Exports

Introduction

Organizations often need to manipulate data outside their records management application to perform actions such as reporting, transfers and migration.

Exports gives the ability to export records from Records365 in a compliant format that can be used for your organization’s needs such as transferring records to the National Archives and other parties, sharing with others within your organizations as well as reporting on it.

Records365 supports the following export formats

• CSV, a metadata only export
• VEO, a format specific to Victorian Electronic Records Strategy (VERS) compliant products.

Prerequisites

The Records365 Export feature integrates with an Azure Storage account to provide the data in a secure, scalable and highly available manner. The type of storage supported is Azure file share, which is recommended for high performance scale application. As the customer you will be required to bring your own Azure Storage account for the exported content, to give you total control over the retention and access of the exported dataset.

To access an Azure File Share, Records365 requires a Service based Share Access Signature (SAS) URL. SAS is known as the best practice for externally accessing content in an Azure file share. This allows for the greatest control and flexibility on securing the file share. For more information on SAS based access click  here.

Azure file shares, when used with SAS based access allow you to easily transfer the exported content to other parties, like the National Archives. As once written to the secured Azure file share, you can then issue a subsequent read-only SAS URL to the third party, eliminating the need to double handle the exported content in order for it to reach its final destination.

Here are the steps to create a SAS link for an Azure File Share:

1. Create an Azure Storage Account. For more information click here.
2. Create a File Share in the newly created Storage Account. For more information click here.
3. Download Azure Storage Explorer to generate a SAS (Share Access Signature) URL for the File Share. For more information click here.
4. When generating the SAS please ensure the following:
   • Start time and Expiry Time are valid for time of export
   • Permissions contains at least: Read, Create and Write
5. Select Copy next to the URI field to copy to the clipboard as the URI will be required at time of export from Records365.

Setting the Export Location

The act of performing an export can be carried out by all Records365 users. This can pose a risk, in that record metadata and content can be easily downloaded from Records365 en masse. To prevent this risk, Records365 allows only those users with the Application Administrator role to govern the destination for all exported data. Please note, users with the Record Manager role can view the set value, but cannot set it.

To set the export location perform the following;

1. With a user assigned the Application Administrator role click the Settings icon  in the top right hand corner of Records365.
2. Under Configuration, click on General in the left hand navigation pane.

3. Within the Export section, provide a Share Access Signature URL: a valid SAS for your Azure File Share. See above for steps to create this.
4. Click Save.

Performing an Export

The export feature is available from the Records365’s Advanced Search feature.

1. Navigate to the Advanced Search page.
2. Perform a search for the records you would like to export.
3. Select one or more records. Note that you will be able to export all search results, even if all are not selected.
4. Click the Export button, you will see the slide bar. That’s where you will need to provide the required information for your export:

5. Select the format type that the records will be exported to, either CSV or VEO
6. Select which records to export:
   • Selected Records Only: The records you manually selected from the search results
   • All Records: All records returned from your search
7. Complete the Additional Details section for your export. For CSV exports, select the fields to be included in the export, for VEO exports all the mandatory information required for the VERS standard is to be supplied.
8. Click Save.

Notifications

When the export is finished, you will receive an email notification confirming it has been completed.

Then, you can head to the Azure File Share, as configured by your application administrator, where you can find the exported data alongside a file called exportSummary.csv containing a summary of the export results.

Exported records

Once a record has been exported, the following information on each record can be used to searching for previously exported items:

• Last Exported Date: the date when the record was last exported.
• Last Exported By: who triggered the last export on the record.
• Last Exported Format: the format the record was last exported on, either CSV or VEO.

The Export functionality also creates an Audit Event, viewed from the Audit tab of the record, for full traceability of the export operation.