SharePoint Farm Administration Best Practices

When it comes to managing a SharePoint farm, there are certain best practices that administrators should follow in order to keep their environments running smoothly and efficiently. Some of these best practices include:

  • Monitoring the health of your SharePoint environment regularly by checking for issues such as high CPU usage or memory leaks.
  • Configuring your SharePoint environment to use a consistent naming convention for sites, lists, and libraries, which can help with search and navigation.
  • Setting up alerts and notifications to keep administrators informed about changes to the environment, such as new site creations or updates to existing content.
  • Using the SharePoint Central Administration website to manage farm-level settings and configuration options, such as setting the default language for your site or configuring database backup settings.
  • Configuring your SharePoint environment to use a consistent set of features and settings across all sites, which can help with consistency and ease of management.

Some of the key features to use within SharePoint include:

  • Site collections: These are groups of websites that share common administration settings and databases. Site collections can be used to organize related sites or to provide a centralized location for managing multiple sites.
  • Sites: These are individual websites within a site collection, and they can have their own unique settings and configurations. Sites can be used to create separate spaces for different teams or departments, or to provide a central location for content sharing.
  • Lists and libraries: These are reusable containers that can store and manage lists of items, such as tasks, contacts, or documents. Lists and libraries can be used to create customized data storage solutions for specific business needs.
  • Web parts: These are small applications that can be added to SharePoint sites to provide additional functionality, such as weather updates, news headlines, or custom calculations. Web parts can be used to enhance the user experience and provide more value to site visitors.
  • Workflows: These are automated processes that can be used to manage tasks and content within SharePoint. Workflows can be used to automate common business processes, such as approval workflows for document submissions or task assignment workflows for team projects.

Some of the key features to use within SharePoint include:

  • Search: This feature allows users to search for specific content within their site or across multiple sites in a site collection. Search can be used to quickly locate specific documents or data points.
  • Libraries: These are reusable containers that can store and manage collections of documents, images, or other types of files. Libraries can be used to create customized storage solutions for specific business needs.
  • Workspaces: These are shared spaces that can be used to collaborate on projects or share information with others. Workspaces can be used to create temporary or permanent working groups for specific business purposes.
  • Lists: These are reusable containers that can store and manage lists of items, such as tasks, contacts, or documents. Lists can be used to create customized data storage solutions for specific business needs.

By following these best practices and using the features provided within SharePoint, administrators can help ensure that their environments run smoothly and efficiently, and that users have a positive experience when interacting with the platform.