Office 365 - SharePoint Site for Staff Only?

[mb2k01]

Hi All,

 

I'm hoping someone can help me out on this one.

SharePoint remains my largest unknown generally, but what I'd like to do is create a 'new' (well, ideally replacement!) Shared Area - but only accessible by staff.

Is this possible, and how would I go about it?

 

We have a single O365 tenant. Staff have @school.net domain names and students have @students.school.net domain names. Each have appropriate licensing.

We use ADFS and manage users locally in AD, though groups do exist up in the cloud via the Azure AD area so are searchable in the other 365 areas etc.

 

Any help will be greatly appreciated!

 

Cheers

 

Mark

[truebluesteve]

Hi All,

 

I'm hoping someone can help me out on this one.

SharePoint remains my largest unknown generally, but what I'd like to do is create a 'new' (well, ideally replacement!) Shared Area - but only accessible by staff.

Is this possible, and how would I go about it?

 

We have a single O365 tenant. Staff have @school.net domain names and students have @students.school.net domain names. Each have appropriate licensing.

We use ADFS and manage users locally in AD, though groups do exist up in the cloud via the Azure AD area so are searchable in the other 365 areas etc.

 

Any help will be greatly appreciated!

 

Cheers

 

Mark

 

I'm looking to do a similar thing - along with an Intranet so would be interesting to see how you get on. SharePoint security permissions can be very complex but from my limited experience you can create SharePoint security groups for each site and even page you set up (you do this from the SharePoint ribbon I think) and you can any AD groups or users into the SP groups. You can also create O365 groups and assign them too. I have a document somewhere that covered it briefly which might help if I can find it

 

Thats about the limit of my knowledge so far!

[jaminben]

If your just doing it for staff then create a group within AD (SharePointStaff) and add users as needed, sync that group with SharePoint, create your page using the group you just created and set permissions for that page, add a document library and again assign it that security group and set it's permissions. Add a link to the document library within your newly created page.

 

EDIT:

Attached an example image of ours to show what could be done which I created and I have no special talents so should be easy enough... it's a complete intranet site which all departments use. It has areas for staff and students each with their own permissions, document libraries for resources, uploading of work or a private department area.

Edited July 3, 2015 by jaminben

[truebluesteve]

That looks really nice and tidy.

 

Whats the structure of the site in terms of a site structure/tree. I'm thinking very simple

 

School-

Staff

Subjects

Governors

[jaminben]

I kept ours separate, staff, students, governors etc. They all have their own document libraries as it was easier to set and manage permissions.... we have one main landing page.

 

Student resources (One Document Library)-
 Maths
   year 7
   year 8
   year 9
 English
   year 7 
   year 8

Student Hand-In Area (Another Document Library)-
 Maths
   year 7
   year 8
   year 9
 English
   year 7 
   year 8

Deparments (Yet another Document Library)-
   English
   Maths
   Science

 

A document library can be linked to by an html link to the folder level... so for example students hand-in area > year 10 > can be directly linked (if that makes sense).

Edited July 3, 2015 by jaminben

[mb2k01]

... sync that group with SharePoint, create your page using the group you just created and set permissions for that page, add a document library and again assign it that security group and set it's permissions. Add a link to the document library within your newly created page...

 

Hi Jaminben,

When you say to sync the group, are you referring to the normal AD > 365 sync process, or a specific sync function within SharePoint?

What do you mean when you say to create your page using the group you just created?

(Sorry - probbaly really n00b questions!)

[MrFrostmaul]

I've done this, create a site and on the permissions just assign the security group to it. you can sync your security groups via dirsync from AD.

[bigjb]

Hi jaminben

 

Site looks very clean, just in the process of developing ours. Just wondered what theme you were using with your site? Is it one of the pre-supplied or have you purchased it?

[jaminben]

Hi Jaminben,

When you say to sync the group, are you referring to the normal AD > 365 sync process, or a specific sync function within SharePoint?

What do you mean when you say to create your page using the group you just created?

(Sorry - probbaly really n00b questions!)

 

As MrFrostmaul said... it's just a normal dirsync.

[jaminben]

Hi jaminben

 

Site looks very clean, just in the process of developing ours. Just wondered what theme you were using with your site? Is it one of the pre-supplied or have you purchased it?

 

I made my own theme... I'll see if I can find the tutorials I used when I'm back on Monday.

[jaminben]

I don't appear to be able to find the resources I used but I'm pretty sure I found lots of videos on YouTube & Lynda.com.... basically I created a 'master page' (under design manager) and then added 'page layouts' (under site contents) for each department using a custom page layout template (under design manager) I created. For the custom menu system I used jQuery which allows the site to be used with mouse or touch devices. You can map drives to the required folders and edit your SharePoint site like you would any normal .html site adding in your own resources (.js, .css etc).... the one thing you can't do is edit the .aspx files which you'll find next to your .html files.

 

You can also download 'SharePoint Designer 2013' which may make things easier or not in my case.

 

If you want to change the theme colour for your site you can use 'SharePoint 2013 Color Palette Tool'.

 

net use N: \\yoursitename.sharepoint.com@SSL\DavWWWRoot

net use R: https://yoursitename.sharepoint.com/_catalogs/masterpage

Edited July 6, 2015 by jaminben

[gshaw]

Regardless of site permissions be careful with how users share individual documents. We've found that because the overall SharePoint instance is tenant-wide it also means any documents shared with "Everyone" will appear in search results for students and staff. You also need to keep the SharePoint license assigned for students for them to be able to use OneDrive so no way around that either.

 

I'd feel much happier if there were a way to separate SharePoint to the level you can using the GAL options in Exchange but it doesn't seem quite as mature in that regard.

[jaminben]

Regardless of site permissions be careful with how users share individual documents. We've found that because the overall SharePoint instance is tenant-wide it also means any documents shared with "Everyone" will appear in search results for students and staff. You also need to keep the SharePoint license assigned for students for them to be able to use OneDrive so no way around that either.

 

I'd feel much happier if there were a way to separate SharePoint to the level you can using the GAL options in Exchange but it doesn't seem quite as mature in that regard.

 

We don't use OneDrive or rather don't publicize that it's available just yet because we're concerned about them sharing the wrong document. We limit this risk with the use of Document Libraries in SharePoint... only staff have permissions to staff documents.

[beany1]

Your SharePoint looks fantastic @jaminben - going to put a bit more effort into ours now!

 

Could I ask on the student hand in, do you use workflows or anything to stop other pupils seeing each others work? or is it just a plain document library?

[jaminben]

Your SharePoint looks fantastic @jaminben - going to put a bit more effort into ours now!

 

Could I ask on the student hand in, do you use workflows or anything to stop other pupils seeing each others work? or is it just a plain document library?

 

It's just a document library with the delete permission removed (IIRC) so they can see each others work and edit it etc. but not delete it.