SharePoint Limited Access: A Crucial Guide for Administrators
SharePoint plays a keen role in managing the sites, subsites, and documents of organizations. It is a full-fledged solution to meet the requirements of organizations because of its enormous features. Among its numerous features, robust permission management is a key feature of SharePoint to restrict users from accessing irrelevant information using SharePoint limited access. All these permissions are controlled by the SharePoint administrator. Which is responsible to allow or restrict the users from sites, subsites, files, and folders if the information is irrelevant or crucial.
Table of Content
This SharePoint feature of providing limited access to the users helps organizations to maintain data integrity and security. So, in this article we will provide a detailed overview of it, how it is crucial for administrators, how to apply it, and what are the best practices that an administrator should follow.
Overview of Limited Access Permissions in SharePoint
Whenever the user is trying to perform any operation in SharePoint then before directly opening that file. It is checked whether the user has permission to do this operation or not. If it is restricted by the administrator then the operation will not execute.
Limited Access in SharePoint is a special permission level that allows users to access specific resources rather than the whole site. It is applied in different situations such as the administrator wants to provide access to a particular folder, not the entire library.
Why Administrators Should Use SharePoint Limited Access?
- Through this permission level administrator can restrict the users from accessing the whole site or library. It helps to maintain data security and confidentiality.
- To meet the organization’s compliance requirements, administrators use this permission level to allow users to access only specific data.
- This SharePoint limited access permission is assigned automatically to the users and does not require manual intervention.
- Accessing only the essential content rather than the whole content protects users from distractions.
How to Apply SharePoint Limited Access?
Before applying this permission to the files and folders, ensure that the user already has access to the parent site. After that follow the below steps.
Step 1. Open the site on which items you want to apply the limited access.
Step 2. Select the item on which you want to use limited access. Hit on the (…) and then choose the Manage Access option.
Step 3. Now in the Manage access section, choose the Advanced options from the bottom right corner.
Step 4. Click on Stop Inheriting Permission and OK.
Step 5. After that, choose the Grant Permission option.
Step 6. Now, provide the name and email of the user and then choose the Permission level. Finally hit the Share option.
How to Use Limited Access Permission for External Users?
The limited access permission also works for the external users. You can go to the Site Settings > Permissions and then Permission levels. Here you can create the custom permission level.
There are several options available: Add Items, Open Items, View Items, and so on. You can also limit the access to the external users on the document library and specific folders. After applying the changes, you can check external sharing in SharePoint Online.
Best Practices for Managing Limited Access Permission
- Monitor the permissions on the regular basis. To ensure sufficient permissions are allocated to the users.
- Try to apply the SharePoint limited access to the groups rather than individual users. It reduces the overhead of managing user’s permissions.
- Educate SharePoint users regarding the importance of limited access and how it works.
- Analyze the users activities and ensure that they are only accessing the needy data. You can check audit logs in SharePoint Online.
There might be situations when we need to perform SharePoint tenant to tenant migration along with the permissions. Then we can use the Proficient SharePoint Migration Tool to perform seamless migration.
This tool can transfer all the document libraries and lists without losing a single bit. It provides end-to-end security to the data from unauthorized access.
Conclusion
SharePoint limited access is a powerful feature of SharePoint. After applying it users can access the limited items within a site. So, now it is all cleared what limited access permission in SharePoint is, how to use it, and what are the best practices that an administrator should follow. Apart from these we have also discussed the professional tool to perform migration if required.
