Repository Design Principles and Best Practices

Laserfiche provides many tools and features to allow you to organize and work with information in your repository. These tools allow you to configure your repository in a variety of ways, depending on the needs of your organization. Because of this, it is a good idea to consider what your organizational needs are and to plan your repository accordingly, as this will allow you to design a folder structure, metadata definitions, security, and other important repository elements best suited to you.

As every organization is different, there is no single optimal way to design a repository. For example, a medical provider will likely have different security and records management needs than a university, and both are likely to have different needs than a financial services institution. However, the principles of repository design can be applied to any repository, by taking into account the specific needs of its users. While there is no single ideal way to design a repository, these principles can help you determine the best way to design the repository that suits your needs.

Initial Planning

When planning your repository design (or optimizing it, for repositories that have already been created), it is a good idea to first determine what types of content will be stored in it, and how it will be used. It is a good idea to have a solid grasp of the purpose of your repository and the types of information it will contain before you begin implementation.

Consider the following:

• What types of information will be stored in your repository? When determining this, take into account both the nature of the content (medical records, student information, invoices, etc.) and the format of that information (scanned documents, imported PDFs, Office documents intended for coauthoring and collaboration, media files, etc.).

• What are your goals for your repository? Most repositories will have multiple important needs to fulfill (security and compliance considerations, accessibility and easy of use, file sharing, performance, etc.), but it is helpful to get a clear idea of what your goals are. As you are likely to have multiple goals, it is a good idea to also consider which goals are most important for your specific organization. An organization that needs to follow strict regulations for data handling, such as a medical service provider, will have different priorities than one that does not; similarly, a city government that must make some documents accessible to the public will need to design their repository with that in mind, unlike an organization that is not using public portal for anonymous public access.

• How will your users access and work with the repository? An organization with a small core of power users who frequently access its content will have different design needs than one with a large number of users who access its content only occasionally.

Your design will necessarily change as users add content and find new ways to work with that content, and as your organization's needs change, but starting with these questions will allow you to plan your initial design intelligently.

Plan Around Your Users

In general, it is easier to adjust the design of your repository to your users' behavior than it is to train users to use the repository in a specific way. For instance, if users are most comfortable searching for information, it is likely to be more effective to ensure that your repository is easy to search than it is to train them to navigate the folder structure. On the other hand, if users are primarily comfortable browsing rather than searching, you may wish to optimize the repository for easy browsing using shortcuts.

It's also a good idea to plan your repository design around the most basic user that will be regularly using the repository. Power users who are already very familiar with Laserfiche and with your repository's design are likely to figure out where to find content they need on their own, but users who are less familiar with Laserfiche may have difficulty.

When planning, consider the following:

• How much training and familiarity with Laserfiche do your users have?

• What is their general technical level? Are they comfortable figuring out how to use software on their own, or do they need more assistance? Are they comfortable finding answers for themselves in help resources?

• How will they interact with the content? 

Planning around your users does not mean tailoring your repository solely to how users are already comfortable accessing information. If you have security needs that require you to organize your repository in a way that is not completely intuitive to a basic or infrequent user, you need to prioritize the security needs over user preference. But, as much as possible, make it easy for users to use the repository in the way you intend.

If your repository has already been in use for some time, it is a good idea to talk to your users about how they are using the repository. Users can identify pain points, discuss how they try to find information, and provide feedback on what works in the repository and what doesn't.

Consider the Suite

Your repository is critical to much of the rest of the Laserfiche suite. Forms processes and workflows store and retrieve information from the repository, integrations connect repository contents with third-party applications, and auditing and reporting tools collate repository data. All elements of the suite should be considered when designing a repository. This is especially important if different administrators or teams work on different parts of the suite. If a repository administrator is not a process designer (or not the only process designer), it is important for them to coordinate with the process designers to ensure that the metadata necessary for process automation is present in the repository. This is also advantageous as process automation can take much of the manual work out of organizing and administering a repository.

Plan for Growth

As with any collection of information, a Laserfiche repository will tend to grow over time as additional content is stored and as new uses are found for it. Because of this, it is important to plan ahead for repository growth. What may be feasible for a repository of five hundred or five thousand documents may be difficult to manage at a hundred thousand documents, and impossible to manage at a million. Planning ahead means that you are less likely to need to drastically change how you work with your repository over time.

When planning for growth, consider how your repository might look in a year, five years, ten years, or twenty years. This is especially important if you are initially implementing a repository for a subset of your organization (a specific team, department, or project) and intend to roll it out to more of your organization over time. Manual work, such as setting security on individual documents or users, may be doable in a very small repository, but quickly becomes difficult or impossible when dealing with hundreds of users or thousands of documents. When designing a structure or process, consider whether it would still be workable if your repository was much larger.

Start Simple, Expand as Needed

Laserfiche provides a wide variety of features and options that you can use to manage your repository. While every feature was included for a reason, not every organization needs every feature--in fact, very few organizations need to use every feature. In general, if you have a use case for a feature, use it; if you don't, you can ignore that feature unless or until you do develop a use case for it.

The same principle is true when implementing your design. It is a good idea to start with broad strokes when organizing your folder structure, creating metadata, and setting security. Once you have implemented and tested those broad strokes, you can continue to refine. This is a continuous process, but with a sound start, the dynamic nature of it allows you to remain agile and responsive to your organization's needs without needing to regularly reorganize your repository.

Further Information

The following pages provide information on repository design considerations for specific repository elements:

• Best Practices for Designing a Folder Structure

• Metadata Design Principles and Best Practices

• Security Principles and Best Practices

Free Training: View the Guide to Designing Your Laserfiche Repository on Aspire.