Non Electronic Document Check Out Check In

[graviton]

When we have Physical documents in a storage area and we declare them as non electronic documents in RM fileplan is there anyway to show the document as checked out by someone?

So a person will walk into a storage area and request a document.
The clerk will fetch the document and then mark it as checked out by John Doe .
When John Doe returns the document the clerk returns the document to its place and then marks the document as "in".

[eholt]

Probably not the best way, but one workaround for this task would be to Freeze the document that was checked out.  When Alfresco queries you for the reason of the hold, you can type in "Checked out by John Doe" or some other boiler plate text that your staff agrees on.  The audit trail metadata will track the text you enter and if you do any cutoffs or deaccessioning, you should get a warning about a 'frozen' record that you'll need to deal with i.e. get the record returned by John Doe before carrying on with your activity.

Ideally, what should probably occur is an additional metadata field that could be activated only for non-electronic documents.  The field can only contain the alfresco username of the user who checked out the document.  A nice to have addition a custom query that shows documents that have on loan for more than X number of weeks so as to allow staff to remind borrowers to return the record to the repository.

[rwetherall]

Hi All,

Unfortunately this isn't directly support in the current Alfresco RM module, but there are some good ideas here.

I've created an issue in JIRA … http://issues.alfresco.com/jira/browse/ALF-5472 … that outlines my understanding of these features and what we could do. 

Please take a look and add any feedback you might have.

Cheers,
Roy

[jgnat]

In context, my background is Records Management rather than Information Management. In the physical world we typically charge out the folder, not the document. I don't think Alfresco allows for Folders that are physical rather than electronic. That would make greater sense to me. Then check-in and check-out would occur at the folder level rather than the document level.