Governance Series - How to create a Single Source of Truth in SharePoint

I was in the SharePoint Community site last night and someone asked about maintaining a single source of truth.  One way to do it is to have a central repository for documentation; in SharePoint we would use a record center.  But it brings up a good point of how you would distribute those documents out to the team sites where they are actually used and manipulated.  The answer is simple, we create a new type of document library that can only contain links to documents.  We template it and save it as part of all our site templates instead of a regular document library.  In addition, we could add form and workflow functionality that would allow the users to upload files, but they would automatically be routed to the document repository; but that is for another time.

So how do we do this?  First we are going to need two sites with two document libraries one we will use as the source, the other as the link. In my example I will start with the "Linking" site first, but it really doesn't matter which site is first, only that the document exists in the repository prior to creating a link.

Linking Site

Ok, so we created a new site, lets say it is a team site template.  With a team site and most sites you get a document library named "Documents",  I am going to modify that library and make it a "Link Library".  Now don't confuse this with the "Links" app, which is just a list of hyperlinks.  At the end, I will add the steps to make it into a "Link Library" template so it can be reused.

Creating a Link Library from a Document Library

1. In the Document Library Click the Library tab then Click "Library Settings"
   
2. In the Settings page, Click "Advanced Settings"
   
3. In Advanced Settings, under "Content Types", "Allow management of content types?", Select "Yes", then scroll down and Click "OK"
   
4. Under "Content Types", Click on "Add from existing site content types"
   
5. Scroll through the list and Select the "Link to a Document" content type, Click "Add" and then Click "OK"
   
6. Under "Content Types" Click "New Button Order and Default Content Type"
   
7. Change "Link to a Document" from "2" to "1" and Click "OK"
8. Under "Content Types" Click "Document"
   
9. Under "Document" Click "Delete this content type"
   
10. When Prompted, Click "OK" to delete the content type
    

Your Library is now configured to create links to documents rather than documents themselves, but I have not addressed the issue of the upload button, but it is simple enough to hide the button or if you want a complete solution you can create a workflow to move uploaded files to a designated location in the repository; to me that is a much better option.  One caveat I want to point out is that the "Link to a Document" uses a URL, not a navigation pane, so you need to know where the document you are linking to is located, the advantage to this is it allows you to cross site collections and farms, but does not provide a great user experience.

Repository Site

The Repository site, like the Linking site contains a Document Library, unlike the Linking site, however, we are not going to manipulate it in the same way.  Instead, we are going to configure it to make it fit for our purpose, which is the storage of documents.  Now I am not going to tell you have to do that, because everyone is different, but some things that you might look at doing include setting up folder containers to classify documents that are uploaded. creating retention and disposition workflows and of course version control.

Test out the solution and let me know what you think.  Based on writing this, stay tuned, I think I like the idea of showing you the Nintex workflows that would go along with ths.

Follow me on twitter @DavidRMcMillan and @DevFactoPortals.  Feedback and suggestions are appreciated and encouraged.