You can declare records in a number of ways, such as through:
For a Base or DoD installation, you can declare a record in a volume, record folder, or a record category; for a PRO installation, you can declare a record in a record folder or a volume. To declare a record, you need to ensure that the entity in which you are declaring the record is open.
If you declare a record in a record folder, the record is automatically assigned to the active volume that exists in that folder. The last created volume is always the active volume until it is closed. If you need to declare a record in a closed volume, reopen the volume and manually select the reopened volume.
NOTE You can create entry templates to facilitate the declaration of records. IBM InfoSphere Enterprise Records includes a sample entry template for declaring email records. You can use this template to declare email records from Workplace. (For information on importing the sample email declaration template, see the readme file for the IBM InfoSphere Enterprise Records software package.) IBM InfoSphere Enterprise Records also includes a sample workflow for declaring records. This workflow demonstrates to software development professionals how a document can be declared using the API and workflow. For more information, see "Install a sample workflow" in the IBM InfoSphere Enterprise Records Installation and Upgrade Guide.
If you are declaring a document as a record and the document has more than one version, you have several choices for how to create the record for the document series (see Documents and records management for more information). Note, however, that you can declare only up to sixteen document versions as a single record.
NOTE After a records user declares a document as a record, other users who are not records users (as a minimum) can no longer access the document's information page. This limitation is by design.
To speed up the process of declaring records, the Declare as Record wizard and Declare as Record entry templates support automatic mapping of property values from the document to the record. When a document is declared as a record, the document class property symbolic names are compared to the record class property symbolic names. If the names match, then the value from the document property is automatically assigned as the value for the matching record property. For example, if the document class has the property "Color," and the record class also has the property "Color," then the value from the document property will be automatically mapped to the record property. Likewise, if you are declaring an email message from Outlook using the default email record class, then the Subject, To, CC, From, Sent On, and Received On property values will automatically be mapped.
Property mapping occurs whether or not the entry template displays the Set Record Properties step. In cases where more than one version of a document is selected to be declared, the property mapping is based on the newest version of the document that was selected for the declare action. Different versions of a document might have different classes and properties. The properties are always mapped based on the properties for the most recent version of the document.
The following rules describe how property mapping works for a property that is common to the document and record classes.
NOTE Properties can be aliased from one object store to another. Any property mapping takes into account the administrator-defined settings for mapping properties from one object store to another object store.