long it is valuable. This fall and into winter I am working with our page administrators (where all of our "intranet" content lives) to educate them on the archive rules and how they can best leverage them on their channels to help them keep their content current.
Aside from that, I also manually archive content all the time.
We also have an archive area in our structure. When pages/channels/content from our intranet structure are no longer needed, I remove access (except for the page admin) and move it to this archive area. This retains it for future reference in case we need to do something similar in the future, for example our Open Enrollment page; once it is over we archive the page, but reference it the following year for the new Open Enrollment page for the new year.
Similarly, with collaboration spaces that go dormant (no activity for 180 days) but contain content that the space admin needs to retain, I remove access (except for the space admin) and move the space to the archive area. I had not thought about creating a page to house the channels to free up the space. Why do you do that Jocelyn Flint ? Also with spaces, if the space is dormant and the space admin is no longer with us and if the content does not seem valuable I delete the space. If I am unsure, I will reach out to other space members before i delete.
Tammy Triplett , I started converting spaces to pages on the advice of an Igloo rep a few years ago. At that time, we had a limited number of spaces included in our contract, so by converting to a page, we were preserving the space for other use.
I like your practice of archiving events after the date has passed. I think I'm going to steal that idea from you!
Ashley Pergolas I know you'll find this information on Content Management of value.
Jocelyn Flint - Oh yeah, I now recall talk of limited number of spaces and I think I mitigated that worry early on. I had forgotten. I am liking the page idea though so I can better organize the archive area. As it grows I'm seeing it could get out of hand being unorganized. Thanks!
Love this conversation! An archiving strategy is a great way to maintain content in your digital workplace and to prevent what many of us fear... content overload and an overwhelming amount of content to sift through when trying to complete a content audit.
Tammy Triplett I love that you have general rules for channels you know usually contain content with a shorter "shelf-life". This is a simple yet effective way to keep some content areas under control.
Jocelyn Flint awesome advice re Blogs and getting SMEs involved in the archiving process!
Blog Channels are another area to consider a general archiving rule as blog articles tend to include timely information that may no longer be relevant as time passes. Perhaps you archive blogs content at the end of each year, or every two years, depending on how you're organization is using blog channels. If you are posting content in blog channels that have long-term value for your employees, consider whether or not this content should actually live in wiki articles instead. At Igloo we house content with long-term value in wikis and use blog articles to draw attention to these wikis by linking to them from our catchy blog posts, essentially using the blog article as our communication tool and wikis are our storage tool.
Another consideration many organizations will need to consider when it comes to archiving policies is whether or not you have to store information for a particular period of time due to regulatory requirements. In this case, you may want to build a formal archiving strategy so your administrators are all on the same page.
Thank you Ashley Pergolas ! I completely agree with your wiki for long-term content and blog for more timely posts.
But, we have a decentralized content management model and although we provide guidance, training and best practices, not all of our content owners adhere to it (or understand the differences). I often come across content in a wiki that should be a blog and a blog that should be a wiki. I even find content in forums that should be wiki, but I've decided we'll just have to deal with those as they come up with the community rule on forums.
And, this is why I want to work with the page administrators that manage their own content to ensure they truly understand when to use each and what makes sense for archive rules on their content channels.
Tammy Triplett that's definitely a common issue. Policies and guidelines are great, but getting people to follow them is another challenge altogether! I'm very interested to hear more about your approach to solve the issue. Please keep us posted on what you find works for your organization.
Diana May , this sounds like another good adoption/engagement campaign idea for us to explore and add to the campaign library-- getting builders, creators, and publishers to follow the guidelines designed to set them up for success. Collaboration for the win!
Ashley Pergolas I couldn't agree more! Folks, I'll add the link to the campaign in this channel when it's completed and I'll be looking for additional info!