One of the most important things you can do in your digital transformation is before you start, imagine how it will finish. When you build the end into the beginning, you ensure that your site will stand the test of time. From a practical perspective, that means thinking about how your site will grow and change, how you want people to collaborate and create content, and how you want to maintain that content down the road. If your Igloo has a hundred people, and each of them creates one item a day, in a year you'll have over 25,000 pieces of content. It scales rapidly from there, and can make finding what you're looking for a challenge. 

However, the Igloo platform offers a number of options to easily manage content on that scale. Good archiving policies will keep your search results relevant, and make sure your members can find the content they need. Labels let you associate content across your digital workplace architecture, so as your site grows in size and complexity, nothing gets lost in the shuffle. Using the features at the beginning will create a solid foundation for your members to build on. 

Archiving

Archived items still appear in widgets, and are available in the site, but they can't be edited or commented on, and don't appear in search by default. It keeps your content where it is, and as it is, but files it away and encourages members toward fresh information. Set up global archiving rules in the Manage Archive area of the Control Panel, and allow those to apply to things in your site. Good rules tend to be:

• Archiving Forum topics and Blog articles 60 days after the last comment
• Archiving Calendar events 5 days after the end of the event
• Archiving Microblog posts 30 days after the last comment

Files and Wiki articles tend to require more nuance, since they can contain policies that might not be updated for some time, and don't drive comments the way more interactive content types do. In cases like that, you can set a Channel-specific rule in the Settings area, so each Channel will fit your needs. 

Labels

Labels are designed to organize content by kind, rather than type or location. They can be as nuanced as you need, and organized in the way that best fits your members. Use them to group policy types, like onboarding or security policies, or content applications, like assets or whitepapers. Having an intuitive label system will let people work in their own Spaces but have their work easily passed to other parts of your site, either through search, or the Search By Label enhancement. Good label practices include: 

• Working with different teams in your organization to find common labels and determine what best fits them
• Documenting a few lines on what each label is and how it should be used, to help guide members decisions when they're unsure what to apply
• Organizing labels into categories by use, rather than department, to make it more intuitive. 
• Making labels mandatory at the Channel level for policy areas.

Good use of labels make your content easy to find and sort, and is integral to policy reviews. Labels are applied to individual content though, so the earlier you start to build the habit of labelling with your members, the easier it'll be for everyone in the future when they have to find those items again. 

Labels and Archiving are two easy ways to make your digital workplace ready for growth. Setting up good rules and habits from the beginning will make it easy to maintain in the future, and provide resources for you to build on as you continue your digital transformation. 

If you have any other questions about the Igloo platform, workflows, or best practices, you can leave a comment here, ask a question in the Community area.