Introduction
Occasionally, companies will move content around to different sites in SharePoint. It is essential the appropriate steps are taken to decommission old sites / libraries and avoid any possible issues with acknowledgement requests being sent if the library is still be used. It may be the case you plan to delete either the site or library, and to avoid errors being generated by the Read and Understood application, you should follow the steps to decommission the site / library.
Decommissioning a Library
Before you Begin
You should check if there are any active Read and Understood cycles for documents before they are moved. These will need to be cancelled to inform users as they may not be able to access the files to acknowledge if they have been moved.
Note: If files are moved within the same site and the files are Microsoft Office files such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc, then because the files are moved SharePoint knows the files Id so can located using the sharing link we use for the file as it will find it in its a new location. This is not true of files such as PDFs or Videos as Microsoft do not offer this functionality.
To cancel any activity notifications:
Open the Read and Understood Application in the site.
From the Navigation click Document Selectors.
From the List of Site/s, click the Site the library resides then select from the list the library you’re decommissioning. Result: The document selector window will open in a new browser tab or window.
In the top right of the page are three buttons, one, the play icon is for managing active document cycles. Click the icon. Result: A popup window will appear.
For each document in cycle, click the Trash can icon to the right of each active document. Result: An email will be sent immediately to the users with active cycles informing them the of the cancellation. If the cycle is for Microsoft documents, then you could leave them to complete as Read and Understood will present links to the files for the new location. If they were PDFs or Videos, then you must cancel them.
Instructions
If you have moved the content from one library to another in the same Site, then we recommend you:
Open the Read and Understood Application in the site.
From the Navigation click Document Selectors.
From the List of Site/s, click the Site the library resides then select from the list the library you’re decommissioning. Result: The document selector window will open in a new browser tab or window.
You may have one or more document selectors as it is possible to create Folder/Content Type/Document selectors all of which can inherit from the library document selector. Open each Document Selector for either Library/Folder/Content Type/Document and set ‘disable document selector’ to Yes. Result: This will effectively stop any potential acknowledgements cycles from being triggered.
If you plan to recreate the same document selector rules for the New Library, then you can replicate the settings from the existing Document selectors. Once replicated or, if your intention is to use an alternative approach, you can now delete each Document selector - but not the Site one, as you must keep this.
Reporting
Because you are keeping the site and moving the content, then all reports will continue to present information from both the new and old library. Assuming you move the files, this will cause SharePoint to persist the original document Id (GUID) in addition, if you use the Document ID services, those Id’s will also be persisted from the old library.
Should you choose to copy files then each file is regarded by SharePoint as a new file, therefore new Id’s will be assigned. While documents may have the same name as before, Read and Understood andSharePoint do not consider them linked to the original files.
Decommissioning a Site
Start by following the instructions for Decommissioning a library (above) and ensure you do every library enabled for Read and Understood. If you’re intention is to delete the Site then you should:
Delete all the document selectors using Instructions above (step 4 above).
Login to the ZoHo customer portal as you need to cancel the subscription for the Site before you delete it. This is necessary so Read and Understood does not detect the Site Deletion and send email alerts. If you cannot or are unsure which subscription to cancel in ZoHo then please contact us at support@spadditions.zendesk.com and provide us with the site name and URL.
Reporting
You may want to export the Acknowledgement Reports prior to removing the site. Withing the App, click Site Administration. Scroll to the end of the page and you can download the ‘Document Versions by Employee’ spreadsheet. You can now proceed with deleting the SharePoint Site.
