Forum Discussion
Turn Off "Create Site"/Office 365 Group on OneDrive Page?
Mine is another company that would like to prevent this backdoor into SharePoint site creations...
Is the issue with the "+" sign in the OneDrive right-hand pane that creates Office 365 Groups or with the creation of subsites off the users OneDrive site?
The "+" sign surfaced here is just an entry point to creating an Office 365 Group - creating an Office 365 group from here, or Planner or the SharePoint home page is exactly the same. It still creates the same set of assets and in terms of Group types it creates an "Connected Outlook Group". Not sure I see the issue.
If however your concern is the sub site creation off the users a OneDrive site - YES, 100% I have an issue with this too. There is a piece of work to hide the link to the page as a first step, and down the line the functionality will be completely removed.
Please share what scenario and issue you have - very curious.
Hello Clifford - I was checking thru the available blogs and forums in the internet to see if there is a way around to get rid of the Sub Site creation option under the ODB sites.
I am interested on your below comment and would like to know if you have any additional details which can be used to hide the sub-site creation options under ODB sites.
"If however your concern is the sub site creation off the users a OneDrive site - YES, 100% I have an issue with this too. There is a piece of work to hide the link to the page as a first step, and down the line the functionality will be completely removed."
Hi Mukesh Murali - we saw some time back that we have taken another step closer to completing this story. That is, the "Site Contents" menu option is not longer surfaced through the OneDrive web UI. Although a user with the full URL could still navigate there, we certainly have seen a reduction in further creation of sub-sites from OD sites. I believe the final phase is still in development, not that it's particularly difficult however there are customers out there that promoted the same ideas that "My site" offered in the SharePoint on-premises editions - so, they started encouraging their users to do the same in OD. This was not the way Microsoft envisioned OD - it was to be the personal business storage service for collaborating and sharing, not another place to run up a SharePoint site. Microsoft (I believe) is still working with these customers to get them off this old thinking and in turn the sub site structure that they have created. I haven't seen any news on this topic in some time.
Hi Clifford Kennedy,
Gear Icon -> Site settings -> Site libraries and lists -> Create new content -> new subsite ...But it is now harder to find than before.
BG
Hi Clifford Kennedy, both are an Issue, but I would say our Immediate issue is your #1. *backstory* when we first launched sharepoint sites/connected to office 365 groups we had over 100 groups created with no purpose in mind, users thought they were just making email addresses (we have a low tech user base)*
so with powershell we disabled site/group creating to just admins. Everything was going well until the new "+" button appeared in OneDrive and now we are back where we started. 40+ group/sites created just to create them. After I contact who craeeted said site, they all say it was an "accident". trying to maintain site sprawl and the wild wild west. That is my issue anyway
Thanks Douglas Clelland for the additional insight. You are not alone on the low-tech workforce, and their take on what they thought they were doing - VERY common. In my my experience, the policy set in Azure AD for O365 group (and asset) creation is respected by ALL entry points, but I will change my test tenant shortly and confirm. This is a real miss on Microsoft is it does not.
We are working on a communication campaign to really lift the O365 Group understanding - it's not silver bullet, but something I feel we at least bring some attention and also hopefully curb the site/group sprawl.
Thanks for sharing.
Hey Douglas Clelland - I have tested in my test tenant, and the OneDrive web UI is respecting this policy. That is, the "+" sign is not visible and as such users cannot create O365 Groups while the policy is in place.
If you have the O365 Group admin policy in place, and you are still seeing the "+" option in the OneDrive web UI, you may need to log a ticket to Microsoft on this one, I cannot repro.
