With site ownership being pushed out to Information Workers across our organizations for Office 365 Groups they’re an owner of, my tendency as an IT Pro is to try and put some controls around it. I want this simply to mitigate some of the risks of having users with minimal SharePoint experience and training having full reign over a site. Controls come in many forms: security controls, data protection controls, retention controls, etc. and there are numerous tools within Office 365 to implement those. One simple control I think is required is preventing a Group owner from creating a subsite in their (Group) site collection. This governance control would support the flat site architecture SharePoint model – a good thing.
Yesterday, I learned about a setting to do just that in the classic SharePoint Admin Center from fellow MVP, Dave Feldman (@BostonMusicDave). I have no idea if this setting is new or not, but I can only assume there are 1 or 2 others out there who, like me, didn’t know it existed but could benefit from knowing.
The setting will hide the subsite menu in Site Contents for Office 365 Group owners. (image)
Why do I like this setting? It supports the flat site architecture model where every new site provisioned is a site collection and not a subsite. A flat architecture will serve organizations well over time. Check out my blog post, Advantages of a Flat SharePoint Site Architecture, where I discuss in more detail the advantages of having one.
Here’s what the New link looks like for a Group Owner before and after the change:
If you’re trying to stay in a flat architecture and want to prevent any subsites from being created in an Office 365 Group site, turn this setting on! When you navigate to the Subsites section of Site Content, this is what you want to see… 🙂
Thanks for reading.
-JCK