Permissions in the world of Microsoft 365 and SharePoint are key to ensuring your environment is not only secure, but making sure your users can access the data they need to do their jobs.
What are the permission levels in SharePoint?
Full Control – Has full control.
Design – Can view, add, update, delete, approve, and customise.
Edit – Can add, edit and delete lists; can view, add, update and delete list items and documents.
Contribute – Can view, add, update, and delete list items and documents.
Read – Can view pages and list items and download documents.
Restricted View – Can view pages, list items and documents without the ability to download.
Over many years, companies have had this idea that if someone doesn’t work in their department or area of the business that they should not have access to the data held within it!
WHY????
When an organisation moves to working in Microsoft 365 and SharePoint, it is a collaborative working environment. Why, would you hide data from users?
Yes, there are items and area of an organisation that needs to have strict restrictions on the data that is held. HR, Finance, Leadership Teams, Executives, anything GDPR related or sensitive project data.
But does all the other organisation data really need to be restricted? Probably not!
Best practice in working within SharePoint as a truly collaborative working environment is to have an 80/20 split.
80% of the data and infrastructure should be OPEN…. With Read or Restricted View access to all staff.
20% restricted, personal data, financial data and sensitive information. This data is only accessible to users who need to see.
Your users all work for your organisation, why would you restrict their access?
Food for thought and I hope this get’s you thinking about how your environment is set up.
Don’t lock data away from users, this will reduce engagement with the platform and the idea of using SharePoint is to SHARE.