How should I build this?

Question

Good Morning, I need some input from the SharePoint community. After several years of evangelizing, I am finally getting some divisions that would like to setup shop in SharePoint. I am trying to decide on Site Collection vs. Sub-Site. They would like to keep Management, Administration, and Supervisory data segregated with some overlap (see image).

My question to you is: should this be separate site collections, or should I use sub-sites and lock it down the further up the chain of command we get?

Thanks, Nick

Answer 1

I recently set this up for work and this is how we are managing everything:

• There's a Sub-site which works as the "Home" for everyone in the company.
• Each Department gets their own subsite within this home site and the links to these subsites is in the top navigation.
• Within each department, there are the following permission groups:
  • {department} Owner -- A designated "manager" to help me manage the permissions of each department
  • {department} Members -- Everyone that is a member of the department
  • A "All users" group (from the "Home" site level) which is all non-external users.
• Each department has 2 Document libraries:
  • Public {department} files -- Owners & Members have edit permissions; the "All Users" group has read access
  • Private {department} files -- Owners & Members have edit permissions; the "All Users" group does not have permissions for this library.

As we continue to develop and grow the SharePoint site, we intend to try and consistently use these permission groups to keep everything clean and easy to manage.