Site Policies in SharePoint 2013

One of the new, and lesser-known, jewels included as part of SharePoint 2013 is the ability to define site policies. SharePoint 2010 allowed you only to create policies attached to content types or at a site collection level, but SharePoint 2013 includes a new set of rules which provides an out-of-the-box site lifecycle management mechanism. In this article you’ll learn how to define site policy for a SharePoint site and how to use site lifecycle management.

Defining the Site Policy

In order to define a site policy:

• In your CloudShare SharePoint 2013 environment, navigate to an existing site collection. Then go to the “Site Settings” page. In the “Site Collection Administration” section you will find a “Site Policies” link.

• Once you click the “Site Policies” link, the “Site Policies” page is displayed. As this is the first time you are evaluating this new SharePoint 2013 feature, you will see that the page is empty: there aren’t any site policies defined in the site yet.

• In order to create a new site policy, just click the “Create” button so the “New Site Policy” page is shown. In this page you have to add some settings like the name and description for the site policy and the most important one: the Site Closure and Deletion configuration the policy defines.

• For defining the Site Closure and Deletion behavior, you have three choices:
  • “Do not close or delete site automatically” – the site policy is not going to take any action against the site.
  • “Delete sites automatically” – the site will be deleted automatically when a specific “Deletion event” takes place. You can configure when the site will be deleted in terms of the number of months from a specific date and also when e-mail notifications will be sent to site owners.

• “Closes and delete sites automatically” – similar to the previous option with an extra configuration related to the “close event” for the site.

• Once you have done all the configurations for the site policy, click the “OK” button so the new site policy is saved.

Using the Site Policy

The process to use a site policy is quite straightforward:

• In your SharePoint 2013 site, navigate again to the “Site Settings” page. In the “Site Administration” section, locate and click over the “Site Closure and Deletion” link.

• In the “Site Closure and Deletion” page, select a site policy in the Site Policy selector and save the configuration by clicking the “Ok” button.

• Back in the “Site Settings” page, click again the “Site Closure and Deletion” page and check there is site deletion information indicating when the site will be deleted according to the site policy defined.

And that’s all about creating site policies in SharePoint 2013. Happy CloudSharing!