In deference to the 5 p.m. start time, Richard Riley, Group Product Manager for SharePoint at Microsoft announced at the top of his ECM for the Masses: How Microsoft SharePoint Server Delivers on the Promise session that he only had "about two slides … I plan to do everything in demo."  This was a bold decision given the justly notorious nature of connectivity during conferences but, fortunately for both Richard and his audience, fortune favored the bold this evening in New Orleans.

Richard structured his presentation in three sections: the ease with which end users can get content into SharePoint 2010, how end users can find and use content once it exists within SharePoint, and compliance.  Beginning with the maxim that "ECM shouldn't be reserved for the power users," Richard went on to show one of his promised few slides, talking through why ECM is different in SharePoint 2010.  The three pillars of ECM in SharePoint 2010 are: ease of use, flexible compliance, and cost effectiveness.

Richard began his demo with the Ribbon, saying, "We've made it really easy for end users to get content into the site."  Admitting that uploading files into SharePoint 2007 was "a bit of a pain," Richard showed that Microsoft has "made [uploading documents] easy in 2010 too."  Shifting gears from the browser-based demo, Richard demonstrated the managed taxonomy experience via a Word doc, showing the associated (and enforced) Enterprise Keywords that "make it easy for people to get accurate content" into a document at the time of creation.  Richard then demonstrated just how easy it is to get content into SharePoint 2010 directly from Word, thanks to the "nice little 'Save to SharePoint'" feature that's baked into all of the Office 2010 applications.  Once the document is in SharePoint, there's a handy Properties pane which allows you to easily manage the associated metadata.  As well, Richard demonstrated that you can enforce the inclusion of metadata at the folder level (via Library -> Library Settings -> Column Default Value Settings), ensuring that every document uploaded to a given library will inherit the desired metadata.

Richard then demonstrated that it's possible to navigate through the contents of a rich media library based on the metadata associated with those contents through the use of the Digital Asset Library.  In-line preview of rich media content is included in the navigation.  Next up was a demo of SharePoint Workspace, in which Richard showed the ease of taking the contents of a library offline and later synching back to SharePoint. 

Richard then said that since, "people live and die by lists, [Microsoft has] incorporated InfoPath into the equation" with SharePoint 2010.  Using the Customize Form button in the Ribbon, Richard demonstrated that clicking the button fires up InfoPath, allowing users to quickly and easily customize existing forms in SharePoint … or create new ones.  As his final demo in the initial section of his presentation, Richard showed the document set functionality, explaining that "Document sets are a way to group together documents that are used for a certain process."  Among the options associated with document sets is the ability to Capture Version, which essentially freezes the current version of every document in the set in its current state.

Beginning the section of his presentation on how to find and use content in SharePoint 2010, Richard mentioned that the "scale of lists has expanded exponentially" with the ability for a library to contain up to 30 million items.  To assist with searchability, every document which exists in SharePoint 2010 is automatically assigned a unique Document ID which follows the document even when moved.  Richard then briefly demonstrated the Content by Query Web Part which allows you to easily surface the contents of a given library based on specific queries, e.g., modified by.  Richard then showed the PowerPoint Broadcast, which allows users to "broadcast a presentation in real-time to anyone with a browser" and, finally in this section of the presentation, the Co-authoring functionality of Office 2010 which, "removes some of the barriers of check-in, check-out," allowing users to collaborate on shared content more efficiently.

For the final section of his session, Richard addressed the topic of compliance.  Beginning with the Term Store Management Tool, which is used for metadata management, Richard demonstrated the ability to delegate the management of term sets and taxonomies, as well as the ability to create term sets in different languages.  Richard then demonstrated the ease of migrating folksonomy  (freeform tags added by individual users) to taxonomy (managed tags).

Richard then demonstrated the Hold and eDiscovery feature in which a user chooses a site and particular query, and the feature will return everything in the site matching that query, presenting the ability to either perform a local hold or export the returned content to a location elsewhere in the site.  As well, there is a Holds link which will show everything that is currently in a hold state.  Moving on, Richard showed the records management functionality, specifically the Declare Record feature which is associated with document sets, as well as the Send To button which allows users to easily place the entire document set into a record center.

Coming into the homestretch of his action-packed demo session, Richard showed: how the Content Organizer filters content to the right location within SharePoint based on its metadata and content type (Content Organizer rules can be set as desired); the Create File Plan Report feature, which creates an Excel spreadsheet showing, "a crisp view of what's happening" in a given record center; and workflow, specifically using SharePoint Designer (still free!) 2010 to kick off a workflow based on a specific flag being set and, once set, moving a document to an archived location.

As you might imagine, Richard had me scribbling notes at a furious pace throughout this session.  I admit that at times I envy conference attendees who have the luxury of just soaking in the content of a given session, but then I console myself with the fact that my scribbling (and, later, blogging) may provide a useful window into the session for those interested parties who couldn't attend in person.  And so, needless to say, if you're interested in ECM in SharePoint 2010, I hope this post proved useful to you.

Bamboo Nation's complete coverage of TechEd 2010:

• What's New in Enterprise Search in SharePoint 2010
• Overview of Social Computing in SharePoint 2010
• SharePoint & Azure – 'How Do They Play Together?'
• ECM for the Masses – How Microsoft SharePoint Server Delivers on the Promise' in SharePoint 2010
• Fine Tuning Your SharePoint Server 2010 Environment
• SharePoint Security – Permissions, Identities & Objects…Including a 'Gotcha' that Breaks Security Trimming
• Integrating Microsoft Dynamics CRM & SharePoint 2010
• Outlook Social Connector – Deployment & Development Overview
• SharePoint 2010 as a Social Computing Platform