SharePoint Online Document and Records Management Training Course

Course overview

Teams often store working files, approved documents, meeting records and regulated evidence across SharePoint sites, Teams channels, personal drives and email attachments. Without agreed content types, metadata, permissions, retention rules and ownership, staff cannot reliably find the authoritative version or demonstrate that records have been retained and disposed of correctly. This course addresses the operational and governance work required to turn SharePoint Online from a file repository into a controlled document and records management environment.

Participants learn to design practical information architectures for SharePoint Online document libraries and sites. They configure columns, content types, managed metadata, document sets, views, versioning, approval processes and permissions to support everyday document control. The course also examines Microsoft Purview retention labels, retention policies, record declaration, disposition review and event-based retention, enabling participants to translate organisational retention schedules and business rules into workable controls.

Training combines instructor demonstrations with guided configuration in a SharePoint Online practice tenant, scenario-based design workshops and peer review of governance decisions. Participants work through a realistic records-management case involving project documents, contracts, policies and controlled procedures. They leave with a documented SharePoint document and records management design pack: site and library structure, metadata model, permission model, content lifecycle rules, retention-label approach and implementation actions that can be adapted for their own organisation.

The course is suited to professionals who manage document-heavy business processes or who have responsibility for information governance, compliance, collaboration platforms or SharePoint administration. It builds a foundation for confident configuration while developing the judgement needed to balance staff usability, legal obligations, auditability and security.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Design a SharePoint Online site, library and folder structure for a defined business records scenario
• Configure columns, content types, managed metadata and document sets to classify controlled documents
• Build library views, filters and metadata navigation that help users locate authoritative content
• Apply versioning, check-out, approval and publishing controls to manage document lifecycles
• Create SharePoint permission groups and inheritance boundaries using least-privilege principles
• Map a retention schedule to Microsoft Purview retention labels, policies and disposition reviews
• Define record declaration, event-based retention and defensible disposal procedures for key record classes
• Produce a document and records management design pack with governance roles and implementation actions

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• SharePoint Administrators — who configure sites and libraries that must meet business control requirements
• Information Governance Managers — who translate retention, privacy and policy obligations into Microsoft 365 controls
• Records Managers — who need to apply records classification, retention and disposition practices in SharePoint Online
• Compliance Officers — who require auditable controls for regulated documents and business records
• Knowledge Managers — who improve findability, ownership and reuse of organisational knowledge assets
• Business Process Owners — who manage document-intensive processes such as contracts, policies or projects

Requirements and prerequisites

This is a foundation-to-intermediate course. Participants should be comfortable using Microsoft 365, navigating SharePoint Online sites, uploading and editing documents, and working with basic document-library features such as folders and sharing. Familiarity with their organisation’s retention schedule, document-control policy or compliance obligations is useful but not essential. No prior SharePoint administration, scripting, PowerShell, Microsoft Purview configuration or records-management qualification is required. Complete beginners should expect a practical introduction to SharePoint terminology before progressing to configuration and governance decisions.

Training methodology

The instructor introduces each control through a business scenario, demonstrates the relevant SharePoint Online or Microsoft Purview configuration, and then guides participants through hands-on practice in a training tenant. Exercises include designing a metadata model, configuring a controlled library, resolving permission conflicts and mapping a retention schedule to labels. Small-group workshops test design choices against usability, audit and compliance requirements. On the final day, participants consolidate their work into an application plan for a selected document or records-management process.

Course outline

Day 1: Document and records management foundations

• Document management versus formal records management
• SharePoint Online architecture: sites, hubs, libraries and lists
• Information governance roles and accountability models
• Records inventory and business classification analysis
• Authoritative source, duplicate content and shadow repository risks
• Document lifecycle stages from draft through disposition
• Requirements gathering for document-heavy business processes

Workshop: Participants analyse a project-and-contracts scenario and produce a records inventory with owners, record classes and lifecycle requirements.

Day 2: Information architecture and document control

• Site and library design patterns for controlled content
• SharePoint columns and reusable site columns
• Content types, document templates and required metadata
• Managed metadata, term sets and enterprise keywords
• Document sets for grouped project and case records
• Library views, filters, formatting and metadata navigation
• Folder use criteria and migration-friendly naming conventions

Workshop: Participants configure a controlled document library with content types, metadata, views and document sets for a policy management case.

Day 3: Access, collaboration and workflow controls

• SharePoint owners, members, visitors and permission levels
• Permission inheritance, unique permissions and access review risks
• External sharing and sensitivity considerations
• Version history, major and minor versions and check-out
• Content approval and publishing approval processes
• Microsoft Teams file storage and SharePoint document governance
• Power Automate approval flows and metadata update actions

Workshop: Participants build a controlled procedure library, configure access groups and create an approval flow for publishing an updated procedure.

Day 4: Retention, records and defensible disposition

• Retention schedules, triggers and record-class mapping
• Microsoft Purview retention labels and label settings
• Retention policies and adaptive versus static scopes
• Applying labels manually, by default and through auto-application
• Record declaration and regulatory record restrictions
• Event-based retention for contracts and project closure
• Disposition review, proof of deletion and disposition authorities

Workshop: Participants map a sample retention schedule to Purview labels and prepare a disposition review workflow for contract and policy records.

Day 5: Governance, implementation and operational assurance

• Document and records management governance charter
• RACI roles for site owners, records managers and compliance teams
• Provisioning standards and site lifecycle management
• Metadata quality controls and periodic content review
• Audit logs, eDiscovery considerations and evidence requests
• Migration assessment and legacy file-share remediation
• Implementation roadmap, adoption measures and success metrics

Workshop: Participants complete and present a SharePoint document and records management design pack with a prioritised implementation roadmap.

Tools & standards covered

SharePoint Online, Microsoft Purview Records Management, Microsoft Teams, Power Automate

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions