Sharepoint Online Permissions

[Talat Zaitoun]

I am currently trying to put together a sharepoint online team site, mainly to set up a company calendar. Everything has been going smoothly until I started to think about permissions. The team website created an office 365 group and when I add a person, I can add them as a member (edit) or owner (full control).

I also know that it creates 3 groups owners, members, and visitors. I can't seem to find myself in owners or some of my test members in members. 

The main question: I want to change the permission of the members either to contribute, or even better to contribute without deleting permissions. Is it possible to do that? I am willing to change the site to a communication site if that is better suited. 

When I go to site permissions, and check the members group, the edit permissions is grayed out. Any help is appreciated.

[#2 · Accepted solution]

What you'll want to do is go to the advanced permission page and create a new group, giving it the contribute without delete permissions. Then add in the Office 365 group to that group. Finally removing the Office 365 group from the Members group.

However keep in mind if you do this, if you have a Team connect to the group or use any other file functions outside of the SharePoint site you might run into issues removing files, Using Move commands etc. on those other apps if you mess with this permission group in this way.

To answer you question about owner, the owners are added as site collection admins kind of invisibly to the site somehow. I think it used to show the "Office 365 Group Owners" or something along those lines in there but Don't think it does anymore and I think this is the cause of a search index issue where owners not being listed as members too have indexing issues not being able to search that SharePoint site content cause they technically aren't listed anywhere on the SharePoint security model for the crawlers to crawl for that user. Anyway that's another topic :P.

[#3]

Hi Talat,

I have been creating a few scenarios like this recently, and the permissions are fun.

Just in case its still a challenge, here is my 10 pence, hopefully it can provide some clarity.

The 365 Group itself, and its permissions, are granted as Member or Owner, this is located by selecting the Members icon at the top right hand corner of the group homepage.

Advanced permissions, is where you get into the SPO permissions, your Group, will be in one of the 3 default permissions lists (Owners, Members, Visitors), simply listed as 'Group Name'. To edit the permissions of one of the default groups, go to advanced settings, select 'permission levels' from the ribbon, and created your desired list of access, name it, and apply it to your Owners/Member/Visitors group as you see fit.

Hope this helps, happy hunting.

[#4]

Hi Sam,

My office 365 group is in the default member permission list. However, when I checkmark this default member permission list to try to edit its permissions (the button is Edit User Permissions on the page that shows all permission groups), its grayed out. It seems as if I can't change the permissions of a default group. Have you ever tried making a new permission group and adding the office 365 group to it, and then setting the right permissions?

[#5]

That's what I said in my response to do :).

[#6]

Hi Talat,

The only way this is available on my tenant is using the Site Collection Admin account that is specified in the SP admin centre.

Even Owners will not have this ability. Are you able to test with the SCA account?