SharePoint Policy Configuration is an essential feature that allows organizations to enforce specific policies and configurations across their SharePoint environments. This ensures compliance with regulatory requirements, industry standards, and organizational guidelines.
Best Practice 1: Define a Clear Policy Framework
Before configuring SharePoint policy, it’s crucial to define a clear policy framework that outlines the rules, procedures, and guidelines for information sharing, storage, and security. This framework should be based on your organization’s risk tolerance, regulatory requirements, and industry standards.
Best Practice 2: Use Central Administration Site
When configuring SharePoint policies, use the central administration site as the authoritative source of truth. This ensures that all sites and web applications inherit the same policy settings, eliminating inconsistencies across the environment.
Best Practice 3: Configure Policy for Site Creation
Configure your SharePoint policy to automatically apply settings when a new site is created. This can include settings such as permissions, document libraries, and list templates. This approach ensures consistency across all sites and helps maintain organizational standards.
Best Practice 4: Use Feature-Based Policies
Feature-based policies allow you to control specific features within SharePoint, such as document libraries, lists, and web parts. By configuring feature-based policies, you can ensure that certain features are available or restricted based on your organization’s requirements.
Best Practice 5: Implement Policy for Site Templates
Configure site templates to inherit policy settings from the central administration site. This ensures that all sites created from these templates inherit the same policy settings, maintaining consistency across the environment.
Features to Use Within SharePoint
- Site Policies: Control site-level settings such as permissions, document libraries, and list templates.
- Feature-Based Policies: Restrict or enable specific features within SharePoint, such as document libraries, lists, and web parts.
- Web Part Policy: Control the availability of specific web parts across your SharePoint environment.
- List Template Policy: Configure list template settings to ensure consistency across all sites.
- Document Library Policy: Control document library settings, including permissions, versioning, and checkout.
By following these best practices and leveraging the features available within SharePoint, you can effectively configure policy settings that meet your organization’s compliance requirements while maintaining a consistent and secure environment for information sharing and collaboration.