SharePoint Policies

SharePoint, Microsoft

One of my colleagues (and friends – hi Brett!) reminded me of something that I think isn’t written about too much. Its one of those things that everyone knows is needed but there’s a lack of information, samples and best practices – a void thats yet unfilled.

He emailed me asking my opinion on the size of SharePoint Site Collections in MOSS. I echoed the sentiments of Bill Baer who’s blog I read a lot. In summary, 15GB is a good limit. Personally, I know the user base that Brett was talking about and 15GB is actually too much. Yes, we did move completely away from traditional file servers but at the same time, SharePoint is not a storage dump. The information should be kept relevant, updated and unneeded documents trashed or archived some other way for historical tracking.

But the bigger question is how to define policies such as these and how to enforce them. Its really a non-SharePoint business decision. Many organizations have an “Acceptable Use Policy” that governs the use and abuse of their systems in general. I think with any Content Management System there needs to be specific policies. These policies would cover file size limits, type of documents stored and other technical limitations. It should also cover non-technical policies such as a blogging policy, classification of documents, use of MySites, etc.

I was researching this recently and could not find any such template, I guess I’ll need to make my own. Usually organizations do have these policies, but they’re unwritten, unclear and scattered everywhere. When it comes time to enforce, its hard to be objective without a comprehensive written policy.

Finally, I think such a policy would reinforce the business’ IT growth plan. It allows you to say, “Despite these limits we’ve imposed we’ll soon need new hardware.”

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