Site Collection Administrators for Team Collaboration

Site Collection Administrators

Site Collection Administrators (SCAs) are responsible for management of their site collections as offered through our Team Collaboration Service.  The OU Information Technology Team Collaboration Service is delivered using Microsoft SharePoint 2010.  This toolset provides specific capabilities and has some limitations inherent to the product as developed and supported by Microsoft.  SharePoint provides document collaboration features via SharePoint “sites” or groups of webpages organized by owner.

A site collection is a group of web sites that have the same owner, administration and root web address.  Each site collection has a top-level web site and can contain one or more sub-sites, nested as deeply as desired. Security throughout the site collection is inherited from the top-level site collection, but can be modified by the SCA. Only the SCA has control over entire collection of sites.

The OU Information Technology Team Collaboration Service is delivered using Microsoft SharePoint 2010. This toolset provides specific capabilities and has some limitations inherent to the product as developed and supported by Microsoft. SharePoint provides document collaboration features via SharePoint "sites" or groups of webpages organized by the owner.

The Site Collection Administrator is responsible for:

• format and design of the site,
• user and resource security,
• content development and
• initial user support. 

Format

The site collection administrator can modify the look of a site by changing the title, the icons, the navigation, the page layouts and the site theme.  It is not recommended that the SCA make any changes unless that person is very familiar with these aspects of SharePoint and is willing to make changes without support from OU Information Technology.

Security

The SCA can create groups that are available anywhere in the site collection including sub-sites.  The SCA can determine membership as well as designate who will manage groups on a group-by-group basis.  It is recommended that all security be applied using groups.

SharePoint provides the capability to secure content down to the item level.  The SCA sets security for the top-level site and can delegate rights to other individuals to control access to components and sub-sites as well as the top-level site.  The practice of assigning least privilege required¹ when applying security is encouraged.

Content

Site Collection Administrators need to be aware of what content is being posted to the site, as well as all sub-sites, and are responsible for that content. Anything posted to the site should follow these guidelines:

• Only approved sites may contain sensitive data. Site Administrators are responsible for understanding applicable data regulations and ensuring that the site and sub-sites do not store any sensitive data types unless the site was set up with provisions for doing so.  This includes, but is not limited to:
  • Social Security numbers
  • Financial account number
  • SCAs should ensure content posted to any site collection follows all applicable University policies.
  • Only post content that is “owned” on a collaboration site or on a MySite Web site. Ownership means that the document is or was created by someone in the department and the department is committed to maintaining the content for its entire lifecycle. If a document is not owned by the department but access to the document is needed on the site, ask the owner to post it and then create a link to it on the site.
  • Do not post content to which we do not have legal rights to post electronically, including PDFs or scanned images of journal articles or other documents from sources to which our organization does not have online publishing rights. A link may be created to this content on the content owner’s Web site.
  • Because content contributors on one site may have a link to content on another site, it is important to “edit documents in place” so that links do not break.
  • The SCA should make sure that links in content or on a site are not “broken.”

User Support

The first line of support for a site collection is the Site Collection Administrator, and is the person most familiar with the site and how it was built.  The SCA may escalate issues to their local IT Service Desk if additional support is required.  If a problem is encountered that is believed to be a SharePoint technology issue, not specific to a site, that problem should be reported to the Service Desk.

In addition, the SCA should work with users on basic training.  User training aides are posted on itservices.ou.edu.