Cadence partnered with the Town of Gibsons to modernize their records management by seamlessly transitioning the Town from a traditional file share to SharePoint Online and Microsoft Purview.

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Introduction and Problem

The Town of Gibsons (TOG) is a small municipal government located in British Columbia, Canada. TOG engaged Cadence in a modernization project to transition the Town from a file share into a modern EDRMS. The key problems that TOG wanted addressed related to struggles with searching, document management, sharing, collaboration, access control, and a lack of records management. Additionally, the town desired an intranet landing page that could provide employees with quick access to some of the key documents any employee may require.

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Implemented Solution

The town's content was migrated from their file share into a SharePoint Online structure with fully automated records management built in. The transition into SharePoint Online helped solve various pain points the town experienced, such as improvements in searchability and sharing, built-in records management, and real-time collaboration. A two-site approach was taken to help achieve the town's needs - the first site to served as the intranet landing page and the other site is the document repository. The document repository was built out following the legislation imposed on municipalities in BC - the LGMA records format. Additionally, this format was built out in a records-first approach while still maximizing the user experience of SharePoint Online features. Our design ensured that users cannot bypass retention but can still have the flexibility to organize content as the do their work. This helped the town solve their struggles with access control, as well as the implementation of seamless records management following the LGMA.

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Outcome

Based on the success of our "records-first" approach, we were able to successfully migrate approximately 1TB of documents into SharePoint Online with automatic retention being applied to files as soon as they landed in SharePoint Online. What made the Go-Live of SharePoint Online for TOG a success was our extensive training and change management plan. Over the course of the project Cadence delivered over 25 user training sessions and 15 tailored change management communications, thus ensuring the seamless transition to SharePoint Online. Now using SharePoint Online, TOG staff can quickly find the files they need, co-author, and share files with fellow staff members, and be confident that business critical records are being retained according to local legislation.