Microsoft 365 configuration options relevant to Atlas

Atlas sits on top of Microsoft 365 and SharePoint, so there are a number of things to consider when it comes to your Microsoft 365 and SharePoint configuration that could affect your Atlas experience.

In this article:

• Microsoft Search bar
  • Modify the search bar config
  • Remove the search bar from existing sites
  • Configure ConneX to remove the search bar from new workspaces automatically
• Page comments
• Mobile app notifications
• Site Storage limits
• Workspace (site) creation defaults
• Default Sharing settings

Microsoft Search bar

The default Microsoft 365 configuration shows the Microsoft Search bar at the top of all SharePoint pages, in the Microsoft Suite bar:

We usually recommend to remove this bar because it is much more visible than the Atlas search on the right of the Atlas header and will lead to Microsoft Search pages rather than Atlas Listing pages. However there are a few options you can consider:

• Keep the default configuration (not recommended)
• Modify the search bar to point to an Atlas Listing page (better, but forces you to choose a Listing page for all searches rather than let the user choose a scope)
• Remove the search bar and use the Atlas search UI (recommended)
  
  

Modify the search bar config

You can modify the search configuration for one workspace at a time to determine which page the user is sent to when using the Microsoft search box, meaning you can redirect it to an Atlas Listing page. To set this up, go to the Site Settings, then under Search, NOT under Site Collection Administration, click Search Settings:

In the next screen, uncheck the "Use the same settings as my parent", choose "Send queries to a custom page URL", then paste the Listing page URL you wish to use into the box:

You can use a relative or absolute URL as necessary.
 

Remove the search bar from existing sites

To remove this bar from existing workspaces you will need to run a Powershell script against each one. You can learn more about this from Microsoft's documentation here: MS Learn - Manage SPO Search box

Configure ConneX to remove the search bar from new workspaces automatically

To have this bar automatically removed from new workspaces when created via ConneX, a SharePoint Administrator needs to set the Tenant Property "Atlas.Header.Disable365Search" to "true". Learn about tenant properties here: Manage Tenant Properties for Atlas

Page comments

SharePoint has a global setting to allow or prevent comments being added on modern pages, which by default allows commenting. You can see this setting in the SharePoint Admin centre under Settings > Pages:

This will apply to all Atlas workspaces as well as any OOTB SharePoint workspaces in your M365 tenant. If you leave commenting on globally, it can be turned off for a specific page by anyone with permissions to edit the page. To turn off comments for a page, edit it, scroll to the bottom, and toggle comments to Off:

If you turn off comments globally, you cannot turn it on for a specific workspace or page.

Mobile app notifications

Notifications for SharePoint activity can be turned off by an individual if they don't wish to receive them, or they can turned off globally by a SharePoint Administrator. To turn them off globally, go to the SharePoint Admin centre under Settings > Notifications and uncheck "Allow notifications":

Click the Learn more about SharePoint notifications link to get more information about which notifications are affected.

Site Storage limits

If your organisation is particularly concerned about storage governance you may want to set size limits on your workspaces. By default workspaces can expand their storage automatically as long as your M365 tenant has more available, but you can change this from the SharePoint Admin centre under Settings > Site storage limits. If you choose "manual" you will then need to go to the Active sites area to assign more storage if a workspace runs out of space.

Workspace (site) creation defaults

From the SharePoint Admin centre under Settings > Site creation you can set some default options for site creation. Firstly whether users can create sites, and whether the options are shown or hidden, but also which URL to create sites under (/sites or /teams) and the default time zone:

On an Atlas and Connex level, who can create workspaces is governed by the ConneX security groups, you can learn more about that here: Managing permissions for ConneX

Default Sharing settings

Sharing settings for Atlas workspaces are controlled from the SharePoint Admin centre, Atlas simply respects the existing settings for SharePoint workspaces.

To modify the default settings for your tenant, go to the SharePoint Admin centre, then expand Policies on the left menu and click Sharing:

The first setting controls how content can be shared from OneDrive and SharePoint:

There is no "best" option here as different organisations may have different requirements, but if you're starting from scratch it may be best to set this to Existing guests at the highest. This prevents users sharing content with accounts that were not "pre-approved" by being added to Entra ID.

There are many settings here which we will not cover in this article because they are documented by Microsoft, but as an IT Admin you should review all this carefully especially if you have not been using Microsoft 365 previously.

One example is whether sharing links are for View or Edit access by default - this can have quite an impact on how the feature is used: