Departments on SharePoint - First Steps

Owned by Dan Jakubiak
Last updated: Jul 02, 2024
2 min read

This page is for faculty, staff, and students who have recently moved to SharePoint and are looking for some first steps to take.

SharePoint site Owners (Admins)

If you are an Owner of a SharePoint site, or “admin” colloquially, know that a new SharePoint site will not have any members or permissions set. You and your second admin (you may have more than two admins) will have access to the site, but you two will need to add other users before they can access the site. Newly added users can view and edit all files until you manually edit their permissions. There are multiple methods of restricting access to folders. For example, the use of User Groups will set a user’s permissions as soon as they are added to the site.

If you are an Owner, learn how to Manage Users in SharePoint and learn how to Restrict SharePoint folders from certain Users.

1) Install OneDrive

Both SharePoint and OneDrive use the same “OneDrive App” on your computer. If you are on a university computer, OneDrive should already be installed.

The installation steps for OneDrive can be found in another article linked below. To return to this page, you may use the back button in your browser, or navigate to s.uconn.edu/firstsharepoint.

Set Up OneDrive on a Computer

2) Link your SharePoint sites

Depending on the number of files in your SharePoint site, the initial synchronization with your computer may take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. This synchronization happens in the background, and you may turn off your computer during the process; the synchronization will resume when the computer turns back on.

During this initial synchronization, you will not be able to access file in File Explorer (Windows) or Finder (macOS). Please use the website, s.uconn.edu/sharepoint, to access your files until the synchronization has completed.

“Now that all my files are in SharePoint and I have OneDrive installed, how do I access my files?”

  • There are multiple methods of accessing your SharePoint data.

    1. Add Shortcut to OneDrive - ITS recommended, this adds a shortcut to your SharePoint sites within your OneDrive.

    2. Use your web browser - no software required.

  • Visit Access SharePoint files to find the instructions.

3) Optional: Further Reading

What is SharePoint? - Long Article, has a video training provided by Microsoft.

SharePoint's Relationship with Teams

4) Learn how to share files

Share Files/Folders in SharePointUNDEFINED

5) Learn about the Recycle Bin and Version History

Recover Deleted Folders/Files from SharePoint

Version History for Files in SharePoint

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