Some organizations use synchronization technology to bring corporate control to desktop documents. These solutions typically replicate corporate documents between users’ machines, creating a virtual space in which people can share documents, collaborate, and perform a variety of project management tasks. This approach enables users to store copies of files locally, work on them offline, and then update them when they reconnect to the network or Internet. When a project is completed and the lifecycle of a document ends, project leaders can simply upload a final version of the master document to a central document repository and delete the document from the shared workspace. This automatically purges all local copies from individual machines.
Synchronization products provide an effective tool for sharing information and collaborating on documents in a workgroup environment, but they have significant limitations when it comes to document lifecycle management.
First, synchronization only works as a document retention solution if documents are always kept inside the workspace. This assumes that users will always be willing to share documents through the workspace—and never e-mail files, copy them to thumb drives or use other sharing methods. In most cases, this is an unrealistic expectation, because synchronization solutions require everyone who interacts with shared documents to have the proper client software loaded on their computers. As a result, users often resort to e-mail when they need to share files with customers, partners or colleagues who don’t have the proper software installed. As soon as these documents travel outside the shared workspace, they become rogue copies that fall outside the realm of corporate control.
For this reason, and because many users are simply more comfortable e-mailing files, teams are typically inconsistent in their use of synchronization products. Synchronization can provide many useful collaboration capabilities for workgroups that choose to use them, but they have limited value as an enterprise-wide solution for extending document retention policies to the desktop.
