Understanding permission levels

Permissions enable users to access resources that they need. For example, permissions enable users to do something such as open an item in a library or create a subsite. Often, single permissions are grouped into a collection of permissions known as a “permissions level”. For example, if you want to give someone permission to read items on your site, you must also give them permission to open the page that contains the item. The Read permission level includes all the single permissions that a user has to have read items.

To save time, SharePoint Online pre-defines different combinations of permissions. These pre-defined permission levels are known as the “default permission levels”.

This article describes the default permission levels that are included with SharePoint Online for Enterprises and SharePoint Online for Professionals.

• Overview
• Default Permission Levels
• Permission levels and permission inheritance
• Site, list, and personal permissions and permission levels
• Site permissions and permission levels
• List permissions and permission levels
• Personal permissions and permission levels
• Permissions and dependencies
• Site permissions and dependent permissions
• List permissions and dependent permissions
• Personal permissions and dependent permissions

Overview

A permission level is a combination of SharePoint permissions. Permission levels specify which permissions users have for a site or list, and therefore whether people can view, change, or manage a site. By default, SharePoint pre-defines some permission levels.

Default Permission Levels

The following table describes the default permission levels in SharePoint Online.

Security   Office 365 plans create a security group called “Everyone except external users” that contains every person you add into the Office 365 directory (except people who you add explicitly as External Users). This security group added to the Members group automatically, so that users in Office 365 can access and edit the SharePoint Online site. In addition, Office 365 plans create a security group called “Company Administrators”, which contains Office 365 Admins (such as Global and Billing Admins). This security group is added to the Site Collection Administrators group.

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Permission levels and SharePoint groups

To help make managing site access more efficient, permission levels work together with SharePoint groups. A SharePoint group is a set of users who all have the same permission level. That is, all users in a SharePoint group have the same collection of permissions.

By default, each kind of SharePoint site includes certain SharePoint groups. For example, a Team Site automatically includes the Owners, Members, and Visitors group. A Publishing Portal site includes those groups and several more, such as Approvers, Designers, Hierarchy Managers, and so on. When you create a site, SharePoint automatically creates a pre-defined set of SharePoint groups for that site. In addition, a SharePoint admin can define custom groups and permission levels.

To learn more about SharePoint groups, see Understanding SharePoint groups.

The SharePoint groups and permission levels that are included by default in your site may differ, depending on:

• The template that you choose for the site
• Whether the site is an internal site for SharePoint Online for Enterprise users or a public website
• Whether a SharePoint admin created a unique permissions set on the site that has a specific purpose, such as Search

The following table describes the default permission levels and associated permissions for three standard groups: Visitors, Members, and Owners.

Permission levels and permission inheritance

By default, permissions are inherited in SharePoint—that is, permissions set at the site collection level are copied to every site, list, and item in the site collection. This means that the permission levels that you set when you first create SharePoint groups can affect access for every site, list, library, folder, and item in the site.

If the default settings are what you want for your organization, you can customize how you assign permissions by uniquely securing sites, lists, folders, and items in SharePoint. For more information, see What is uniquely secured content?

Site, list, and personal permissions and permission levels

SharePoint permissions apply to three categories of content: list permissions, site permissions, and personal permissions.

The following sections contain tables that describe each of these categories. The tables list the SharePoint permissions and the permission levels that use these permissions.

• Site permissions and permission levels
• List permissions and permission levels
• Personal permissions and permission levels

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Site permissions and permission levels

Site permissions apply generally across a SharePoint site. The following table describes the permissions that apply to sites, and show the permission levels that use them.

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List permissions and permission levels

List permissions apply to content in lists and libraries. The following table describes the permissions that apply to lists and libraries, and show the permission levels that use them.

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Personal permissions and permission levels

Personal permissions apply to content that belongs to a single user. The following table describes the permissions that apply to personal views and web parts, and show the permission levels that use them.

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Permissions and dependencies

SharePoint permissions can depend on other SharePoint permissions. For example, you must be able to open an item to view it. In this way, View Items permission depends on Open permission.

When you select a SharePoint permission that depends on another, SharePoint automatically selects the associated permission. Similarly, when you clear SharePoint permission, SharePoint automatically clears any SharePoint permission that depends on it. For example, when you clear View Items, SharePoint automatically clears Manage Lists (you can't manage a list if you can't view an item).

 Tip    The only SharePoint permission without a dependency is Open. All other SharePoint permissions depend on it. To test a custom permission level, you can just clear “Open”. This automatically clears all other permissions.

The following sections contain tables that describe SharePoint permissions for each permission category. For each permission, the table shows the dependent permissions.

• Site permissions and dependent permissions
• List permissions and dependent permissions
• Personal permissions and dependent permissions

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Site permissions and dependent permissions

The following table describes the permissions that apply to sites, and show the permissions that depend on them.

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List permissions and dependent permissions

The following table describes the permissions that apply to lists and libraries, and show the permissions that depend on them.

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Personal permissions and dependent permissions

The following table describes the permissions that apply to personal views and web parts, and show the permissions that depend on them.

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