SharePoint Online

Students, Faculty and Staff can request a SharePoint site based on Microsoft's Communication site template to set up and manage a project or department site. Designed to share information to others (think one-to-many), use a communication site to inform and engage project stakeholders or department members, including but not limited to Students, Faculty, and Staff. External sharing can be enabled by request (please include the use case when requesting a site).

If a space for collaborating with your team is needed, Students, Faculty and Staff can create SharePoint sites based on Microsoft’s Team site template from:

• within Microsoft Teams by creating a new Team. A Microsoft 365 Group is automatically created, users added to your team site are automatically added to your Microsoft 365 Group, and the M365 group is added to your new SharePoint site.
• or from within Outlook by creating a Microsoft 365 group. A SharePoint Team site is automatically created and any users added to your Microsoft 365 Group get added to the team site.

Note: Communication sites are not linked to Microsoft 365 groups. Instead, they rely on three default SharePoint security groups, each mapped to a specific role:

• Owners – Full control over the site, including permissions and settings.
• Members – Can contribute content (add, edit, delete) within the site.
• Visitors – Read-only access to view content.

This structure ensures that permissions are managed at the site level rather than through Microsoft 365 group membership.

No matter the site type or whether you are Student, Faculty, or Staff, you can set permissions, create and manage lists, upload files, share documents, and more!

For further reading, see the Microsoft Communication site and Microsoft Team site articles.

SharePoint vs. OneDrive

Use SharePoint when:

• Files will be shared with team members (e.g. team or project documents and formal collaborations with others).
• Workflows are needed to assign list items or documents to others or collect feedback.
• Custom permission levels for confidential information are required.
• App and service integration (e.g. line-of-business applications, Power Apps, Power Automate or Power BI) is needed.
• Advanced file versioning is required.

Use OneDrive when:

• Files will not be shared (e.g. documents that no one else needs to see, draft documents or personal expense reports).
• Files will be shared with limited scope (e.g. articles or documents you want to informally review).
• Basic file versioning is sufficient.

Only use OneDrive subscriptions not affiliated with the University (consumer Personal or Standalone) when:

• Files are exclusively personal files (e.g. family photos or recipes).
• Files will be shared with family, acquaintances, and others who do not work at the University.

Setting permissions on SharePoint

Follow the Principle of Least Privilege (grant users the lowest permission levels they need to perform their assigned tasks). To manage site and content permissions for sites created using Microsoft's Communication site template, use the built-in SharePoint security groups. There are three default security groups with three default roles each mapped to a specific role:

• Owners – Full control over the site, including permissions and settings.
• Members – Can contribute content (add, edit, delete) within the site.
• Visitors – Read-only access to view content.

For sites created with Microsoft’s Team site template, manage permissions through the associated Microsoft 365 group. Use the group to add or remove users and to control access to site content. The group’s Owners are automatically assigned as site admins, and its Members are automatically assigned the site’s member role.

Sites and content inherit permissions (the site and content have the same permissions) until inheritance is broken and item level permission is granted. Limit breaking permission inheritance and setting item level permissions where possible. Instead, create a separate Document library to isolate sensitive content and then set permissions on the Document library itself. When necessary, you can add, change, or remove permissions for an individual document or folder by following methods mentioned in Share files or folders in Microsoft 365. 

Sharing content to users outside of the UARK domain is called External sharing and is available on Team sites that were created using Microsoft's Team template, and can be requested for Communication sites that were created using Microsoft's Communication site template. Here's how it works: 

External or guest sharing in OneDrive, SharePoint, and Lists - Microsoft Support

Cloud security groups can be added to default SharePoint security groups (e.g. add the UA-PrimaryAccount group to the Site Visitors group with Read permissions) if you need to grant access to a large audience or subset of users: 

• UA-PrimaryAccount
• UA-Student (All)
• UA-Faculty
• UA-Staff

Using SharePoint with Teams and Groups

Follow the Principle of Least Privilege by granting users only the minimum permissions necessary to perform their tasks. For sites created with Microsoft’s Team site template, manage permissions through the associated Microsoft 365 group. Use the group to add or remove users and to control access to site content. The group’s Owners are automatically assigned as site admins, and its Members are automatically assigned the site’s member role.

Editing a SharePoint page

To learn how to change your page, see:
Edit your page and manage spellcheck and grammar with Editor

See Pages in SharePoint - Microsoft Support to learn more.

SharePoint support

For more help with SharePoint, see:

SharePoint Help and Learning

and

LinkedIn Learning Online Tutorials | University of Arkansas