SharePoint governance

Concept

The policies, roles, responsibilities and processes that control how an organization uses SharePoint: who owns sites, how sites are created and shared, and how content is reviewed.

Description

Microsoft defines governance in general as "the set of policies, roles, responsibilities, and processes that control how an organization's business divisions and IT teams work together to achieve its goals." This sentence comes from the page for SharePoint Server, which says it does not cover SharePoint in Microsoft 365.

For SharePoint in Microsoft 365, the Microsoft Learn guide on intranet governance says: start governance planning early and review it regularly. A governance team should include business and IT and stay in place after launch. The business is responsible, not IT alone. Policies are requirements; guidelines are recommendations. Topics named include external sharing, default sharing links and metadata. Ownership of sites should be defined, for example with a primary and a secondary contact per site. Sites can be created by request or by self-service. Policies work best when site owners do not have to think about them, for example through site designs. A review cycle can be automated, for example with Power Automate.

With SharePoint Advanced Management, Microsoft offers tools in three areas: content sprawl, the content lifecycle and oversharing.

Sources (Microsoft Learn, checked in November 2026): https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/intranet-governance , https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/governance/what-is-governance-in-sharepoint , https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/advanced-management

Episodes about SharePoint governance

Related topics in brief

• SharePoint · Related to · Product
  Microsoft 365's platform for intranets, document libraries and team sites. Most files shared in Teams are stored in SharePoint, so its permissions directly decide what Copilot can find.
• SharePoint Advanced Management · Related to · Product
  Set of governance and lifecycle tools for SharePoint, such as site access reviews, inactive site policies, restricted access control and oversharing reports, included with Microsoft 365 Copilot.
• Copilot governance · Related to · Concept
  Controls for permissions, data access and oversight when using Copilot in a Microsoft 365 tenant.
• Content lifecycle management · Related to · Concept
  Managing documents through defined stages of creation, review, archiving and deletion, with owners, review dates and expiration rules so outdated content does not linger.
• SharePoint site owner · Related to · Concept
  A person who manages a SharePoint site: members of the Owners group have Full Control and can manage site permissions, settings and appearance. In a team site, the owners of the connected Microsoft 365 group are the site owners.
• SharePoint site lifecycle · Related to · Concept
  Policies in SharePoint Advanced Management that keep sites in use, owned and reviewed: a site ownership policy, an inactive site policy and a site attestation policy. They do not delete sites directly.
• SharePoint permissions · Related to · Concept
  How access to SharePoint sites and content is controlled: through a Microsoft 365 group or the SharePoint groups Owners, Members and Visitors, and through sharing links for single files and folders.
• Audit logs · Related to · Concept
  Records of who did what and when in a system, used for security investigations and compliance.
• Sensitivity labels · Related to · Concept
  Labels from Microsoft Purview that classify and protect documents, emails and meetings. A label can add encryption, visual markings and access restrictions that travel with the file wherever it goes.
• Oversharing · Related to · Concept
  Content in Microsoft 365 that is shared more broadly than intended, for example through organization-wide or anonymous links, which AI assistants like Copilot can surface to users.
• Cognillo · Related to · Organization
  Software company from Jersey City, New Jersey (legal name Tendero, Inc., doing business as Cognillo) with tools for SharePoint administration and a generative AI platform for software testing; it says it has offered enterprise IT solutions since 2012.
• SharePoint Essentials Toolkit · Related to · Product
  Cognillo tool for SharePoint administrators and site owners: reports on permissions, oversharing and sharing links, a broken link monitor, content tools, SharePoint-to-SharePoint migration, metadata reports and scheduled exports.

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Experts on related topics

• Mirko Peters ✔ · via SharePoint

Maintained by Mirko Peters (Microsoft MVP) · Last updated: 2026-11-11