MICROSOFT SHAREPOINT - On The Right Track€¦ · UNDERSTAND PERMISSIONS CURRENT PERMISSION LEVELS...

MICROSOFT SHAREPOINTSITE OWNER’S MANUAL

Creating a Useful, Engaging Site for your Team to Love

CONTENTSUNDERSTAND SHAREPOINT

UNDERSTAND PERMISSIONS CURRENT PERMISSION LEVELS 5

PERMISSION LEVEL DEFINITIONS 6

CREATING NEW PERMISSIONS 8

CREATING LISTS & LIBRARIES

MAKING IT EASY ON YOUR TEAMCUSTOM VIEWS 11

VERSIONING SETTINGS 12

CUSTOM NAVIGATION 14

CUSTOM HOME PAGE 15

Microsoft SharePoint: Site Owner’s Manual | 3

UNDERSTAND SHAREPOINTMicrosoft SharePoint is a platform for building websites. These websites can serve nearly any business purpose, from team- and project-based collaboration to outward-facing marketing. Because of its flexibility and the number of features packed inside, one of the most important things we can do as Site Owners is to narrow everyone’s focus. Find specific tools and specific use cases that are relevant to your team, and create a simple site to satisfy that need.

A SharePoint site is composed of pages (like the home page of the site), lists (like contact lists, task lists, and calendars), and libraries (which are effectively folders - good for holding your team’s files). In the later versions of SharePoint, Microsoft has brought both lists and libraries under the broader term of apps.

4 | Microsoft SharePoint: Site Owner’s Manual

A SharePoint site typically finds out who you are - as a user - by the ID you used to log in to your PC. If it can’t read that information, then you need to log in with your normal company ID on the website itself. From there, your user information is put into the permissions system to determine what you’re allowed to do.

Some of the most common uses of a SharePoint site include:

• Collaborating on files within your team

• Creating FAQs, wikis, and blogs to spread information within a company

• Publishing marketing content for clients and partners

• Holding centralized copies of information used by a team


UNDERSTAND PERMISSIONSSharePoint Permissions (security settings) are controlled through three elements:

• the users (the ID you log in with)

• SharePoint Groups (a site-by-site organization system for users)

• Permission Levels (the set of yes-or-no questions about what people are authorized to do)

CURRENT PERMISSION LEVELSIn every SharePoint site, you have these five permission levels already in place:


PERMISSION LEVEL DEFINITIONSRead Only: Users who should be able to view and download the contents of the site, but can’t add, edit, or delete any content, nor can they customize their experience:

Contribute: Can do everything read-only users can do, but can also work with items - the files and records of the site - and can set up their own custom settings (views and home page customization):


Edit: Can do everything contributors can do, plus the ability to customize lists and libraries.

Design: Editors with the additional privileges of (1) overriding check-outs, and (2) customizing pages and the aesthetics of the site:

Full Control: Of course, these users have every checkbox selected; these are your Site Owners, who can change permissions and otherwise do anything they want to the site (including delete it):


CREATING NEW PERMISSIONSTo create a new Permission Level, click Gear Icon > Site Permissions.

Then, select Advanced permissions settings.


Now, click the Permission Levels button.

You can now click Add a Permission Level, and select any relevant settings for the audience you have in mind.

To create a new Group you can assign that permission level, click Gear Icon > Site Permissions. Then, select Advanced permissions settings. At this point, you can now click the Create Group button.

Give the group a relevant name, and assign ownership to the Owners group of the site you’re working on. Then, assign the permission level from before:


CREATING LISTS & LIBRARIESLists and libraries are the two major elements in SharePoint. Sometimes, Microsoft lumps them under the simple name of apps. A list contains records - contacts, meetings, tasks - while a library contains files - PDFs, spreadsheets, images.

To create a new list or library, click Gear Icon > Add an app.

Now, choose the type of list or library that’s useful, and give it a simple and descriptive name.


MAKING IT EASY ON YOUR TEAMNow comes the really important part - if you don’t customize the SharePoint environment, and demonstrate how easy it can be to use, all is lost. Let’s get to work:

CUSTOM VIEWSThe view of a list or library includes (1) what columns of information you can see, and in what order; (2) what sorting and grouping you apply to make it easy to find the right record; and (3) if you want to filter the records to only show one subset.

To create a new view, click either Gear Icon > Library Settings / List Settings, or the List Tab > List Settings. I wish it was consistent, but they’re still figuring it out:

Either way, click into your area for Views and select Create view:


VERSIONING SETTINGSAn easy way to guarantee you can roll back to a better, earlier copy of a document is to change the Versioning settings on a libary. Click Gear Icon > Library Settings:

Now, choose Versioning settings:


You can now apply either Major or Major and Minor versioning - the difference is that minor versions can be set up to be viewed only by the major contributors or editors of a site, while all major versions are immediately published.


CUSTOM NAVIGATIONAt any point, you can add either a list or library, or a view of a list or library to the navigation area on the left. First, visit anything you want to link to, and copy the address:

Now, click Edit on the navigation panel, and paste your URL with a good snippet of text for the clickable entry:


CUSTOM HOME PAGEIt’s essential that your users immediately see value on your SharePoint site. So, click Home on the navigation pane, and choose Edit in the top-right corner of the page:

Now, by clicking the plus sign, you can add Web Parts - elements from your site - to the home page. Don’t add too many! Too many options is noisy and confusing. Give them 1-3 things that are valuable to get them hooked on the interaction.

When you’re done, click Publish to let your users see the changes.

MICROSOFT SHAREPOINT - On The Right Track€¦ · UNDERSTAND PERMISSIONS CURRENT PERMISSION LEVELS...

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