Overview
SharePoint sites are intended to support active collaboration throughout their lifecycle. As projects conclude, departments reorganize, or collaboration needs change, sites should be reviewed to ensure they remain current and continue to provide value.
This page explains how SharePoint sites are managed throughout their lifecycle, when they should be retained or deleted, and how storage is managed to support a sustainable SharePoint environment.
SharePoint Lifecycle Management
To maintain a healthy SharePoint environment, OIT periodically reviews SharePoint sites for activity.
Sites that continue to be actively used require no action. If a site has been inactive for an extended period, site owners may be asked to verify that it is still needed before it progresses through the site's lifecycle.
This helps ensure abandoned or obsolete sites do not remain indefinitely while preserving sites that continue to support university business, teaching, research or collaboration.
Inactive Site Notifications
When a SharePoint site has been inactive for a six-month period, the site's owners will receive an email asking them to confirm whether the site should remain active.
If no response is received and the site remains inactive:
- One month after the third notification is sent, the SharePoint site will be placed into read-only mode. This will prevent new content from being added and existing content from being edited.
- After three months in read-only status, the SharePoint site will be moved to Microsoft Archive (cold storage).
- After three months in cold storage, the SharePoint site will be permanently deleted.
At any point in this process, an owner can respond to the inactivity notification to keep the site active or, if it has already been archived, restore it to an active state.
Site Deletion Guidance
SharePoint sites should be deleted when they are no longer needed.
Examples include:
- Completed projects
- Temporary committees or working groups
- Test or demonstration sites
- Duplicate collaboration spaces
- Sites whose content has been moved elsewhere
Before requesting a site deletion, verify that:
- Business records are no longer required or have moved to systems of record.
- Important files have been retained or moved.
- Site members have been notified, when appropriate.
- The site is not supporting an active Microsoft Team or other business process.
To delete a SharePoint site, contact the IT Service Center.
Storage & Data Limits
To help ensure SharePoint storage remains sustainable and available for future growth, OIT manages SharePoint storage using standard site quotas.
Most SharePoint sites require very little storage. New sites receive a default 50GB storage allocation, and additional storage can be requested when justified by business, research or academic needs.
If your site approaches its storage limit, you will receive notifications before the limit is reached, providing an opportunity to remove unnecessary content or request additional storage if needed.
Version History
SharePoint automatically maintains previous versions of documents, allowing users to restore earlier versions when necessary.
To balance document recovery with long-term storage efficiency, OIT uses Microsoft Automatic Version History, which intelligently manages historical versions over time.
Rather than retaining a fixed number of versions indefinitely, Microsoft automatically preserves the versions that provide the greatest recovery value while gradually removing older versions that are unlikely to be needed. Site owners do not need to configure or manage this feature.
Best Practices
Help keep your SharePoint site healthy by:
- Reviewing site ownership regularly.
- Removing outdated content that is no longer needed.
- Organizing files into appropriate libraries and folders.
- Deleting duplicate or obsolete files.
- Responding promptly to lifecycle certification emails.
- Deleting SharePoint sites that are no longer required.
- Requesting additional storage only when justified.
