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

Glossary

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