Microsoft SharePoint Online

What is SharePoint Online?

Microsoft SharePoint Online is a cloud-based collaborative environment.

Microsoft SharePoint Online is what organisations use to store documents, such as Excel and Word, and create internal websites and intranets. You can use it as a secure place to store, organise, share, and access information from any device. All you need is a web browser, such as Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, Chrome, or Firefox to access it.

SharePoint Online is not a direct replacement for traditional file-server-based mapped drives. If you need rich granular permissions, we recommend our IFS service.

SharePoint Online is not a backup service for other storage devices. If you need backed-up storage, consider storing the data in a UIS service that is automatically backed up as part of its design.

What are the different types of SharePoint site?

There are 4 types of sites in SharePoint Online:

Team site
Communication site
Hub site
Project web app

Team site

Team sites are private spaces where you can work on files with colleagues in the same Microsoft team. They are created automatically when you create a new Team (or Private or Shared channel in Teams)

Every team, private channel and shared channel within a team has a private SharePoint Online team site in the background. It contains files that have been shared in the Teams app in channels.

By default, all Team members can view and edit content on the site. Team members can also create and edit pages on the site. These pages are like web pages. Site owners have some extra permissions, such as adding members to the team.

Team site not connected to a Microsoft 365 group

It's possible to create a Team site that is not connected to a Microsoft 365 group. This creates a SharePoint team site without the associated Outlook, planner or Team. We do not recommend this as the permissions can be complicated to manage.

Communication site

SharePoint Online communication sites are more like internal websites or intranets. Only a few of the people with permission to view the site will have permission to edit it. These sites are better suited if you want to create web pages of information rather than storing your files for your team.

Communication sites can either be open to all users with a University account or restricted to a group of users.

Hub site

A hub site is a type of site in SharePoint Online that connects and organises related sites. Hub sites honour the permissions on the linked sites so users can only view the information they are permitted to see.

Institutions are limited to a maximum of 5 Hub sites.

More details on Hub Sites are available on Microsoft's help site.

Project web app

Project SharePoint sites are used to support projects created with MS-Project that you share with others.

What SharePoint gives you

Data compliance
Business productivity
Access your content at any time from any location
Latest security features
Centralised administration
Documentation management and collaboration

Storage capacity

SharePoint sites have a 1TB storage capacity.

For large datasets (such as research data) we recommend either one of our research storage offerings or our IFS service.

What you can store on SharePoint

SharePoint communication sites used for intranets or internal websites

SharePoint communication sites which include internal web pages and document libraries are suitable for low impact data (level 1). This covers information that is open to a wide group of students and staff within the University. Files and folders that need to be restricted to a smaller group of users should be saved in a SharePoint site connected to a Team in Microsoft Teams.

SharePoint team sites

A SharePoint site created as part of a Microsoft Team can also store high impact data (level 2). However, it is only suitable for this kind of data if you manage the SharePoint permission settings carefully.

SharePoint is not suitable for:

health data where individual patients are named or can be identified
data that is subject to a specific contractual agreement that specifies a particular storage method (that is not SharePoint)
data that is subject to a specific contractual agreement that prohibits storage in a public cloud service

Find out about University data classifications

How to access SharePoint?

Your SharePoint homepage can be accessed via https://universityofcambridgecloud.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/sharepoint.aspx?

Your most frequently and recently visited sites will be listed, you can also 'Follow' a site to add to your list of Followed Sites:

Find and follow Sites on SharePoint Online

Each Microsoft Team has an underlying SharePoint site, the URL will be in the format:

https://universityofcambridgecloud.sharepoint.com/sites/TeamName

You can also open from Teams under the Files tab of a Channel using this button:

sharepointteamsbutton.png

It is possible to use the OneDrive client to map a SharePoint site so it appears like a regular folder on your desktop computer. We strongly discourage use of this feature as we have experienced multiple data loss issues using this feature. We are looking to disable this feature for all new sites.

Request a new SharePoint site

Find out how to request a new SharePoint team site or communication site.

Backups and retention

SharePoint Online has 2 levels of recycle bins.

The first stage recycle bin keeps deleted files and folders for 30 days, after which they move to the second stage recycle bin.
The second stage recycle bin keeps deleted files and folders for an further 60 days.

Combined, the 2 recycle bins keep data for 90 days after deletion.

A site administrator can override these and purge files from these recycle bins. We do not recommend use of this facility.

Once a file leaves the second stage recycle bin, it then enters the preservation hold library. By default, this is configured to keep a file for 1 year from its initial creation. If you intend to keep financial data on your SharePoint site, UIS can extend this to 7 years. Only UIS can recover files from the preservation hold library.

We store backups of SharePoint sites on a separate service that is independent of any of SharePoint Online's recycle bins and preservation hold library.

If you need us to restore a file, contact the UIS Service Desk with the URL of the site and the full path of the files.

SharePoint site organisation

We have disabled the creation of new subsites as this is against best practice, having separate sites avoids issues with inherited permissions leading to sensitive information being shared more widely than intended. Please refer to this guidance from Microsoft on SharePoint information architecture for further details and recommendations.

Get help using SharePoint

Our help pages

Learn how to use SharePoint

If you are not familiar with SharePoint Online already, use the training resources on LinkedIn Learning.

Microsoft support pages

Further help is available on Microsoft SharePoint Help and Learning Centre.