OVERVIEW
Target audience: McGill students, faculty and staff
In this article:
What is a public SharePoint site?
A public site is accessible by any McGill user, including students and alumni, who may add themselves as a member without any need for approval. All content stored on a public SharePoint site is automatically accessible to all McGill users. This means:
- Your site and data will appear in searches of the McGill Microsoft 365 environment
- Any McGill user can find your site and become a member
- Any McGill user can access and edit any document on your site (even without joining as a member)
Note: External users (general public) will still need to be invited to access public McGill SharePoint sites. Even though SharePoint is an approved Cloud solution, no personal or confidential data should be stored on a public site.
What is a private SharePoint site?
On a private site, membership is managed explicitly by group owners and members. Private sites can be accessed by invitation only. This means that site owners have full control over the membership and permissions of their site.
Files stored on these sites are secure and in compliance with McGill's Cloud Directive.
To check privacy status on your site:
- For Team sites, ensure that your Microsoft 365 group associated with the site is private; by checking your home page, or looking in the group itself.
- Ensure that your site member list does not include "Everyone except external users".
Best practices
Even when working with information that is not sensitive, any information which is not explicitly meant for public consumption should not go on a public site.
If you have any existing public SharePoint sites, MS Teams, or Groups, we encourage you to review its content to ensure that all content is intended for public consumption. Any non-public information should be relocated to a secured space.
Teams and SharePoint are excellent places to store most types of sensitive data, in compliance with McGill's Cloud Directive, when proper access controls are set.
Need to ensure you are correctly securing your data on MS Teams and SharePoint?
- Register for a personal Q&A session.
