SharePoint Best Practices

A SharePoint Governance Committee is a cross-functional team responsible for defining policies, standards, and procedures for SharePoint usage across your organization. It typically includes IT, legal, compliance, and business stakeholders. The committee ensures consistent site provisioning, security controls, content lifecycle management, and user adoption strategies. Without governance, SharePoint deployments often result in sprawl, security gaps, and poor user experience.

A proper SharePoint security model follows the principle of least privilege using SharePoint groups (Owners, Members, Visitors) and Microsoft 365 Groups. Best practices include: never breaking permission inheritance unless absolutely necessary, using security groups instead of individual permissions, implementing sensitivity labels through Microsoft Purview, enabling conditional access policies, and conducting quarterly permission audits. External sharing should be restricted and governed with link expiration policies.

SharePoint Power Users are business users with advanced knowledge who serve as first-line support and champions within their departments. They understand site creation, list/library configuration, Power Automate workflows, and governance policies. Develop Power Users through structured training programs, certification paths, and regular community sessions. They reduce IT burden, accelerate adoption, and ensure business-driven configuration aligned with organizational needs.

AI integration with SharePoint has become essential through Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft Syntex, and Purview. Copilot enables natural language queries across SharePoint content, automatic document summarization, and intelligent search. Syntex provides automatic content classification, metadata extraction, and retention label application. Organizations need AI governance policies defining acceptable use, data boundaries, and compliance requirements. The integration of AI is moving from optional to mandatory for enterprise content management.

Modern SharePoint Records Management centers on Microsoft Purview retention labels rather than legacy Records Centers. Best practices include: defining retention schedules based on regulatory requirements (GDPR, HIPAA, SEC), using event-based triggers for disposition, enabling automatic classification with Syntex, implementing disposition reviews for sensitive records, and maintaining audit trails. The trend is moving from site-specific records management to unified, platform-wide governance across SharePoint, Teams, and Exchange.

Effective SharePoint ECM requires: defining content types and site columns at the root site level (not subsites), using metadata instead of folders for content organization, implementing document lifecycle policies, enabling version history with appropriate limits, configuring content approval workflows, and integrating with Microsoft Purview for compliance. Avoid renaming native fields like Title, and use remote provisioning for consistent Information Architecture across sites.

Modern SharePoint intranets should leverage: SharePoint home sites for organization-wide landing pages, Viva Connections for personalized employee experiences, news posts with audience targeting, mega menus for intuitive navigation, multilingual support for global organizations, and mobile-first responsive design. Content should be governed with publishing approvals, and analytics should track engagement. Integration with Teams, Viva Engage, and Stream creates a unified digital workplace.

SharePoint collaboration best practices include: using Microsoft 365 Groups for team sites, enabling co-authoring with AutoSave, implementing @mentions and comments, integrating with Teams for real-time communication, using Planner for task management, configuring alerts and flows for notifications, and enabling guest access with appropriate controls. Train users on version history, check-in/check-out when needed, and document library best practices to prevent file conflicts.