At this point, you should have configured an Intranet in Office 365 and SharePoint. When it was created, “Read” level permissions were granted to the main site in the Intranet to everyone in the organization. We’ll now see how to use permissions inheritance, and also set unique permissions on the Contract Lifecycle Management site, when continuing to build out Sales’ divisional presence as referenced here https://blog.westmorr.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/sitestructure.png.
Reviewing the Permissions Levels for the Sales Sites
In our scenario, the Sales Division top-level site, Inside Sales top-level site, and the Field Sales top-level site, all have the same access main Intranet site. This is referred to as “inheritance” – those sites will inherit their access permissions from the main Intranet site. The CLM site is different though; it was classified as access level ‘B’:
- Specific members from multiple divisions and departments can read
- Specific members from multiple divisions and departments can contribute
- Very few members can design and own management
The CLM site will not inherit permissions from the main Intranet site. Instead, the it will require unique permissions.
Let’s first look at creating the Sales Division top-level site, Inside Sales top-level site, and the Field Sales top-level site. The latter two, and the CLM site, are all sub-sites of the Sales Division site.
Open the Control Gear and choose “Site contents”.
Note: I’ve highlighted the “Return to classic SharePoint” link below, way in the lower left hand-corner, but DO NOT CLICK IT. For now, just make a note of it, because later I will have you click it to change to classic mode where doing so will make it easier (IMO) to complete certain tasks such as managing permissions.
*Working in both classic and the new “Modern UI” interfaces and knowing when/how to switch between the two is a key part of managing SharePoint Online.
Click New > Subsite from within the Site Contents page:
Creating the Sales Sites and Inheriting Permissions
You’ll be viewing the “New SharePoint Site” page. Which, if you’re following along, you’ll see has shifted back to the SharePoint Classic experience. Specify the following:
- Title – “Sales Division”
- Description – “This is the top level site for the sales division.”
- URL name – “sales”
- Select a language – “English”
- Select a template – “Collaboration > Team site (classic experience)”
- User Permissions – “Use same permissions as parent site” (see above, this is how to specify that the site should “inherit” from the main Intranet site)
- Navigation
- Display this site on the Quick Launch of the parent site – “No” (the quick navigation refers to the left hand navigation – the team doesn’t want sites listed there)
- Display this site on the top link bar of the parent site – “Yes”
- Use the top link bar from the parent site – “Yes” (the team wants a consistent top navigation on most sites – exceptions will be covered later)
*Click image above for better view.
Press the “Create” button to create the site and you’ll have successfully created the Sales Division top-level site.
Reference this earlier post, and look at the Site Settings > Site Permissions image. Now, go to the Site Permissions page for the new Sales Division site.
Above, I just want you to get a visual of what permissions inheritance looks like. You can see, there is a button to “Stop Inheriting Permissions” (don’t click that here…we intentionally inherited permissions), and you’ll also see the same exact groups as the main Intranet site as well as language advising you that permissions are inherited. Let’s get back to creating the the Field Sales team site, Inside Sales team site, and finally the Contract Lifecycle Management site.
Navigate to Site Contents on the top level Sales Division site you just created and use the same drop-down, New > Subsite, to create both the Inside Sales and Field Sales sites. Here are the parameters to specify:
- Inside Sales
- Title – “Inside Sales”
- Description – “A shared top-level site for inside sales.”
- URL name – “insidesales”
- Select a language – “English”
- Select a template – “Team site (classic experience)”
- User Permissions – “Use same permissions as parent site”
- Navigation
- Display this site on the Quick Launch of the parent site – “No”
- Use the top link bar from the parent site – “Yes”
Again, navigate back to the Sales Division top-level site and create the next sub site, “Field Sales”. In case you didn’t see it, setting “Use the top link bar…” when creating the Inside Sales site carries over the link to the “Sales Division” site in the top-navigation bar. Use this to get back to the Sales Division site before creating Field Sales.
- Field Sales
- Title – “Field Sales”
- Description – “A shared top-level site for field sales.”
- URL name – “fieldsales”
- Select a language – “English”
- Select a template – “Team site (classic experience)”
- User Permissions – “Use same permissions as parent site”
- Navigation
- Display this site on the Quick Launch of the parent site – “No”
- Use the top link bar from the parent site – “Yes”
Do a quick sanity check and confirm, before moving to build the CLM site, that you have built out the following so far (shown in green):
Creating the Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) Site with Unique Permissions
Now, move on to create the CLM Site. Navigate back to the Sales Division site using the top navigation bar on the Field Sales site you just created. Then, as before, to Site Contents > New > Subsite, and specify the following:
- CLM
- Title – “Contract Lifecycle Management”
- Description – “A site for sales contract lifecycle management”
- URL name – “clm”
- Select a language – “English”
- Select a template – “Team site (classic experience)”
- User Permissions – “Use unique permissions”
- Navigation
- Display this site on the Quick Launch of the parent site – “No”
- Use the top link bar from the parent site – “Yes”
Unlike with the other sites, you’ll be sent to the “Set Up Groups for this Site” page instead of directly to the new site. That’s because of the “Use unique permissions” setting you chose above. The default groups are perfect for the team’s needs. Below is a description of the groups and some default users added for the scenario:
- Owners – these users can do everything Members and Visitors can do, plus make advanced design changes to permissions, features, etc.
- DeVon Smith – Sales Division Business Analyst
- Sarah Clark – Field Sales Manager and Lead
- Members – these users can Create, Read, Update, and Delete items as well as perform some design changes
- John Finch – Field Sales
- Cassandra Johnson – Inside Sales
- Visitors
- The visitors haven’t been defined yet, and the site isn’t ready for them yet anyway. Add them later.
- What’s important is that it’s NOT “Everybody except external users” as it is for all of the other sites that have been created. Not everybody in the organization should be able to get access to the contracts and other data that will be stored specifically in this CLM site.
Specify the users and press OK to complete creating the Contract Lifecycle Management site:
*As an exercise, go into the CLM Site Settings > Site Permissions. Take a look and compare it to what you see here.
The hierarchy for the Intranet is now built out as follows:
You now have the basic site framework setup. In the next post, we’ll get into creating content types, site columns, and managed metadata in preparation for adding sales contracts.