How to Create a New SharePoint Site

Summary

This article shows how University of Michigan and Michigan Medicine faculty and staff can create new SharePoint Online websites, with some important considerations. SharePoint Online is part of the institutional Microsoft 365 license. It provides an easy-to-use platform for team collaboration, document sharing, light database-like functionality, and business process automation. It is a great tool to make daily study management tasks easier, within an environment that is approved for HIPAA / PII (Michigan Medicine only) or for public-facing websites (campus only).

Steps

Create the Site

1. Login to SharePoint
   • U-M users can login at https://umich.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/sharepoint.aspx
   • Michigan Medicine users (those with level-2 access) can login at https://umhealth.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/sharepoint.aspx
   • Note that the campus environment (umich.sharepoint.com) is not approved for PII and requires a level-1 login. The MM environment (umhealth.sharepoint.com) is approved for PII but requires a level-2 login.
   • LSA users also have access to an on-premise version of SharePoint. Contact LSA technical support for more information.
      
2. Once logged in, click "+ Create site" on the top left. You will be presented with two choices: Team site or Communication site.
   • Team sites are more appropriate for collaboration within a team, such as sharing documents or management daily study tasks.
   • Communication sites are more appropriate for public-facing sites, or Hub-connected sites (those part of the MM InSite intranet) that are meant to give information about your department to others.
     
     
      
3. Click Standard to start with a blank site, or choose from a specific template to get sample lists and formatting added. Under the "From your organization" tab, you will find templates made available to all campus or all MM users. The Eisenberg Family Depression Center is currently working on templates for study teams that will be made available under this tab.
   
   
    
4. Click Use Template
   
    
5. Enter a Site Name and click Next. The Site Name should be short, and should contain only letters, numbers and dashes. Even though SharePoint will allow you to use names with spaces and other characters, we recommend avoiding special characters for better compatibility with other products, such as Power Automate, and to make links to documents more readable.
   
   
    
6. Chose the appropriate language and privacy level. For Team sites, choose Private, so that only the team members you specify will have access (this can be refined later). Click Create site.
    
7. Add the team members who should have access and assign an access level. Members can create, edit and delete content such as files and list items, but cannot create new types of content. Owners can create new lists and document libraries, and can manage permissions. You can also use Active Directory or Michigan Medicine groups here. Click Finish.
   
   
    
8. Your new site is now ready to use! We recommend you bookmark your new site, but if you ever forget how to access it, return to the link on step 1 to view a list of all your SharePoint sites.
    

Setup Permissions

1. If the basic permissions outlined earlier are not granular enough, once logged in, click the gear icon on the top right and go to Settings -> Site Permissions
   
   
   
    
2. The three default levels of permissions are:
   • Site owners - administrators; can do everything on the site.
   • Site members - read/write users; can add/edit/delete content (pages, list items, documents) but not create new lists or document libraries
   • Site visitors - read-only users; can view the site and list items but cannot add or edit anything
      
3. We recommend that only those who will create site functionality, such as new lists and document libraries, have Site owner permissions, to decrease the possibility of accidentally breaking things.
    
4. We also recommend that management or primary investigators have either visitor or member access to all team sites, for business continuity purposes.
    
5. If more fine-grained permissions are needed, click Advanced Permission Settings. This will take you to the "classic experience" (older version) where you can setup permissions with much more detail, such as breaking inheritance from parent permission groups or customizing permission groups.

Create Content

1. Now that your site is created and permissions are set, use the gear icon on the upper right to go to Site Content. Here, you can add new Lists (similar to spreadsheets or database tales, but more flexible), Document Libraries (shared drives), or Site Pages (web pages created with widgets).

Notes

• None.

Resources

• None.

About the Author

Gabriel Mongefranco is a Mobile Data Architect at the University of Michigan's Eisenberg Family Depression Center. Gabriel has over a decade of experience with automation, data analytics, database architecture, dashboard design, software development, and technical writing. He supports U-M researchers with data cleaning, data pipelines, automation and enterprise architecture for wearables and other mobile technologies.    |     |     |