SharePoint Permissions Management

A Guide for SharePoint Administrators

Analyze SharePoint Permissions down to the document level

Because SharePoint’s permissions management is limited, the tool you select should ensure that permissions are set properly by evaluating user permissions at any point in the SharePoint farm, even down to the document level.  Additionally, you should have the power to do a complete security analysis, including whether the user has been granted permission as part of a group or by having direct permissions. It should be easy to analyze what a user has access to, or alternately, you should be able to investigate permissions from the site perspective.  For example, you should be able to find all sites where a user has specific permissions level like Administrator.

Enforce SharePoint Permissions for all users

The management tool you select should let you easily manage permissions settings across the farm all at once.  Instead of going into sites one by one, you’ll want the ability to perform your permissions activity on multiple sites, saving significant amount of time, especially if your personnel changes frequently. 

Set SharePoint Permissions

Setting permissions should be easy, either directly or through a group membership.  It should be flexible to work at the site, site collection, web application or even at the entire farm level.  Advanced tools also let you specify custom permissions levels and permissions should be additive to retain the existing permissions levels.

Delete SharePoint Permissions

Deleting permissions should apply to both users as well as groups of users. When you delete permissions, they should be deleted from all sites, all groups in which they are listed as a member as well as web application policies.  And, you should have the option of deleting a user from the site’s All People list.

Reassign SharePoint Permissions

As part of the process of deleting a user’s permissions, you should be able to re-assign those permissions to someone else.  For example, if an administrator changes jobs or leaves, you might want to reassign that user’s permissions to another administrator.  

Duplicate SharePoint Permissions

Duplicating permissions makes it really easy to manage a dynamic SharePoint environment.  If you have a “model” user in a department and a new user is added to the department, you should be able to easily, in one step, ensure that the new user is granted access to all the appropriate sites.  This should work on a single user as well as a group of users all at once.