Forum Discussion
Change group permission on connected group site
Hi,
I would like some guidance on the following. With the new SharePoint sites that are connected to a group, the default setting for members is that they have edit permissions. I have seen some threads where people like to have contribute permissions as default, or as an option.
Changing the permissions through the ui is greyed out. However, changing the permissions through PowerShell is possible. Simply use this command and the permission level changes:
Set-SPOSiteGroup -Site https://tenant.sharepoint.com/sites/ModernSharePointSite -Identity "ModernSharePointSite Members" -PermissionLevelsToAdd "Contribute" -PermissionLevelsToRemove "Edit"
I know that sometimes it's possible, but you still shouldn't do it. Does anybody have any good arguments on why I shouldn't use this option on the modern group connected SharePoint sites?
- Bob German’s blog is unavailable so I cannot judge his advice.
All I can say is that I favor simplicity above complexity, especially in cloud systems where you do not control all the pieces. It is up to you to decide whether to take the risk that you might break something. If you are experienced at dealing with SharePoint permissions, you might be able to work everything out and all will go smoothly. However, generally speaking, I do not recommend that people go outside the boundaries of the default permissions. It’s your tenant... so it’s up to you. And if you work everything out and make it all work as you want, perhaps you can document what you did so we all learn from your tenant experience.
We have discussed this subject in several other threads in the past. You could do a search for such threads.
The takeover is that it is not recommended to manipulate permissions in modern team sites.
The reason is that Groups are composed of many resources allocated in several workloads, with much things happening behind the scenes, and therefore manipulating permissions often breaks something in an unpredictable way.
If you need to manipulate permission, do yourself a favor and use a classic team site instead.
Maybe TonyRedmond could add something more authoritatively than me...
I agree. Don't mess with the permissions for a group-connected site. If you want to do something funky with permissions, create a traditional team site and use that. There are just too many potential ways you can break the connection between Office 365 Groups and SharePoint (with potential consequences for other apps) if you change the permissions on a group-connected site.
Thanks for the replies. I've done a search and found some guidance, but not on this PowerShell option.
Could you elaborate on what might break? The permission change is only for SharePoint. I can imagine some consequences for Teams, as it uses SharePoint for the wiki and file storage.
Am I missing something else? And there's always an option to revert is back unless Microsoft closes this option.
And another point, I (try to) read and inform myself. There are a lot of users out there that will use the advance permissions options to change the permissions on the SharePoint site. According to your guidance you shouldn't do this. I'm confused as what the consequences of these changes might be. My powershell options is edgy as it overrules the ui that blocks this option, but adding a group and changing the permissions seems fully facilitated by Microsoft.
I don't like the alternative to use classic team sites. Microsoft is pushing hard on the new team sites, with site designs, site scripts and hub sites. If I read correctly I need to miss out on all these options when I don't want to give 'normal' users the ability to customize sites and libraries.
