Site collections in SharePoint Online are very similar to their on-premise counterparts. As we discussed at the beginning of this chapter, a site collection is nothing more than a grouping of sites that are functionally, navigationally, and administratively related to one another (see Figure 1-32).
FIGURE 1-32 Sites within a site collection.
Site collection admin center
Creating a new SharePoint online site collection is accomplished within the Site Collections menu of the SharePoint admin center (see Figure 1-33).
| FIGURE 1-33 |
| SharePoint admin center. |
From this console, you can build a private site collection or a public web site.
Site collection types
Two types of site collections can be created within SharePoint Online: multiple private site collections and a single public web site.
■■ Each Office 365 subscription enables you to create a single public web site for your business; after this site has been created, the option to create it becomes grayed out.
■■ All SharePoint Online site collections (except the public web site) are initially created as private site collections. After creation, external users can be added to these site collections.
Before building a new site collection, you will want to consider factors such as the target audience of the site collection and how much data will be stored in the site collection.
Site collection administrators (SCas)
In an on-premise SharePoint installation, each site collection has primary administrators and SCAs. Although others can be assigned the same permission levels, they do not receive SCA quota e-mail, for instance.
SharePoint Online site collections have a single designated SCA. This tenant administrator retains full control and is responsible for the administration of a site collection.
Other SCAs can be added as backups for the primary site collection admin. Additionally, external support partners can be given access to the site collection from a help desk or administrative perspective.
Storage quotas
There is a maximum amount of space that is given to a SharePoint Online subscription. A dedicated amount of this space can be given to each new site collection as a quota that limits the overall size for the site collection. There is no default amount of space issued—the quota is assigned as part of the site creation process.
Optionally, an e-mail can be sent to SCAs when a certain percentage of the overall quota size has been consumed.
Server resource quotas
Each SharePoint Online installation is granted a server resource quota. This amount represents the memory and processor resources that are utilized by the entirety of all site collections in the installation.
As a new site collection is created, it is assigned a percentage of the resources for use; the idea of this quota is to prohibit a single site collection from consuming all available resources within an installation. Adding new sandboxed solutions or apps to the site collection can cause this number to increase.
Sharing
Although site collections are created for private use, external users can be added to the permissions structure. These users can be granted reader, contributor, and even owner permissions.
Sharing is enabled on a per-site collection basis. Within the SharePoint admin console, there are three options for sharing:
■■ Don’t Allow Sharing Outside Of Your Organization
■■ Allow External Users Who Accept Sharing Invitations And Sign In As Authenticated Users
■■ Allow Both External Users Who Accept Sharing Invitations And Anonymous Guest Links
After sharing is enabled, users can share an entire site or individual documents on a site.
These users are fully authenticated, signing in with either a Microsoft account or a Microsoft Office 365 ID. If anonymous guest links have been enabled, users can share individual documents anonymously.
