The role of effective document management in an organization cannot be overstated. It’s the cornerstone of team collaboration, the guardian of compliance, and the protector of sensitive information.
Enter SharePoint: not just a web-based collaboration platform but a powerhouse with an arsenal of features and capabilities tailored to revolutionize document management practices. As we explore the best practices of SharePoint document management, you’ll discover how it can transform not just your documents but also the very way your organization functions.
Setting Up SharePoint for Document Management
SharePoint is organized hierarchically, with site collections at the top level of the structure. A site collection is a collection of SharePoint sites that share a common set of permissions, navigation, and branding. The Document Center is typically the top-level site collection in a SharePoint implementation, as it serves as a central repository for storing and managing corporate documents.
Beneath the Document Center, the structure can be further divided into subsites - smaller, more focused sites nested within the main site collection. Subsites are typically used to organize content by department, project, or topic.
Here’s a simplified representation of the SharePoint organization structure, focused solely on documents and document management within SharePoint’s organization structure:
- Root Site Collection: This serves as the central repository for all documents, regardless of department, project, or topic. It provides a common access point for users to locate and manage their documents.
- Document Libraries: These are the primary containers for storing and managing documents. They offer features like document versioning, check-in/check-out, and metadata tagging to facilitate efficient document organization and control.
- Subsites: When the volume of documents becomes too large for the root site collection, subsites can be created to organize documents by department, project, or topic. This enhances the granularity of document management and improves navigation for users.
- Folders: Within document libraries and subsites, folders provide additional levels of categorization, allowing users to group documents based on specific criteria, such as document type, author, or date created. This further enhances document organization and accessibility.
Folders in SharePoint
Folders are essential tools for organizing and managing content within SharePoint’s hierarchical structure. They act as containers for grouping files within lists and libraries, providing a more granular level of categorization and accessibility. Folders enable users to logically arrange their content, making it easier to find and retrieve specific files or documents.
Key Roles of Folders in SharePoint:
- Content Organization: Folders divide and structure content based on specific criteria, such as department, project, or file type. This facilitates efficient retrieval and navigation through the content repository.
- User Experience Enhancement: Folders mimic the familiar hierarchical navigation structure of file systems, allowing users to easily browse through folders and subfolders to find the desired content. This improves the overall user experience.
- Permission Management: Folders enable administrators to control access to specific files and folders within libraries, ensuring that only authorized users can access sensitive or confidential information. This contributes to data security and compliance.
By utilizing folders effectively, organizations can create a centralized and easily accessible repository for their knowledge assets. Ideally, a cross-functional team of stakeholders from different departments and teams should collaborate in defining the document structure. This ensures that the structure addresses the needs of all users and reflects the organization’s unique structure and document types. Still, it is usually easier to get feedback from stakeholders when there is a proposed structure, as this avoids starting from scratch.
Best Practices for Organizing Documents in SharePoint
If you were to organize all your company files in a physical filing cabinet, you would likely use dividers and categories to make it easier to find everything. Similarly, when it comes to using SharePoint for this, the way you organize files is crucial for ensuring easy access, collaboration, and compliance with data management standards.
Here are some document management best practices in SharePoint:
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Consistent Naming Conventions
Adopting consistent naming conventions for documents and folders is essential for easy identification and retrieval. This includes using clear, descriptive names that reflect the content of the file or folder. Avoid using abbreviations or names that are too generic as that might confuse users.
Example
If a folder contains Sales Material on the company’s products, it is best to call it “Sales Material” rather than “Products.”
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Hierarchical Folder Structure
Organize documents into a hierarchical folder structure that mirrors the organization’s structure or the natural categorization of the documents. This could be based on departments, projects, topics, or other relevant criteria.
Maintain a manageable folder structure by limiting the number of levels to two or three. Deeper folder structures can make navigation difficult and tend not to make sense to anyone else other than the one that created them. Naturally, this is just a rule of thumb - the optimal number of levels may vary depending on the organization’s size, document volume, and user needs.
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Permission Management
Define clear roles and permissions for different user groups within the organization and decide how granular access control permissions should be to ensure that users can access the documents they need to do their jobs while maintaining data security and compliance.
Leverage automation tools to streamline permission assignment when documents are created, modified, or moved between libraries. This reduces the risk of errors and ensures consistent access control.
Example
When documents come from a Dynamics 365 SharePoint integration, it is crucial to use a tool to automate permissions replication. This is because you will need to sync the security model from Dynamics 365 to SharePoint – we recommend CB Dynamics 365 to SharePoint Permissions Replicator, which you can get from Microsoft AppSource.
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Metadata Tagging
When a user uploads a document to a document library, SharePoint adds some document metadata by default. If you are unfamiliar with metadata, you can think of it as data about data. In this case, SharePoint metadata is the information about documents, not the content of the documents. The default metadata for a SharePoint document includes the file name, modified date, and modified by. In other words, these are the columns you normally see when viewing Documents in SharePoint.

You can add more metadata and establish a metadata schema that is relevant to your organization’s needs. This schema should include fields for relevant descriptive information about documents. This provides additional search criteria, and you can also use it to trigger workflows.
You will need to think long and hard about the metadata that users will find more helpful. A practical first step is asking users themselves what they would like to search for to locate documents.
Example
Consider a legal firm that handles a large volume of case documents. Metadata tagging can be used to categorize documents by case number, client name, type of document (contract, brief, etc.), and date of creation. This allows lawyers to quickly locate and retrieve relevant documents, enhancing efficiency and productivity.
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Version Control
Version control is enabled by default in SharePoint, and the best practice is to keep it enabled. You can adjust some settings to make version control adequate for what your organization needs.
Here is a table summarizing the version control settings in SharePoint:

“Create major versions” is used for tracking significant updates or finalized versions of a document, while “Create minor versions” is useful for managing and tracking ongoing edits and smaller changes. As you can see in the table above, it is possible to create both types of versions automatically whenever they are modified, but I would say it is more common to use the “Create minor versions” setting.
Bonus: Techniques for Efficient Document Search in SharePoint
Efficiently searching for documents in SharePoint can be significantly improved by adopting a systematic approach. Here are key techniques to enhance your search experience:
- Simplify Search Terms:
- Use broader terms when you are not getting the results you want
- Benefit: Casting a wider search net will uncover more documents.
Example
Opt for general terms like “report” instead of specific ones like “sales report.”
- Comprehensive Search Scope:
- Ensure search settings include all content types and all relevant folders
- Benefit: Ensures no relevant document is missed in the search.
Example
If you are inside a specific folder when you search, SharePoint will only show you the results on that folder. If you get a “No items match your search” message, always try navigating to the folder above or even to the Documents Center, as seen below.

- Employ metadata filters
- Conduct targeted searches using document type, author, creation date, or other metadata fields.
- Benefit: Precise and faster retrieval of specific documents.
These strategies will make your SharePoint document searches more efficient, saving you and your team time and improving productivity.
Recap
In wrapping up our deep dive into SharePoint’s best document management practices, we hope these can be real game-changers for your team. To quickly recap:
- Keep Naming Simple: Your future self will thank you, and so will your colleagues.
- Keep Structure Simple: Organize like a pro and make finding things a breeze.
- Manage Permissions Wisely: Keep the ‘top-secret’ stuff, well, top-secret. Be especially careful with documents that come from Dynamics 365 to SharePoint.
- Smart Metadata Tagging: Think of it as the secret sauce that will make users search effectively.
- Version Control: Because sometimes you need to rewind.
Implementing these practices isn’t just about tidying up your documents or avoiding document dilemmas. It is all about efficiency, productivity, and a happy workplace.
References and Further Reading
Thank you for taking an interest in this article and reading it through! Here are some more articles if you want to dig in deeper:
Bridging the Security Gap in a SharePoint Dynamics 365 Integration
Overcoming the SharePoint Unique Permissions Limit
SharePoint Integration with Salesforce – All You Need to Know
About the Author

By Ana Neto, technical advisor at Connecting Software.
“I have been a software engineer since 1997, with a more recent love for writing and public speaking. Do you have any questions or comments about this article? I would love to have your feedback, leave a comment below!"
Comments 1
Appreciate this post. Will try it out.