Chapter 8: Administering SharePoint Online

SharePoint administration is a significant part of the O365 admin's responsibilities as it, in many ways, serves as one of the core functions and requirements of successful O365 implementation: learning to provision new site collections, managing sharing and site sprawl, and improving the user experience.

Throughout this chapter, you may see site collection or site used interchangeably as Microsoft shifts to a site-based architecture whose language is inclusive of all site template types.

In this chapter, we'll cover the following recipes:

• Creating a new site collection
• Deleting a site collection
• Limiting external sharing abilities
• Setting up stricter external sharing settings for a specific site collection
• Setting up the default share link type
• Configuring site collection storage
• Giving someone access to another user's OneDrive site
• Importing data from network locations using Migration...

Technical requirements

To complete the recipes in this chapter, it's recommended that you're assigned the Global or SharePoint admin role.

Creating a new site collection

Sites are at the core of SharePoint, providing a designated space for teams to collaborate and be more productive in Office 365. In this recipe, you'll create a new site.

Getting ready

You should be a Global or SharePoint admin to complete this recipe. Depending on organizational settings, licensed SharePoint users may be able to create new site collections as well if allowed.

How to do it…

1. Go to the SharePoint admin center at https://YOURTENANT-admin.sharepoint.com, or go to the Microsoft Admin Center and click SharePoint from beneath Admin centers on the left-hand navigation menu.
2. Click Sites > Active sites:

   Figure 8.1 – Active sites link on the left-hand navigation menu of the SharePoint admin center

3. Click Create:

   Figure 8.2 – Create option in the Active sites screen of the SharePoint admin center

4. Choose a site type. For this recipe, we'll choose Communication site:

   Figure 8.3 – Site...

Deleting a site collection

When a site collection is no longer needed or needs to be deleted for another reason, it's simply done via the SharePoint admin center. In this recipe, we'll go through the steps of deleting a site collection.

Getting ready

You should be a Global or SharePoint admin to complete this recipe. Site owners can also delete their own sites.

How to do it…

1. Go to the SharePoint admin center at https://YOURTENANT-admin.sharepoint.com, or go to the Microsoft Admin Center and click SharePoint from beneath Admin Centers on the left-hand navigation menu.
2. Click Sites > Active sites:

   Figure 8.5 – Active sites link on the left-hand navigation menu of the SharePoint admin center

3. Select the site to delete, and then click Delete:

   Figure 8.6 – Delete option for a selected site in the Active sites screen of the SharePoint admin center

4. When prompted, click Delete again to confirm:

Figure 8.7...

Limiting external sharing abilities

As a SharePoint (or Global) administrator, you may wish to protect your organization's users from unintentional leakage of sensitive information outside the organization itself. You may also have compliance policies that your administrative setting configurations need to account for. No matter your reasoning for needing to do so, this recipe will guide you through the steps necessary to limit external sharing abilities in your organization's SharePoint environment.

Getting ready

You should be a Global or SharePoint admin to complete this recipe.

How to do it…

1. Go to the SharePoint admin center at https://YOURTENANT-admin.sharepoint.com, or go to the Microsoft Admin Center and click SharePoint from beneath Admin Centers on the left-hand navigation menu.
2. Click on Policies > Sharing from the left-hand navigation menu:

   Figure 8.9 – Sharing policies link on the left-hand navigation menu of the SharePoint...

Setting up stricter external sharing settings for a specific site collection

In the previous recipe, Limiting external sharing abilities, you set the global baseline policy for external sharing from SharePoint in your organization. In this recipe, we'll further configure a specific site collection to have stricter external sharing settings so that users can only share with other people in the organization.

Getting ready

You should be a Global or SharePoint admin to complete this recipe.

How to do it…

1. Go to the SharePoint admin center at https://YOURTENANT-admin.sharepoint.com, or go to the Microsoft Admin Center and click SharePoint from beneath Admin Centers on the left-hand navigation menu.
2. Select Sites > Active sites from the left-hand navigation menu:

   Figure 8.12 – Active sites link on the left-hand navigation menu of the SharePoint admin center

3. Select a site and then Sharing from the ribbon menu:

   Figure 8.13 – Sharing button...

Setting up the default share link type

Just as we can in OneDrive, we are able to set the default share link type users are presented with when attempting to share content in SharePoint. This can help reduce accidental permissions sprawl and make it so that additional permissions are only granted if users intentionally change the default type to something that specifically does that. In this recipe, we'll cover the steps needed to adjust the default share link type selection.

Getting ready

You should be a Global or SharePoint admin to complete this recipe.

How to do it…

1. Go to the SharePoint admin center at https://YOURTENANT-admin.sharepoint.com, or go to the Microsoft Admin Center and click SharePoint from beneath Admin Centers on the left-hand navigation menu.
2. Click on Policies > Sharing from the left-hand navigation menu:

   Figure 8.16 – Sharing policies link on the left-hand navigation menu of the SharePoint admin center

3. Scroll down...

Configuring site collection storage

Site collection storage quotas are less of a consideration in SharePoint Online than SharePoint Server, but there are still cases in which you may wish to limit how much storage space a site collection has. For example, even in SharePoint Online, your license limits how much storage you have available. Currently, an E1, E3, E5, or SharePoint Plan 1 or 2 license gets you 1 terabyte (TB) plus 10 gigabytes (GB) per license purchased. Read more on license-specific storage limits at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/sharepoint-online-service-description/sharepoint-online-limits.

Some users who could be considered digital hoarders when subject to a storage limit might be less likely to upload their 100 high-resolution vacation photos. This limit can help encourage better content management and awareness (and hopefully prompt users to reconsider which files are most important to take up space in the site collection). Always...

Giving someone access to another user's OneDrive site

There may be cases where a replacement employee needs access to a former employee's OneDrive site that's still active. Or, perhaps an employee has multiple managers who always need access, or even a colleague on a person's team needs constant access rather than individual shares.

Whatever your purpose, this recipe will demonstrate the implementation concept by generating an access link to Bertha Lestrange's OneDrive site that we'll share with her colleague, Richard Weasley, who will fill in for her while she's on vacation.

We'll do two things for this to work:

1. Grant ourselves access (which adds us as a site collection admin if we're not already).
2. Add Richard as another admin and send him the same access link we generate in Step 1.

Getting ready

You should be a Global admin to complete this recipe.

How to do it…

1. Go to the Microsoft 365 Admin...

Importing data from network locations using Migration Manager

There are at least three tools you can utilize to import data from network locations, and three of them are all conveniently linked from the SharePoint admin center: Migration Manager, SharePoint Migration Tool, and Mover. You utilized the SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT) in Chapter 6, Administering OneDrive, so we'll look at Migration Manager in this recipe.

Migration Manager is a more complicated and involved tool compared to SPMT because of the agent configuration. However, Migration Manager is also the best pick for larger, more complicated migrations of file-share content. SPMT, on the other hand, is the ideal pick for migrating specifically SharePoint (2010 or 2013) content and small file shares, but perhaps not the best option suited for large file shares.

Getting ready

You should be a Global admin to complete this recipe and will also need admin credentials to machines with access to file shares being...

Hiding the Subsite creation button

Site owners can create subsites (nested within a site) by default. If you're trying to promote a flat architecture, this can become especially problematic. Make it less convenient to create subsites and encourage site owners to request a new site collection or create one themselves if they're able. In this recipe, we'll hide the subsite creation button to promote this practice, seen in the following screenshot:

Figure 8.37 – New subsite menu option in SharePoint

Getting ready

You should be a Global or SharePoint admin to complete this recipe.

How to do it…

1. Go to the SharePoint admin center at https://YOURTENANT-admin.sharepoint.com, or go to the Microsoft Admin Center and click SharePoint from beneath Admin Centers on the left-hand navigation menu.
2. Select Settings and then follow the link to the classic settings page:

   Figure 8.38 – Classic settings page link on the Settings...

Designating a site collection as a hub site and associating other site collections with it

Hub sites are the connective tissue between related sites. For example, IT Vault may be a hub site that connects other site collections such as Information Security, Command Center, and End User Support, as you'll see in this recipe. Site collections that are associated with a hub site inherit that hub site's theme and navigation and can roll content (such as news, events, and documents) up to the hub for simple centralized sharing and communication.

A common example may be Human Resources as a hub site that connects its associated sites – Benefits, Payroll, and Talent. The main hub site may be a landing page that represents all its associated site collections, but also has some unique content of its own. For a deeper dive, users could go to the specific site collections associated with the hub.

One of the major benefits of hub sites is that if your organization goes...

Restricting access by IP address

Some organizations choose to restrict employee access to SharePoint Online to only those employees who are accessing it from approved IP addresses specified in the SharePoint admin center. In this recipe, we'll specify which IP addresses can access our SharePoint Online environment.

Getting ready

You should be a Global or SharePoint admin to complete this recipe.

How to do it…

1. Go to the SharePoint admin center at https://YOURTENANT-admin.sharepoint.com, or go to the Microsoft Admin Center and click SharePoint from beneath Admin Centers on the left-hand navigation menu.
2. Choose Policies > Access control from the left-hand navigation menu. Then, click Network location:

   Figure 8.45 – Access control settings in the SharePoint admin center

3. Toggle the Allow access only from specific IP address ranges setting to the On position, and then specify a comma-delimited list of network IP addresses and ranges that should...