User Best practices and guidelines for Sharepoint Online.

by Administrator Comments
  1. Use SharePoint Online communication sites for department or org-wide audiences. A small audience such as your team can use MS Teams for collaboration which already includes their SharePoint sites.
  2. Keep your content structure simple, and try not to exceed a three-level deep navigation and document library structure.
  3. Sharepoint list should not be used as a database.
  4. Use indexes in large document libraries and lists, and use logical structures such as Year, Category, Department, etc.
  5. Make your site security structure as simple as possible without breaking inheritance, if, however, sections of your site require different permission, consider using a subsite.
  6. Try not to break permission on the document level.
  7. Consider naming your site to indicate when guest access is enabled. For example, Public Digital Marketing suggests the site is publicly available. Do not store sensitive information data on a public-facing site without your IT or Legal approval.
  8. Do not activate features you will not use on your site.
  9. Try to use the Modern template Vs. the classic one.
  10. For better search results, tag your documents and use descriptive names, the document title/name is a significant driver for relevant search results.
  11. Use your recycle bin to restore deleted documents, however, be aware that the grace period for deleted files is 3o days.
  12. Switch version control on document libraries where you want to track document changes.
  13. Set at least two site owners/Admin for each site.
  14. Based on your company’s o365 retention policies, inactive sites may be deleted after a certain period without activity. Consult with your IT if your site needs to be removed from your company’s retention plan.
  15. The site owner is the Site Administrator and is responsible to all site features and permissions.
  16. Some sites are for a global audience. In these cases, consider enabling View or Read permission to all authenticated users when the content is not sensitive.
  17. Use Hub sites to combine sites on the same category together; MS recommends using hub sites vs sub-sites when applicable.
  18. Be mindful of SharePoint thresholds:
    1. Limit list view to 5000 items – the max return lines in a single query call.
    2. A list/document library can have up to 30 million items.
    3. File size – 250 GB is the limit for an individual file uploaded to Microsoft Office 365.
    4. The attached file size limit is 250 MB.
    5. The file path is limited to 400 characters.
    6. A SharePoint site can have 2,000 lists or document libraries.
    7. The limit of subsites and hub sites is 2000.
    8. The limit of users on a single Sharepoint Site is 2 million.
    9. Try to have few unique permissions as possible and remain below 5000
  19. Use the official web client to collaborate as a group on Office documents, including Word, Excel, OneNote, Boards, etc.
  20. User retention policies to clean old data.