The purpose of this article is to establish a loose set of guidelines for naming / classifying SharePoint sites.


  1. SharePoint Site Classification
    1. Team Site - A site for a group of people working in a common department or job case.  Examples:  Human Resources Team, Safety Team, Expanding Markets Development Team
    2. Communication Site - A site for departments/teams to post information for other internal employees to consume.  Examples Human Resources, Safety, Information Systems
    3. Project Site - A site tied to a specific project that likely has an end date.  Examples:  Postell Site Project,  Parrish Site 2022 Expansion Project, Afton Customer Attainment Project
    4. Portal Site - A site for external users to access information provided by Nelson Brothers. Examples: Lhoist Blasting Portal, Republic Energy Portal

  2. Site Creation Guides
    1. Team Sites - Team sites should be created as Microsoft 365 groups. By default this will create a Azure AD Group, a SharePoint site, and a Outlook shared inbox. The shared inbox, by default, will be for internal use only. In many cases the shared inbox will only be used to access the SharePoint site via Outlook, if the users prefers, or not at all. In some cases, like AP teams and Emulsion Orders Team the mailbox will have an alias @nelbro.com address and have external emails enabled so that the group can receive emails form customers/vendors. Optionally, a Microsoft Teams team can be created with the group at the time of creation or in the future as needed.

    2. Communication Sites - Communication sites should be created as Communication Sites via SharePoint administrator. It will not include a Microsoft 365 group, Team, or shared inbox. Communication sites are intended as a publishing point for documents and information that employees need. Examples are Human Resources and Safety sites. In the example of Human Resources members of the Human Resources Team will be admins of this communication site and will take the documents and information they've worked on in their team and place it in this site for publication. The team site is the place where a team or department works together to produce the content and the communication site is where the finish product is stored and accessed by the consumers.

    3. Project Site - Project sites are the same as Team sites in the creation and available options. Project sites are a way to allow users from multiple teams to have a shared workspace dedicated to a specific project. It may be unclear when a project site or team site is needed, but in general if it has a narrow focus and a date when work will be completed it should be a project site.

    4. Portal Sites - Portal sites are created the same as Communication sites. After the portal site is created external users are added to the member or guest permission groups in SharePoint so that external users can reach the resources. These are intended to be "islands" of information, so every effort should be made to only give the guests access to information inside this island. For example, Republic Energy needs to see shot reports stored in the ABU Blasting Team's SharePoint, instead of giving those guest users access to this internal resource a Flow or other method should be used to make a copy of the information in the Republic Energy Portal island to maintain a secure enviornment.