Insights

This blog is part of a series of posts where we are looking at the lesser-known SharePoint-associated add-ons available in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. The list below outlines the order in which the blog posts will be released.

• SharePoint Premium
• SharePoint Embedded
• SharePoint Advanced Management
• Microsoft 365 Backup
• Microsoft 365 Archive
• Microsoft 365 Viva
• Microsoft 365 Copilot (M365 collab-tools related)

Next up in this series, we are covering a set of features we’ve highlighted previously under the SharePoint Premium banner. SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM) is a set of add-on features that enable businesses to govern, monitor and analyse their SharePoint Online environment and users’ actions.

What is SharePoint Advanced Management?

Microsoft stated that businesses were asking for controls and features to better govern and control the content sprawl and data oversharing within their SharePoint Online environments, previously they were told to seek this from 3rd party applications and integrations or custom build and maintain themselves.

Released over a year ago now with additional features being added over time, the SharePoint Advanced Management suite of add-ons aims to address four key areas for administrators with functionality:

Manage Content Sprawl

• AI Insights – AI insights to identify patterns and potential issues from reporting and receive actionable recommendations to solve issues
• Sites lifecycle management policy for inactive sites – Configure policies to perform actions on sites that have been inactive for some time. Before an action is taken owners of the site or associated Team can be polled to check action is appropriate

Manage Oversharing

• Data access governance (DAG) insights for SharePoint sites – A page of graphs and reports detailing for etc. top 100 sites with the most sensitive label content, externally or internally shared files
• Block download policy for SharePoint sites and OneDrive – Block users from downloading, printing, or syncing files from specified SharePoint sites or OneDrive accounts to reduce the risk of data loss. Users will have browser-only access and won’t be able to access content through apps, including Microsoft Office desktop apps
• Secure SharePoint Document Libraries – Ability to add a default sensitivity label to a Library, ensuring all files added will automatically have that label applied
• Conditional access policy for SharePoint sites and OneDrive – Enables the ability to configure additional credential gates to access content. Gates such as MFA, managed devices only or specific networks only can be configured, with users having to pass through before gaining access to the sites and content within the tenant

Control Copilot access to content

• Restricted access control (RAC) policy for SharePoint sites – Implement higher-level permissions for a site, disregarding permissions that have been configured within the site itself
• Restricted access control (RAC) policy for OneDrive – Similar to the SharePoint sites implementation, a higher level permissions control which administrators can implement to restrict access to a defined group of users, or all internal users only for example

Manage content lifecycle

• Change History – Create and download detailed .csv reports of site actions or organisation setting changes made by Global Administrators, SharePoint Administrators and Site Administrators within the last 180 days
• Your Recent Actions – Get a quick view of recent site changes you made from the SharePoint Admin Center. For example, if you changed a site address, you can see the previous and new address

Licensing Model

• SharePoint Advanced Management is a per-user license. To use SharePoint Advanced Management, you must have a license for each active user in your organisation (It’s not required for guests). Users must also be licensed for SharePoint K, P1, or P2 via standalone or a Microsoft 365 suite.
• You’re looking at around $5 AUD for each user per month for a SharePoint Advanced Management licence.

The Value Proposition of SAM

• Microsoft pitches these add-on features as negating the need for 3rd party products available that offer similar functionality but require additional effort to be configured, integrated, and managed – a cost and feature comparison would need to be performed depending on which features are required
• Some level of governance and administration of SharePoint Online is required, and these tools can greatly reduce the manual tasks and upkeep needed to maintain a healthy environment. Businesses may have developed similar processes and controls using tools such as Power Apps and Power Automate, or 3rd Party products such as AvePoint, and therefore a review of what additional features SAM provides would be required to determine when and if a transition or addition of it  would give value

Points to think about when considering the use of SAM

• Microsoft offers a trial for SAM, and making use of this can provide an organisation with the opportunity to evaluate and run test scenarios to determine the suitability of purchasing the additional licences
• First-party functionality should always be preferred where available over 3rd party integrations – though there are occasions where 3rd party products better meet the needs of organisations
• Microsoft recently, seem to be listening to customer requests for features and capabilities, with this product being enhanced greatly over the last year, with even particularly around the AI space planned

At Chamonix, we have years of experience helping organisations get up to speed and derive value in their business from tools and features such as what SharePoint Advanced management offers. Some of the areas we can assist with are:

• Setting up test cases to explore these features in real business scenarios
• Feature configuration, usage governance, and cost management
• Deployment models to leverage enhanced capabilities

Get in touch with us today to see how we can streamline your SharePoint experience.