Using SharePoint Online

Site provisioning, the creation of new sites in SharePoint Online, can take place once your unit has been through the onboarding process.

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Onboarding is the process by which a department, college of other equivalent part of the University sets up their presence in SharePoint Online.

At least one Business Owner (BO) and one SharePoint Network Administrator (SNA) must be nominated to oversee the use of SharePoint Online in your unit. The BO or SNA must then complete the onboarding form, supplying:

  • The unit name, as per the University organisation structure
  • The email address for at least one Business Owner
  • The email address for at least one Site Network Administrator

If your unit cannot be located in the University organisation structure, please contact the Nexus team directly.

When approved by the Nexus team, an automated email will be sent to advise that your unit has successfully been onboarded to SharePoint Online.

unit-wide strategy should be developed for your unit's use of SharePoint Online.

Your unit must have been through the onboarding process

If your unit is not listed in the onboarded entity list, check with your unit’s IT support team about onboarding with SharePoint Online.

 

Site provisioning is the process by which new sites are created in SharePoint Online (SPO).

To prevent the creation of new standalone sites that may lead to compliance and accountability issues, each unit must have been through the onboarding process before people in the unit can create new SPO sites.

Site provisioning follows the following process:

  1. The new site owner consults their SNA regarding:
  2. The site owner, or SNA on their behalf, submit a request through the SharePoint Online Site service request
  3. The SNA receives and approves an automated email
  4. The Nexus team use the request details to generate the new site
  5. The Nexus team send a new site notification to the Site Owner
  6. If appropriate, the SNA links the new site to a Hub

Team sites and communication sites are the two standard SharePoint Online site types, with hub sites assisting in the organisation of your various sites. 

Team sites

Team sites are similar to traditional SharePoint sites and focus on collaboration.

See also: Team sites in SharePoint (Microsoft)

Communication sites

Communication sites are aimed more at broadcasting messages to a wide audience and can create engaging content, so are the better choice for creating an intranet.

When you create a communication site in SharePoint Online, you can start with one of the following three templated site designs, each of which comes with a default set of web parts:

  • Topic: Share information such as news and events
  • Showcase: Use images to showcase a team or event
  • Blank: Create your own design

See also: Communication sites in SharePoint (Microsoft)

Hub sites

SharePoint Online sites can also be designated as hubs, which connect and organise sites for the project, department or college, making it easier to:

  • Discover related content such as news and other site activities
  • Apply common navigation, look-and-feel, and site structure across associated sites
  • Search across all associated sites

SharePoint Online hubs model relationships as links, rather than a hierarchy or ownership, with each associated site retaining their permission settings.

A hub provides associated sites with a common navigation, look and feel, search scope, and news and activity roll-up. For example, a department or college’s hub brings together all the communication and team sites within that area of the University.

See also: Hub sites in SharePoint (Microsoft)

Document Libraries

Libraries are file repositories, secure places where you and your co-workers can store files, access them from any device at any time, and work on them together. For example, to store all files related to a specific project.

Libraries allow you to:

  • Create folders to separate and organise files within the library
  • Check documents out to make sure that only one person can edit them at any given time
  • Keep different versions of files, and see the versioning history of documents
  • Assign metadata, such as public/internal/confidential sensitivity to a document, or when a document was reviewed

There are four different document library types:

  • Document library: Store documents
  • Picture library: Store pictures in Teams sites, and in Comms sites when the “Team and Collaboration” site features have been enabled by a site administrator
  • Site assets library: Store images, graphics and other common elements used in your site
  • Site pages library: Store HTML and Active Content pages in your site

See also: Documents and libraries in SharePoint (Microsoft)

Apps and web parts

Apps and web parts are the building blocks of a page in SharePoint Online.

Web Parts provide ways to customise the content displayed and the layout of a site. Apps are additional applications such as calendars, notebooks and document libraries, that can be added to provide sites with specific information or functionality.

See also: Pages in SharePoint (Microsoft)

Lists

A SharePoint Online list is a collection of data that users can share with their site members. Microsoft Lists help users organise, collaborate, and share information. Using lists, users can, for example, create and share lists that help people track issues, routines, contacts, inventory and more. Any web part in SharePoint that holds content is a SharePoint list.

See also: Data and lists in SharePoint (Microsoft)

By default, SharePoint Online provides the following permissions groups:

  • Site Owners: Full permissions. Responsible for managing access and permissions, site-level navigation (web parts), all structures (libraries, folders and document sets), and content held in the site
  • Site Members: Edit permissions. Create and edit content, similar to being a member in Microsoft Teams
  • Site Visitors: Read permissions. Browse, read and download content (if permitted)

If further access control requirements are needed, Site Administrators and Site Owners can create additional SharePoint groups for the site and assign them with custom permission levels.

External users can collaborate or access content using their own accounts in line with OneDrive and MS Teams.

See also: Site governance, permission, and sharing for site owners (Microsoft)

There are currently several issues around compliance and retention. The University does not have a single source of unified ownership or guidance, and the tools provided by the current SharePoint Online licence are limited and do not include the event-based triggers that many retention schedules use.

To date, retention and compliance labels and tools are not available in SharePoint Online. Once a way forward is agreed, retention tools will be implemented retrospectively for existing sites, and made available to new sites where required.

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