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Essentially, the metadata should present sufficient information about the document to classify it appropriately. 

Figure 3-3 shows what happens to the document’s metadata when a user declares and classifies it as a record: Its content remains within the host application’s content repository, and the related metadata is stored in the Records Manager database. This metadata stored in the Records Manager database helps Records Manager in locating and managing the record. 

<img src='content_image/977303.jpg'>

One highly desirable capability of Records Manager is automatic classification. 

## Automatic classification 

Automatic classification  eliminates the need for users to manually assign retention rules (or more accurately select a record component from the file plan hierarchy the user is permitted to use). Records Manager offers metadata-based automatic classification, whereby the records administrator can define classification rules based on metadata of the record. If you plan on using automatic classification for your e-mail archiving solution, you should understand the lack (or potential lack) of suitable metadata. In the case of e-mail, it usually contains the From, To, and Subject fields. To have successful automatic classification, these fields or other metadata of the e-mail must contain sufficient information for the system to auto-classify. 

