SharePoint governance overview
Governance is the set of policies, roles, responsibilities, and processes that control how your organization's business divisions and IT teams work together to achieve its goals. We recommend that you consider governance first as you start working with SharePoint. Having a governance plan in place early can help your organization stay compliant with your business processes and regulations.
Two of the primary ways SharePoint is used in an organization are intranet sites and collaboration. See Planning intranet governance and Overview of collaboration governance in Microsoft 365 for a look at governance in these two areas.
Resources
Use these resources to further explore governance in Microsoft SharePoint and related services.
SharePoint
- Manage site creation for SharePoint in Microsoft 365
- SharePoint site designs & site script overview
- Learn about retention policies
- Managing sites in the new SharePoint admin center
Related services
SharePoint is tightly integrated with other Microsoft 365 services, including Microsoft 365 Groups, Teams, and Viva Engage. It's important to think about SharePoint governance in a way that's inclusive of these other services. Microsoft 365 includes a variety of options to enable your governance policies across SharePoint and related services, including Teams, Planner, Stream, Outlook, Viva Engage and Microsoft 365 Groups.
To see how SharePoint governance capabilities overlap with other Microsoft 365 services, see:
Settings interactions between Microsoft 365 Groups and SharePoint
Settings interactions between Microsoft 365 Groups, Teams and SharePoint
For lifecycle guidance for SharePoint sites together with related Microsoft 365 services, see:
Related topics
Manage who can create Microsoft 365 Groups
Microsoft 365 reports in the admin center – Microsoft 365 Groups
Create a secure guest sharing environment
Limit accidental exposure to files when sharing with people outside your organization