Turn Off "Create Site"/Office 365 Group on OneDrive Page?

[Eric Adler]

We are able to turn off "Create Site" on the SharePoint page via the SharePoint Admin.

I have not found how to do this on the OneDrive for Business page.

Is it possible to turn of the little "plus" symbol that allows users to create new Office 365 Groups/Team Sites on OneDrive page without disabling Office 365 Groups?

Thanks,

eRic

[#2]

In my opinion (and it seems in agreement with our security team), this feature (allow users to create O365 groups / sites) should be disabled by default. This only makes sense for small organizations, but anyone with more than a thousand users will have governance issues as users start creating their own sites with no control at all.

[#3]

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."

[#4]

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.

[#5]

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

[#6]

Why don't sys admins want to let users to create teamsites from onedrive? What's the downside of it?

I understand that for some users the option might be confusing as they might not understand what a teamsite is and why is their new onedrive suddenly empty and with a different look. But for advanced users who understand what a teamsite is, why shouldn't they be able to create teamsites without the support of IT, as they feel the need for a teamsite?

[#7]

There might be a whole set of reasons for organisations to implement tighter controls over Team site creation. For example our organisation requires users to accept terms and conditions before a site is provisioned. This includes a disclaimer outlining roles and responsibilities of the site owners. 

We also create entries in our central ITSM system for every site collection provisioned which captures who owns it, what purpose is was requested for as well as other useful information (for example for charge-back purposes we capture business unit's cost center). Every organisation operates differently and what might be a non-issue for a smaller company may be a non-starter in a large enterprise setting. Microsoft is slowly recognizing it, but there are still gaps in the Office 365 platform which they need to plug.

[#8]

I can only speak for the sys admins in my company. We have a governance in place, we have a set of requirements such as a mandatory site owner training and we use specific team site templates (based on classic templates) to create the sites.

We also create entries in our ITSM system for every site collection provisioned which captures who owns it and we ask every year (workflow) whether the site is still in use or can be archived and deleted.

Therefore, it is important for us that the sites are created centrally by the sys admins and not by the users.

[#9]

Thank you @Alex Ouretski and @BJ for the descriptions of your situations.

As far as I could understand from your answers, the problem is not necessarily that users create teamsites as they please, but that they don't also do all the other steps that the sys-admins do when creating a teamsite, like creating entries in the central ITSM system for every site collection, some training on how to properly use teamsites, make sure the user understands the responsibilities that come with a teamsite, etc.

From what you said, but maybe there's more to it, that I don't know about, the problem is not the existence of the plus icon, but the lack of customization that comes with it. I guess if you could create a questionnaire that properly hooks with your ITSM, and that it has all the right disclaimers and that it also has some video for training, that would be good enough for you, to be displayed when the user clicks on the + icon. This would probably make the life of the sysadmin a bit easier. As it is now, the plus icon seems like a good promising feature, but half-baked.

To be honest, I expected your answers to be related to costs. I don't know how it works and whether Microsoft charges extra for every teamsite, but if it does, I can perfectly understand that you'd want to make sure that only people who really need a teamsite, get a teamsite, and that the bill is not ramping up because a user missclicked while on onedrive. I couldn't find this information online, but I'd imagine that one of you would know. Does it cost more for you for each extra teamsite?

[#10]

This was a bug in the code for OneDrive and it should have respected the SharePoint Admin center to hide the link.  Microsoft was able to correct this for my company's tenant and we no longer see the "+" create group on our OneDrive sites.