Forum Discussion
Team Site Provisioning
I'm in a situation where we're just beginning to roll out SharePoint to our users. With the advent of connected groups there are many ways to get a SharePoint site created. We have not turned off self site group creation.....yet. I'm struggling a bit with the best way to offer SharePoint to our users? Do I create site collections the traditional way from the admin console or do I create group sites for them instead. Group sites get them the added advantages of shared calendar, shared DL, shared Notebook, Planner, etc, but they also have a different simiplified permissions model. The look and feel of the new teams sties versus the ones created via the admin center are also a concern. Outside of the admin center the sites have the modern UI inside the admin center they are still old school 2016 and you can't really change a 2016 site to look like a modern site due to the modern page layout.
I don't want to have to recreate these sites. I'm leaning towards creating all group sites unless there is a specific business need, however that means a ton of new training and I keep getting hung up on the different way permissioning is done. Going back to outlook for permissions rather than right in SharePoint is a pain to me.
I just don't want to make a poor choice and end up with rework. I know there are pros and cons of each method. Being able to see each site collection in the admin console is a plus for that route, but being on the latest and greatest is a pro for group creation. Anyway. Would love to hear others thoughts.
Another way to pose this question would be. If you could start completely from scratch with SharePoint how would you provision team sites knowing the current landscape.
8 Replies
Luke, we find ourselves in the same position. Our Sharepoint deployment has been on hold for a year now as we continue to sort out details and inconsistencies with modern sites, groups, teams, etc. We do not want to waste time building on the old platform, yet the modern UI and 365 apps are not ready for enterprise. Yes, you can link a Team to a group, but there are several bugs, including issues with integrating planners, document view, sharepoint URL link, and email link. This is just one of many odd administrative issues that get slow attention after the products are released. For instance, until a week ago, it was not possible to recover a deleted 365 group, which caused all sorts of headaches mentioned on the community. Granted this is a much appreciated feature that has been added now, but it probably should have been included in the public release if "groups" was intended for businesses, let alone enterprises.
Improvements are coming, but from an admin and functionality side they are slow. If your organization is small and you are willing to relinquish some administrative control and let the environment be "organic", I would probably recommend groups as this seems to be the way of the future and will keep you from rebuilding in the future. That being said, even if you build on the groups platform, you may end up having to rebuild/move things around as microsoft continues to figure out what the product is going to be. If you are an enterprise or want administrative functions, I wouldn't trust groups just yet.
Which begs the question when are we going to be able to create modern team sites from the admin portal?
While it has been said that it will be possible to create both classic and modern team site from the SharePoint home, AFAIK it has not been said that it will be possible to create also modern team sites from the SharePoint admin center (if it is what you mean...).
On the other side, there are plenty of ways to create Groups (and hence modern team sites), included from the Office 365 admin center, so why bother?
Would really be nice to have a central location to be able to create groups then "tick" on the added services if necessary. Options to add Planner, Teams, Yammer rather than adding them all up front or having your point of entry dictate what services you get. You can't retrocatevly go add a team or a yammer group to a pre-existing group at least not that I'm aware of.
And yes I'd like to see the conolidated view in the admin portal so I don't have to use PowerShell if I don't want and in most cases I don't want to......
If there are not particular reasons in favor of classic sites, you should create Groups, IMO.
Why do you feel that permissions are a concern in modern team sites, exactly?
In particular, why do you think that it is necessary to go to OWA for permissions?
Ah looks like this is actually changed now. In early iterations of groups you could not get to the site permissions of the site. This alleviates my hangup on permissions for the most part.
