SharePoint Online Sync Hub Permissions

Applies to: SharePoint Online

If you’re using Hub sites and associated sites in SharePoint Online, especially as a replacement architecture for sites + subsites, then you’ve probably wished there was a way to have the associated sites inherit permissions like subsites do. This is currently not possible, but one of the announcements made at Microsoft Ignite in early November 2019 was the coming ability to “sync” hub permissions to associated sites.

Hub site permission sync demo

As demonstrated in Brad McCabe’s Microsoft Ignite session on the Intelligent Intranet, now (that is to say: soon) when you associate a site with a Hub site, you’ll be given an option to Sync hub permissions to this site.

After an associated site’s permissions are synced with a hub, you’ll see a Hub pivot at the top of the Site permissions pane, showing that permissions are being managed by the hub site.

However, note that there’s also still a Site pivot, so things like the Site Owner are still coming from the current site, not from the hub site.

As you may know, you can choose later to remove the association between a site and a hub. In that case, the hub site’s permissions will stop being synced to that site.

Looking ahead

The roadmap slide shared during Ignite puts this feature at “Early” 2020 availability. [As of May 2020, this is not yet rolled out.]

We look forward to testing this feature when it’s available, to see exactly how it works. For example:

• Is syncing permissions slightly different from inheriting them?
• Which permissions will come from the associated site (e.g. Site Owner), and which from the hub site?
• Are there any caveats when disassociating a site which has had its permissions synced to a hub?
• Will it be obvious which of a hub site’s associated sites have synced permissions and which do not (without clicking through to every site and examining its Site permissions pane)?

As always, Lightning Tools will be on hand to help give you visibility into your SharePoint site permissions with our DeliverPoint permissions reporting and management tool. We’ll recommend that you know exactly what permissions exist on a hub site before you tick the box to sync those permissions with an associated site.