Why Archived Content Needs Its Own Records Tool
2 min read · Last updated · Page version 3
Organisations are legally obliged to keep many kinds of record, to know what those records contain, and to be able to show what they hold and why.
Archiving does not change that obligation. It changes where the record is.
What archiving does to a document
When Squirrel archives a file, the document moves, encrypted and compressed, into your own Azure storage. SharePoint keeps only a small pointer page in its place.
Anything that looks at SharePoint from then on sees the pointer page, not the document.
Your obligations for that record have not moved with it. It is still yours, and you will still be asked to account for it.
Why that is a problem for records management
A records tool that works on SharePoint content works on what SharePoint holds. After archiving, what SharePoint holds is a pointer page, and the record itself sits somewhere a SharePoint-facing tool does not reach.
That leaves an archived estate in an awkward position. The content has been moved for good reasons, storage and performance among them, and the obligations attached to it have quietly become harder to act on, not easier.
An archived estate needs a records tool that can reach inside the archive. Forage is that tool, which is why it is positioned as the completion of Squirrel rather than an add-on to it.
What that means in practice
- Your inventory covers both halves of the estate, live and archived, from one record.
- Search reaches inside archived documents, not just their names and locations.
- Where content classification is enabled, archived documents are checked for what they contain on the same terms as live ones.
The buyer this is written for
A records manager or compliance officer with a legal obligation to keep and account for records, who will be audited on the result.
That shapes the whole product. Everything Forage reports has to be explainable and provable afterwards, which is why every file is accounted for and every finding keeps the words that produced it. See safety principles.
Questions about your own estate go to sales@smikar.com.