SOLVED

Is it possible to disable subsite creation in a modern team site?

Copper Contributor

Is there a way to prevent users from creating subsites in a (Group) Modern Team Site?

 

Screen Shot 2017-02-08 at 10.23.37.png 

 

If not, is it possible to control the templates made available?

 

Screen Shot 2017-02-08 at 10.26.04.png

14 Replies

That link is only visible to uses who have the create site pemission, which is included in the Full Control permission level by default. You can create a custom permisison level by copying the Full Control level and removing that specific permission. (changing the default Permission Levels is not a recommended practice)

 

see https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc721640.aspx for the details.

The permission policies are not available anymore in Modern Team Sites. The options you have on the site settings page changed for Modern Team Sites. I would prefer an option within the Admin Center to control this option. Just like the option you have to show or hide the "Create site" option. 

 

Screen Shot 2017-02-08 at 12.01.25.png

 

Any other options to prevent users from creating subsites and a way for limiting the Site Template selection?

 

Side note: i think it is really strange from a governance perpective that a "Joe User" that created a regular Group or Teamsite gets Site Collection administration permissions... 

Many administrative pages are hidden for modern team sites, but they are accessible anyway using the direct URL.

For permissions, for example, you have to go to https://<tenant>.sharepoint.com/sites/<site>/_layouts/15/user.aspx

Yeap, you know another piece of basic functionality that should be in modern team sites and not hidden

What's worst is that hiding functionalities in Office 365 seems an intentional strategy by MS ...

In fact it appears to me that, in order to prevent unexperienced users froom shooting in their feet, they are basically pushing out a "three administrative configuration levels" model: visible pages, hidden pages, powershell.

I have not been able to find the the relevant thread, but I remember that, a couple of months ago, an MS representative explicitly stated such strategy in this forum.

I am not interested in these administrative pages through hidden url's. Just plain and simple control over what users can do in a site. It seems strange that MS has a strategy of hiding stuff from users to keep it simple. Then it is rather strange to see that these users become Site Collection Owners and can created a Record Center below a simple team site...

 

Questions still stands:

1. Can we prevent users from creating subsites through a tenant level setting. For example the SharePoint Admin Center or PowerShell command

2. If the above functionality is not available, can we change the available site templates in the subsite creation dialog. Normally this can be configured for each site collection, preferably we want to configure this on the tenant level.

It could be strange, but it is true...

I found the thread in which we discussed such things: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/SharePoint/Site-Collection-Admin-in-Modern-Team-Sites/m-p/352...

In particular look at this words: "...the difference with our modern UX and O365 groups is that we are doing more and more work to hide the paths that are most likely to cause pain like this."

And just remeber that the backend is still SharePoint Online and those options have been there for ages...and they are required in classic SPO sites.

Agreed.

The takeaway here is that we must become accustomed to the fact that some advanced configuration can be done only using hidden pages, as we are already accustomed to the fact that some advanced configuration can be done only using powershell.

In other words, it looks like using hidden URLs should not be perceived like a hack, but instead just an advanced way of doing things.

best response confirmed by Avi Sujeeth (Microsoft)
Solution

You can turn this off for the entire tenant in the SP admin center.  Settings>Subsite Creation.

 

Here's the text from the setting:

Control whether site owners can create a subsite in a site that includes an Office 365 group. This setting determines whether the option to create a subsite is available on the Site contents page when users click New.

Thanks for this. Any idea when this functionality was added to the Admin Center? I don't recall seeing any announcement about this.

I have used this tenant setting to turn it off ("Hide the Create site command") but it does nothing. Site Owners with Full Control are still presented with the 'new subsite' command, and are able to create one. Even on newly provisioned site collections (created after I configured this setting). Maybe I'm missing something, but it seemingly takes no effect throughout my tenant.

It seems that settings in the classic Admin site don't impact modern sites very often. In the new admin center you can disable the overall creation of sites but it doesn't have a subsite creation feature (YET). I would expect to see it there because you can also see Groups in this admin center while you can't do that in the classic. It's really a transition phase from Classic SP Admin center to the New Admin center.

Bad news about this solution - in fact this only hides the 'create subsite' button in the Modern site contents page. If the user selects the 'Return to classic SharePoint' option in the bottom of the left column of the Site Contents page, site owners still have access to the 'Create sub-site' option.
Hiding the button will stop most users but the more technically savvy users can easily discover how to get around this after doing a quick online search.
1 best response

Accepted Solutions
best response confirmed by Avi Sujeeth (Microsoft)
Solution

You can turn this off for the entire tenant in the SP admin center.  Settings>Subsite Creation.

 

Here's the text from the setting:

Control whether site owners can create a subsite in a site that includes an Office 365 group. This setting determines whether the option to create a subsite is available on the Site contents page when users click New.

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