Document Labeling in SharePoint

Document labeling is an easy way to increase user awareness about the sensitivity of information in a document. For instance, a document may have a CONFIDENTIAL label at the top of the document, which makes it hard for the reader to claim they didn’t know the document was sensitive.

The difficult part is getting the label onto the document – and doing it in a way that’s consistent across the organization. If you leave it up to the users to type in labels themselves, they’ll either skip doing it (too hard!) or they’ll make up their own labels. And what if you have hundreds or thousands of legacy documents to label? You can’t expect your users to go back and label these documents one by one.

SharePoint goes some way toward solving these problems, although there are limitations. Let’s talk first about what SharePoint can do.

SharePoint has an Information Management Policy called “Labels”. Here’s what it looks like:

You can use this policy to add labels – such as Confidential - to the top of documents, as shown below:

There are several options available for administrators to customize the labels, including the ability to:

1)   Prompt users to add the label when they save or print, rather than relying on the user to click the Label button in the ribbon

2)   Specify labels containing static text and/or variables such as Project Name

3)   Control the appearance of the labels, such as font, size, and justification

The labels are added from within Microsoft Office Word, PowerPoint, and Excel 2007. One method is for the user to click the Label button on the Insert ribbon group, as shown below:

 

Another method is to add the label through a prompt that appears when a user saves or prints a document (if the administrator has configured this option):

The labeling capabilities in SharePoint are a good start for increasing user awareness and improving the handling of sensitive documents. However, a number of limitations exist with this feature:

1)   Watermarks are not supported. There is no way to automatically apply a watermark to the document with native SharePoint capabilities.

2)   There is no support for bulk labeling of documents. Users must open each document individually and apply the label.

3)   Related to point #2, if the labels need to change for some reason (e.g. the organization name changes, or updates are made to the labeling taxonomy), all previously labeled documents need to be opened one by one to apply the change.

4)   Even if you prompt users to apply a label, the user can choose to save or print the document without a label.

5)   Users can modify the labels in any way they like, including changing the text, size, and placement. This makes it difficult to enforce consistency across the organization.

6)   The feature does not work with Office 2003, nor does it work with Office 2007 Standard. Users must have Office 2007 Professional, Enterprise, or Ultimate.

An alternative approach is to add the labels automatically with no user interaction. This opens up new feature possibilities, such as watermarking, bulk labeling, and wider Office version support. This approach requires third-party software, which Charlie will cover in the next blog entry.

-Lara

Comments

[Andy]

Hi Lara,

That's a great post! It is important for employees to know the sensitivity of shared documents. This is just one of the great uses of document labeling in SharePoint. Labels are also a great way to organize and search for specific versions of your SharePoint documents.

The Office community on Facebook could really benefit from your knowledge and expertise. Check it out at http://www.facebook.com/office

Cheers,
Andy
MSFT Office Outreach Team

[Lara Bender]

Hi Andy,

Thanks for your comments! I'll be sure to check out your Facebook group.

Cheers,
Lara

[Andy]

Thanks Lara! Keep up the great posts!

Andy
MSFT Office Outreach Team

[Adil]

Hi Lara,

Can you use calculated columns on the label format?

Thanks-- Adil

[Lara Bender]

Hi Adil - No, calculated columns are not supported with SharePoint native labeling (according to Microsoft).

[nani]

can i set label to be added on let say : left hand corner at each page of the document? currently it just added in the cover page.

[Charlie]

Hi Nani,

You would need to manually go into the doc and add the location of the label manually to do that. Our product, Document Marking for SharePoint, will do want you want automatically.