Microsoft’s modern information architecture results in content which is distributed across many sites and teams, with ownership delegated to workspace creators. This can isolate departmental managers and subject matter experts (SMEs) from the content which falls in their domain, because in many scenarios, sites and teams are created by users who aren’t necessarily long-term custodians of the content they generate.
SharePoint hubs address this problem to a degree, but there are situations in which it is useful for a manager or SME to have ownership of all workspaces created within their part of the organization.
At the time of writing, there aren’t any out of the box methods of setting default ownership on SharePoint sites, short of manually adding someone after creation.
In this article, we step through several methods of how you can achieve adding default owners to SharePoint sites, discuss their advantages and disadvantages as well as the complexity of implementation.
Requirements
Roles & Licensing
- SharePoint Administrator role – To enable setting org-wide settings via PowerShell and via the SharePoint admin center.
- M365 Business or Enterprise License – Any Microsoft Business or Enterprise license that includes SharePoint P1 or P2.
For all three methods detailed below, we recommend that site creation on the tenant is only allowed through a defined provisioning process, as this provides control over the ownership assignment and other governance rules.
Method 1 – Manual provisioning & owner assignment
Manually creating SharePoint sites and assigning the appropriate owner is the easiest approach to enforce ownership, but involves the most administration effort.
You can use a SharePoint list to define a list of site types, such as Finance, IT, or HR, along with the corresponding owners for each type, and then use the form for this list to capture creation requests from users.
The workspace request tracker list could look like this:
The default site owners list could look like this:
The request form could look like this:
For more information about how to create and capture requests using the Forms experience for SharePoint, read the following Microsoft documentation: Collect information like a pro New Microsoft Lists forms experience in Microsoft 365.
Advantages
- Very little setup – You only need to configure a request tracking list and then field incoming requests.
- Flexibility – This solution is easy to adjust for future changes, allowing for modifications in site types and owner assignments as needed.
- Control – Administrators have direct control over site creation and owner assignment, ensuring that all organizational standards are met.
Disadvantages
- Manual process – This approach requires someone in the administration/IT team to manually create new workspaces, which can be time-consuming and expensive.
- Enforcement challenges – It’s difficult to track and ensure that the default owners are being consistently added to all new sites.
- Error-prone – There is a higher margin for error as it is easy for those creating the site to make mistakes when adding the default owner.
- Consistency issues – Manual processes can lead to inconsistencies in site creation and owner assignment, affecting overall governance and management.
- Scalability concerns – As the number of site requests grow with the organization, the manual approach requires a proportional increase in admin effort.
Method 2 – SharePoint request form & Power Automate provisioning flow
Using the lists created in Method 1 you can automate the creation and ownership assignment of your SharePoint sites using Power Automate.
Once the user has completed all the required details and requested their site or team as described in method 1, a Power Automate flow will be triggered to provision the workspace. The flow adds the members, owners, and importantly, the default owners specified.
Advantages
- Immediate availability – By automating the process, requesters don’t have to wait until someone in IT with the ability to create workspaces is available.
- Fewer errors – With automation, you can ensure that all the required steps are followed, and the correct details are completed without exception.
- Control – Control is built into the creation process.
Disadvantages
- Complex automation flows – While the creation of workspaces seems like a simple automation, we find it isn’t as straight forward as it could be, as Power Automate doesn’t have out of the box steps for provisioning of the various types of workspaces to be created. For example, creating a communication site requires an http request using the SharePoint connector and a team site requires an http request using the Office 365 group connector
- Updates/Changes – Any changes to the flows can cause issues unless proper ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) is implemented.
Method 3 – Third party tool
Using a third-party tool like SProbot, you can streamline workspace creation with granularly customizable templates.
These templates allow you to set governance rules, specify default owners and admins, control access, and enforce approval processes. For a detailed guide on setting up SProbot templates, see our guide on Creating a SharePoint or Teams template to enable governance.
You can for example add default owners and default admins separately.
Even more powerful is the ability to specify a source Microsoft 365 group which defines the members and owners of any requested workspaces. This means you can manage for example a core project team using a Microsoft 365 group, and the members of this group are then automatically added to all individual project sites which are provisioned.
Advantages
- Easy setup – Creating new templates is easy and intuitive.
- Advanced template configuration – SProbot enables you to set up templates with fine-tuned governance rules that assist with keeping your tenant healthy.
- Automated process – By automating the process, requests won’t have to wait until someone with the ability to create workspaces is available for each request.
- Fewer errors – With automation, you can ensure that all the required steps are followed, and the correct details are completed.
- Control – In addition to default owners, you can also specify who is allowed to be added as an owner during the request process.
- Default admins – SProbot gives control over adding default admins to newly created workspaces, which is useful from an overhead admin perspective.
