Microsoft SharePoint
What is SharePoint?
Microsoft SharePoint is a cloud file storage service included in UConn’s Microsoft 365 licensing. Students, faculty, and staff can use SharePoint by signing into Microsoft 365. With SharePoint, you can save, share, request, and edit files on any device with an internet connection. SharePoint supports shared ownership and structured permissions, making it the best option for storing team, group, or departmental files. Since it serves the group and is not tied to an individual, the data will not be deleted if a member or one of the owners leaves the University.
If you would like to read more on SharePoint, you may visit this full guide: https://uconn.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/IKB/pages/26250641504
When students, faculty or staff leave the university, they lose access to SharePoint, but the files they added to SharePoint persist.
Research, department, and group data
Research data should be stored in SharePoint to meet the state’s data security requirements and to prevent data loss when people leave the university. Departments and other groups should also store shared data in SharePoint for file safety.
If group data is stored in OneDrive, you risk losing the data when people leave the university.
SharePoint membership
When a SharePoint site is first created, there are three group permission levels. Custom groups can be created after the site has been created.
Add your coworkers by placing them in the appropriate group:
The “Visitor” group has read-only access to the data in the site.
The “Member” group can create, add, edit, and delete the data in the site.
The “Owner” group can add and remove Members, and delete the site in its entirety.
Ensure that there are multiple, full-time employee Owners of your site.
SharePoint maintenance
ITS uses SharePoint lifecycle policies to ensure data is not left unmonitored and sites are not abandoned.
Site Ownership Policy:
If a SharePoint site’s only owner leaves UConn, the site will become ownerless and trigger the site ownership policy. At the beginning of the next month, automatic emails will be sent to any site Administrators or active Members asking if they are able to become an Owner for the site.
If a recipient clicks Yes, they become an owner of the SharePoint site (only the site, not the associated Group or Team if one exists).
If a recipient clicks No, they will not receive further emails about becoming an owner for that site.
The policy will email at the beginning of the month for 3 months, or until someone agrees to become Owner (whichever occurs first). If a SharePoint site still has 0 owners after 3 months of emails, the site will become read-only and may be subject to future deletion.
Inactive Site Policy:
If a SharePoint site and its associated resources have been inactive for at least 6 months (e.g., no updates to files, no new files added, no chats in the associated Team if there is one), the site will trigger the inactive site policy. When this policy begins, emails are sent to site Owners asking if the site and its contents are still needed.
If a recipient clicks Yes, the site is certified “still active,” and the emails stop for 12 months.
If a recipeint clicks No, the site will become read-only and may be subject to deletion.
The policy will email towards the end of each month for 3 months, or until someone certifies the site is/isn’t still active. If an inactive SharePoint site is not certified after 3 months of emails, the site will become read-only and may be subject to future deletion.
Policy emails include embedded buttons which will not always work in a preview pane. Open the email in a new window to use the response buttons.