SharePoint site lifecycle

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.

Description

Microsoft Learn describes site lifecycle management as policies in SharePoint Advanced Management that automate governance so that sites stay active, properly owned and regularly reviewed. It names three policy types:

A site ownership policy makes sure a site has a minimum number of owners or admins, for example at least two. An inactive site policy detects sites without meaningful activity across SharePoint and connected workloads such as Teams, Exchange and Viva Engage. A site attestation policy asks at regular intervals for an explicit confirmation that the site is still needed.

How it works: in simulation mode a policy runs once and creates a report. In active mode it runs regularly, creates reports and sends notifications. Recipients can respond from the e-mail, for example by confirming the site is still in use. If nobody answers after several notices, the policy can take no action, set the site to read-only, or archive it after a configurable read-only period with Microsoft 365 Archive. Microsoft states: "Site lifecycle management policies don't delete SharePoint sites directly." Disabling or deleting a policy stops future actions but does not undo actions already taken.

Sources (Microsoft Learn, checked in November 2026): https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/site-lifecycle-management , https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/advanced-management

Related topics in brief

• 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.
• Orphaned sites · Related to · Concept
  SharePoint or Teams sites that no longer have an active owner, typically because the original owner left the organization, while their content and permissions remain in the 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through defined stages of creation, review, archiving and deletion, with owners, review dates and expiration rules so outdated content does not linger.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 governance · Related to · 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.
• 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.

Glossary

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Experts on related topics

• Mirko Peters · via SharePoint Advanced Management

Maintained by Mirko Peters (Microsoft MVP) · Last updated: 2026-11-12