In this article we will cover some of the Microsoft SharePoint data and configuration that cannot be changed or deleted without causing problems with your Atlas installation.
Some items may be specific to a particular version of Atlas but to be safe, none of the things listed here should be removed in any version of the software.
Please note that only Administrators will have sufficient permissions to configure or delete most of the items listed in this article - Contributors and Visitors will not have any option to delete them. The exception to this would be the Term Store, where you may have granted non-administrators rights to manage specific Term Sets relevant to their work.
In this article:
Atlas Configuration site collection
In Atlas deployments there is always an "Atlas Configuration" site collection which is not promoted to users but can be used by administrators to configure some Atlas features across all workspaces. This site collection and the content within should never be deleted and should only be managed by trained administrators with a good understanding of the system.
Additionally, all Atlas users need Read access to this workspace to ensure they can see the Launchpad, Footer, Feedback button and other assets such as logos, standard imagery and icons, so you should not remove these Read permissions.
Term Store
Metadata is crucial to the functionality of Atlas, so it is important to know what you can and cannot safely change in the Term Store. In general, you cannot change or delete Term Sets in any way without breaking Atlas - only the terms within them, and even then we would usually recommend deprecating terms rather than deleting them in case they have already been tagged against content.
Terms can be added to Term Sets without causing any problems and the new values will simply become available wherever those Term Sets are used.
New Term Sets can be created but note that they will not be utilised by Atlas at all, even if you map the new term sets to new columns. To clarify what we mean here, any custom columns created for mapping custom Term Sets will not:
- Be added to Atlas content types
- Be shown in Listing pages or In Focus Refiners, or
- Be shown in Add It.
If you choose to configure any of the above yourself, it is unlikely that Atlas updates will remove any of these customisations, but it is not guaranteed. Therefore you should consider documenting such changes in case they need to be repeated.
Custom Term Sets and their terms will never be deleted during any Atlas update, but any columns they are mapped to could be affected.
Site Contents
Contents
Site Contents allows the user to see all the content in the current workspace at the List or Library level, and Atlas utilises these Lists and Libraries to store the content users create. You should never delete any containers from the Site contents in any Atlas workspace unless they were added after deployment and are not Atlas-related.
Lists and Libraries required for SharePoint and/or Atlas functionality include but are not limited to:
- Documents
- Events
- External Insights
- FAQs
- Form Templates
- Mandatory Read Tasks
- Site Assets
- Site Pages
- Be careful when managing Pages that you do not delete any Atlas-provided pages such as Listing pages and Landing pages. Do not delete the default.aspx page.
- Spotlights
- Style Library
- Useful Links.
If any of the above is ever deleted in error it should be recovered from the Recycle bin as soon as possible to avoid errors and missing content.
Subsites
Atlas does not support subsites, so please do not create subsites in your Atlas workspaces as they will not work as expected. You should always create Atlas workspaces using ConneX, which will create Site Collections without support for subsites.
Site Settings
There are a huge number of configuration options available to administrators via the Site Settings menu, but as before there are a number of things which should not be changed or deleted. Note that Editors will see a reduced set of options here, and Read users will have only a couple of options.
Users and permissions
- People and Groups - you should not remove or delete groups deployed as part of Atlas - for example the <Workspace> Visitors, <Workspace> Members and <Workspace> Owners groups. You can add groups but there should be a good reason to add them rather than just populating the default groups.
- Site permissions - we recommend not changing anything in the site permissions apart from adding Active Directory groups into the SharePoint groups mentioned just above to provide site access for users and editors. It is not recommended to change the permissions for these groups.
Web Designer Galleries
- Site columns - you should not edit or delete Microsoft or Atlas columns. You can add custom columns for your organisation but these should be added under a new Group e.g. <Client Name> Columns.
- Site content types - you should not edit or delete Microsoft or Atlas content types. You can add custom content types for your organisation but these should be added under a new Group e.g. <Client Name> Content Types.
- For all other options in this section we recommend not adding, changing or removing anything unless instructed to do so by support.
Site Administration
In general there are few reasons to use the options in this section, but we'll give a quick overview:
- Regional settings / Language settings - these should not be changed after a workspace has been created because the language option chosen in Atlas Connect when creating the site will determine the SharePoint region and language settings but also static labels for Atlas web parts which cannot be affected by changing this language setting.
- User alerts - if users have alerts set up you can see and administer them here. This has no effect on Atlas.
- Site libraries and lists / Sites and workspaces - we don't recommend using these menus at all as they are essentially very old versions of the Site contents, you should just use Site contents instead.
- Workflow settings - only relevant to SharePoint 2013 workflows, which should not be used as they will soon be deprecated. If you need workflow you should look into Power Automate.
- Term store management - shortcut to the term store. Restrictions for the term store are discussed earlier on this page. See Term Store
Site Collection Administration
There are a number of very specific options in this section that may be useful, but also plenty which should be avoided. If you are unsure please speak to our support team. Below we'll discuss the most relevant ones:
- Recycle bin - this is where you can go to restore any deleted content that was deleted from the user level recycle bin. So if a user fully deletes something that needs to be recovered, you can find and restore it here for up to 90 days before it is unrecoverable.
- Search-related options - all options here starting with "Search" should generally be avoided unless you have discussed a specific configuration change with our support team.
- Site collection features - generally these features should not be changed unless instructed by our support team.
- HTML Field Security - by default when adding Embed code to a page users are limited to a set of "trusted" URLs provided by Microsoft such as Youtube, Vimeo and various Microsoft services. If users try to add Embed code from sources outside this list they will get an error, so when that happens you can go here to add the site they need to the list.
Search and Microsoft Search
All options under Search should be avoided unless you have a specific requirement and have discussed it with our support team. The Microsoft Search options can be configured, but please note that this only applies to the Microsoft Search pages, not the recommended Atlas Search pages.
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