Patent ID: 8839452

Claim:
A method comprising: maintaining employee data with respect to a first organizational hierarchy in at least one memory, the employee data representative of a plurality of employees of an entity; maintaining file records data with respect to a second organizational hierarchy in the at least one memory, the file records data representative of a plurality of file records in storage at a records supplier associated with an organizational division of the entity; receiving, at a first computer, a request from an employee of the plurality of employees for a file record of the plurality of file records; determining, by the first computer, whether the requesting employee matches an entry in the first organizational hierarchy; determining, by the first computer that the first organizational hierarchy has not changed, responsive thereto: determining, by the first computer, whether the requesting employee is authorized to access said file record based on the second organizational hierarchy; and permitting, by the first computer, access to the requested file record to the requesting employee upon determining that the requesting employee is authorized to access said file record based on the second organizational hierarchy; wherein the step of permitting includes enabling an audio indication of status of the access to the requested file record; wherein the second organizational hierarchy identifies specific physical documents records boxes accessible to employees of the organizational division of the entity and not accessible to employees of a different organizational division of the entity, wherein the permitting, by the first computer, access to the requested file record to the requesting employee includes permitting access to a specific physical document records box identified in the second organizational hierarchy.