Sharing Your Communication Site

By default, you are the only owner and member of a SharePoint site that you create – you are the only person that can see and edit your site and the site contents. SharePoint supports many ways for you to control who has access to your site and site content. When you add a person to your site, you can choose their permission level. The three permission levels for sites are:

Permission Type

Permissions Summary

Permission Specifics

Owner

Full control of your site

People who should have the same level of access and permissions as you. They have full control of all site content (like a member) but can also change the site’s appearance, permission settings, and site settings

Member

Edit and contribute

People whom you want to be able to edit site content. Site members can edit and view all site content, including files and pages.

Visitor

Read only

People whom you want to see site content but not edit it.

Instead of sharing the whole site, you can instead only share specific files and folders.

Be careful about what privileges you give and who you give them to! This is particularly important for sensitive information. Since members and owners can see all contents of your site, Tufts recommends giving the fewest privileges necessary for your full site and only to people for whom it is absolutely necessary.  

Note: Adding site owners outside of Tufts is not recommended. If you share site ownership with an outside email account, the outside individual will always have this access. Even if all Tufts collaborators leave the university, these outside owners will still be able to view and edit the files and folders in the site. The Service Desk cannot transfer ownership of a site from an account outside of Tufts to a Tufts user.

Changes that are made to shared files and folders affect everyone that has access to it. This is particularly important when someone deletes an item. Make sure your site members, site owners, and document editors are in communication with each other to avoid unexpected file deletions and changes.

  1. From any page in your site, click the Share button in the top right.
    Share is under settings and help
  2. A sharing panel appears on the right.
    Sharing panel lists all members by permission
  3. In the add users field at the top, type in the name of the person you want to share the site with. SharePoint will suggest names from the Tufts Directory as you type. Click on the person you want to invite. Repeat as necessary.
  4. By default, users will be granted read only access. To change this, click the word Read under the user’s name.
  5. Choose this person’s permission level from the dropdown menu. Important! Do not give Edit or Full Control permissions to users outside of Tufts University.
    Permission choices are full control and edit
  6. Check whether to send the newly invited users a personalized Email, and if so, enter a message (optional).
    Don't forget to check Send Email
  7. Click Share.
  1. From any page in your site, click the Share button in the top right.
    Share is under settings and help
  2. A sharing panel appears on the right. You can expand each permission section to view the site members with that permission level.
    Permission levels are site owners, site members, and site visitors
  3. Underneath the name of the person that you’d like to change permissions for or remove, click their current permission level.
  4. Choose the person’s new permission level, or choose Remove to remove this person completely as a member of the site.
    Permissions are read, full control, or remove
  5. This permission change autosaves. You’re done!