Forum Discussion
SharePoint sites and data enterprise cost allocation
From an admin standpoint how could you manage cost centers / cost allocation to SharePoint Online Farm? Would be ideal to add a custom column in the SharePoint admin center to the sites so that cost ...
From an admin standpoint, managing cost centers and cost allocation to SharePoint Online can be challenging, as there is no native feature in SharePoint Online to add a custom column in the SharePoint admin center to the sites. However, there are some possible workarounds that I've used that you can try, such as:
- Using PowerShell scripts to create and update site properties with cost center information, and then use the SharePoint Online Management Shell cmdlets to get site usage reports and filter by site properties.
Then use Microsoft Graph API to access and update site properties with cost center information, and then use the Microsoft Graph reports API to get site usage reports and filter by site properties. You can then display this in a PowerBI report.
If you don't want to go this route then third party is your only option to provide cost management features for SharePoint Online, I've used such Rencore, ShareGate, AvePoint, before at clients. These tools can help you track and allocate costs by site, site collection, or tenant level, and provide reports and dashboards for cost analysis and optimization.
I hope this answer helps you with your query. If you have any further questions, please feel free to ask. 🙂
- Using PowerShell scripts to create and update site properties with cost center information, and then use the SharePoint Online Management Shell cmdlets to get site usage reports and filter by site properties.
Then use Microsoft Graph API to access and update site properties with cost center information, and then use the Microsoft Graph reports API to get site usage reports and filter by site properties. You can then display this in a PowerBI report.
If you don't want to go this route then third party is your only option to provide cost management features for SharePoint Online, I've used such Rencore, ShareGate, AvePoint, before at clients. These tools can help you track and allocate costs by site, site collection, or tenant level, and provide reports and dashboards for cost analysis and optimization.
I hope this answer helps you with your query. If you have any further questions, please feel free to ask. 🙂
- Thank you for your reply. The first options do seem complex and unless documented well I am sure we will not be able to go that route. Do you have any reference documents suggesting this path? Second options, we do have ShareGate but not familiar how we would accomplish with what we typically use only for migrations -any reference material or links much appreciated. Thank you.
- > The first options do seem complex and unless documented well I am sure we will not be able to go that route
To be honest it isn't, you're tagging who owns which site when created for example and then querying the data. And displaying it in PowerBI to make it easier to see and transform the data in a form of a dashboard, you can export it to a random excel or SharePoint list etc if you also want.
>we do have ShareGate but not familiar how we would accomplish with what we typically use only for migrations
Check out reporting:
https://sharegate.com/reporting- Ok I think I understand a bit more now that you mention ShareGate reporting. Instead of trying to boil the ocean and asking Microsoft to make a change to the SharePoint Online farm column so we can track in live production or purchasing an additional Microsoft product such as Azure Purview or SharePoint Syntax; export information and maybe use the site owner as a way to assign a cost center ID to associated with but in an Excel or MS List manually tracking. Am I understanding this correctly now?
