Inactive Sites
Overview
SharePoint sites are systematically reviewed by Tufts Technology Services (TTS) to monitor activity and free up storage space. On an iterative basis, automatic processes will do the following:
- Identify SharePoint sites that have been "inactive" for 6 months.
- Notify site owners and admins via email about inactive sites once a month over a three-month warning period and give them an opportunity to manually re-certify the site.
- Continue to monitor for activity during that three-month warning period. If any activity is detected, this will also automatically re-certify the site.
At the end of the three-month period, any inactive sites which have not been recertified are administratively set to read-only.
Questions? Please email it@tufts.edu.
If you are an owner or site admin on a SharePoint site that has been identified as inactive, you will receive an email notification like the one pictured below. This will be sent automatically, once a month, for up to three months. The email contains a convenient “Certify site” button that you can click on.
If the site is not certified by an owner/admin and no activity is detected during the 3-month warning period, the site will be automatically set to read-only. In this read-only state, users will notice a banner message along the top of the page, and site pages/contents can be viewed, but not edited.
Microsoft automatically scans for user activity on the SharePoint site itself, as well as other Microsoft services that are connected to it, like Teams and Exchange/Outlook. If any such activity is detected, including during the 3-month warning period, the site will be considered “active” and will not be impacted by the automated process. See table below for examples.
| Platform | Activities |
|---|---|
| SharePoint | Viewed files, edited files internally and externally, synced files, viewed pages, visited pages |
| Teams | Posted channel messages in a team across standard, posted messages in Teams and standard channels, replied to messages, mentioned in messages, reacted to messages, sent urgent messages, conducted meetings (recurring, ad hoc, one-time) |
| Exchange | Received emails in Exchange mailbox |
- As a best practice, important SharePoint sites should have multiple owners. That way, multiple people will receive the email warnings about inactive sites.
- If you know someone is leaving Tufts and they are the sole owner of an important site, you can ask them to transfer ownership to you (or someone else) before they leave.
- Periodically review the SharePoint sites you own. If there is anything stale/unused that is no longer needed, you can delete it proactively!
- If you receive an email warning about an inactive site that you own, think carefully about it and act accordingly. Still need it? Certify it! Don’t need it anymore? Delete it or let the automated process take care of it for you.
- Other than that, keep using your SharePoint sites and connected services like you normally would!