Permissions in SharePoint 2016 have remained pretty much the same as they were in SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint Online. Lightning Tools have ensured that their SharePoint 2016 Permissions Tool (DeliverPoint) product is ready to go with the launch of SharePoint 2016 RTM. So, below are some of the fantastic time saving features of DeliverPoint when it comes to SharePoint 2016 Permissions Reporting and Management.
In many organizations, the end users within a SharePoint team site, have a better understanding as to who should access their content than that of the SharePoint Farm Administrator. Although DeliverPoint also offers Permissions Management and Reporting for Farm Administrators, it also caters for the Site Owner and Site Collection Administrators. The Reporting Features for SO’s and SCA’s are contextual, so the users does not need to know that they are using a third party tool for permissions management.
Within a SharePoint Team Site, users logged in with Full Control will be able to run DeliverPoint permission reports on the Site, Lists/Libraries, Folders and Items. Figure 1 displays a screenshot taken from a Document Library displaying the DeliverPoint Inheritance column that visually represents folders and documents that have broken permission inheritance. The DeliverPoint Ribbon provides the ability to execute permission reports or manage permissions on the Library as well as the Folder/Document Items.
Figure 1 – Contextual Permissions Management & Reporting
The Discover Permissions Report displays every user that has been granted any level of permissions, even if the permissions are assigned through an Active Directory Group. The Discover Permission Report can be executed on the Site, List, Library, Folder and Item. The Report can be scheduled to run periodically and also exported to Microsoft Excel.
Figure 2 – Discover Permissions Report
DeliverPoint has a wealth of permission management features that allow for Permissions to be Granted, Copied, Transferred, and Deleted in bulk. You may select multiple lists, sites, site collections and web applications as the scope of an operation, and then trigger that operation across all selected objects. An example would be that a user is retiring from the organization. Using a single action, you could transfer that users permissions across entire site collections to another user replacing him/her. Without DeliverPoint, such an operation would require endless hours of digging to find where the user is granted permissions, what groups the user is a member of, and then remove them before granting the same permissions manually to somebody else.
Figure 3 – Permissions Management Features
Auditing Permissions
Permissions can be audited within Microsoft SharePoint 2016. The Discover permissions reports display who has permissions at any given time. However, you may be concerned as to how the user was granted the permissions, by who, and when. The Permissions Auditing Feature of DeliverPoint interrogates any permission assignment and records it. At any point, you will be able to determine who granted the permissions and when it was granted.
Figure 4 – Auditing Permissions against a site collection
Permission Alerts
Permission Alerts enable the SharePoint Farm Administrator to put his or her trust into Site Owners and Site Collection Administrators. It enables the SO’s and SCA’s to manage permissions within their own sites, but the Farm Administrators can be alerted should a specific user receive permissions, or a certain permission level such as [Full Control] is assigned within the said scope.
Figure 5 – Creating an Alert
Dead Account Reporting
DeliverPoint contains a Dead Account reporting feature that alerts you to the fact that an Active Directory User or Group has been removed or disables within the Active Directory, but permissions are still assigned to the user or AD Group within SharePoint. This is not so much a security risk since the user in question cannot authenticate. However, it is misleading to other users when they see a retired user showing up in permission reports as having permissions still. The Dead Account Reporting Feature enables you to clean up the accounts.
Downloading a Trial
DeliverPoint is available for SharePoint 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016 and SharePoint Online. You can download a fully functional trial from.
