Sharepoint Documents for Multiple Departments

[cconverse]

I have a fairly general understanding of Sharepoint. We have created a hub site connected to department sites for each department. I have some departments with document libraries which are specific to the department but also require input from other departments. The issue is, to give other departments access to the document library it appears I am required to provide access to the departments site when they only should have access to the document library (not the entire site). One idea I had was to create a site to hold all company documents which need to be shared. This way I can specify if the user should have view, read, contribute or no access to the document library. This way multiple departments could have access to the document libraries. I would imagine this is a common dilemma. Can anyone provide guidance as to what would be considered best proactive to solve this issue? Thank you in advance.

[#2]

Hi, the better option is to provide the users 'Read' access to the department site and then to maintain 'Item level permission' for those users from other departments who has to contribute.
If you create a site to hold all the department documents, then you are holding all the documents in a single place where the permissions would become cumbersome in future.

Hope it helps, please like it or mark it as a solution if it resolves ur clarification or issue
-Sudharsan K...

[#3]

@cconverse:.

Here is what I would normally do in this situation.

Anything that can be shared with all the company put on the Intranet, create one if you don't have one. 

If you need to shared files within a department site with other departments then try and do this at the document library level. So create document libraries for that purpose. 

If you just need to share a folder inside a document library then just share that folder with the other department. The other department will only be able to see the folder they are given access to. Do this via direct permissions and not a sharing link.

[#4 · Accepted solution]

@cconverse 

A couple very basic/intro guidelines to SharePoint & access rights.

1. Keeping access rights as open & broad as possible will make people's lives easier and make them more productive. No one likes hitting "Access denied" all the time and no one wants to spend their workday adding/removing access rights. Trust your colleagues to treat your content respectfully.

2. Access rights should be limited only based on SECRECY - as in what bad thing will happen if these people see this content. Rights should NOT be based solely on artificial constructs like org structure. 

Building on the Intranet idea - Every department or business unit should have a "public" site - a place where they publish who they are, what they do, maybe a list for service requests, etc. Everyone in the org should have access to this site as a visitor. This is where they publish all those policies, procedures, templates, etc. These sites should be easily accessible from the main navigation.

Each department should also have at least one team site (with or without Teams) where they can post and collaborate on working material. Invite anyone to these sites who needs to access the content to get work done. These sites may/may not be open to the entire org as visitors as needed. 

Then let the site owners manage access rights and walk away.