SharePoint and Teams cleanup
Make shared files easier to find, with an owner for every area.
Reorganize the agreed SharePoint sites and Teams, correct permissions and name their owners. Set rules for creating and retiring workspaces, then test the structure with users.
- What you get
- The agreed SharePoint and Teams structure, organized content, access rules and instructions for its owners.
- How it starts
- A free scope call. The price is fixed in writing before anyone is given access.
- When it is done
- In-scope content and user access are checked against the approved structure; pilot defects are closed before handover.
Illustrative sample · constructed example
Test whether a person can find the right document.
Constructed workspace · project documents
Selected check
Can the pilot user find the approved drawing without asking its author?
Constructed workspace · project documents
| Record | Evidence or responsibility | Sample review |
|---|---|---|
| Business owner | Choose the authoritative record and approve the structure. | Current version unclear |
| Library structure | Use project, document type and status to locate it. | Two competing libraries |
| Pilot user | Find the approved drawing without asking its author. | Findability failure |
| Access and retention | Check membership, links and retention decisions separately. | Separate checks required |
A folder count is not an acceptance test. The user’s actual document task is.
- Evidence
- Two libraries contain similarly named files with no agreed current version.
- Decision
- Agree structure before moving content
- Next action
- Owner identifies the authoritative record, metadata and access rules.
Illustrative sample. Fewer folders alone do not demonstrate usefulness; content and retention changes require approval.
Open the complete illustrative document to inspect its fields and print a copy.
Open the sample documentWhy now
The work starts here.
There are more Teams than people, half of them abandoned, and nobody can find the final version of anything.
Scope at a glance
- A named site and Team list, agreed up front
- Tested with real users before sign-off
- Workflow automation quoted separately
If nobody acts
What waiting costs
Work gets redone when somebody starts from the copy they could find. The correction lands on whoever spots the difference later.
Where anyone with a license can create a Team, each new one brings its own site and its own permissions. A Team created to escape the current mess becomes one more place that has to be sorted out later.
Guest accounts and company-wide sharing links stay live until somebody removes them by hand. With no owner named for an area, it is nobody’s job to look.
Without an agreed retention position and a reversible archive window, an in-house tidy-up puts Teams away with no way to check first. A later finance or legal request may need what was in them.
Check your own environment
Sounds like you?
- People email documents to each other rather than send a link, because links are unreliable
- There are more Teams than people, and half have not been touched in a year
- Two versions of the same document exist and nobody can say which is current
- Nobody owns any given area, so no one feels able to archive anything
Save yourself the call
Not for you if
- There is already a structure people follow and each area has a named owner
- The files are not in Microsoft 365 yet, which is a move before it is a cleanup
- One team is affected and one person inside the business can tidy it in an afternoon
The work
What is different when we hand over
Every site and Team in the agreed scope is inventoried and carries a keep, merge or archive decision with a named owner.
The target structure is built: the categories, naming and metadata that replace a folder tree nobody can navigate.
Content is moved into the new structure for the areas in scope, and the merged or archived Teams are actioned rather than recommended.
Permissions are corrected to match who should actually have access, including the guest and company-wide sharing that accumulated.
Lifecycle rules for creation, naming, expiry and review are applied, so the clutter does not rebuild the week after handover.
Real users run their real work through the new structure, and what fails in that test is fixed before sign-off.
Acceptance
Checks before handover
Every Team and site in scope carries an actioned keep, merge or archive decision
The target structure is built and the in-scope content sits inside it
Permissions match the agreed access model, verified from real accounts
Lifecycle and naming rules are applied and documented
Each area has a named content owner who has accepted it
Real users have run their own work through the structure and the defects found are closed
A fair question
Can we not just ask everyone to tidy up their own areas?
That has usually been tried once already. It stalls in the same place every time: tidying means deciding what to archive and who owns what afterwards, and no one feels entitled to make that call about someone else’s work. This engagement makes those decisions with a named owner behind each one, then builds the structure so the clutter has somewhere to not come back to.
Price and calendar
Scope, price and project calendar
Engagement price
Price fixed after a short scope call.
The price is agreed in writing before any work starts and before anyone is given access. The call itself costs nothing. What moves the number:
What determines the scope
- Number of SharePoint sites and Teams in scope
- Volume of content to be restructured or moved
- Number of distinct permission groups and guest relationships to unwind
- Whether content migration is included or handled separately
- Whether the tenant has retention or compliance requirements affecting archival
Delivery calendar
The proposal names the start date, the change windows and the completion date before anything is agreed.
How engagements workScope & responsibilities
What is and is not included
The exclusions, what we need from you, how change is staged and reversed, and what is handed over at the end.
Exclusions
- Workflow or approval automation: that is One Workflow Automation Build
- Migration from a third-party platform, which is a Safe Migration engagement
- A full Purview classification or records-management programme
- Help desk and end-user support
- Ongoing content governance after handover
What we need from you
- Approve the site and Team list before any archival
- Nominate a content owner for each area
- Provide the users who will run the real-work test
- Own end-user communications and training
- Confirm retention and compliance requirements before anything is archived
Change and rollback method
- Nothing is deleted. Archival is reversible for an agreed retention window, and the window is stated before the first Team is touched.
- Permission changes run in batches verified from a real account in the affected group, so a correction that locks out a working team is caught the same day.
What you keep at handover
- A System guide: the configuration as delivered, the checks that were run and the unresolved list
- The Teams and sites register, with the decision made on each
- The target structure: categories, naming, and the metadata that replaces the folder tree
- The permission map across the sites and Teams in scope, before and after
- The naming and lifecycle rules as applied
- The named content owners, and their acceptance
Access, acceptance and support arrangements
How you know the work is good
Judge it by what you can inspect.
The method is written down, the sample records open and the demo can be broken on purpose. Read it the way your technical owner would.
- 01How a project runs
A first conversation, free. An agreed scope with a named technical lead in the proposal. The price fixed in writing before we are given access. Checks before handover.
How we work- 02What is checked
Release checks, access test matrices and ownership maps. Constructed inspection records on the service pages show the standard before you buy.
See sample deliverables- 03What you keep
A System guide: what was agreed, what changed, what was tested and what remains open. With it, the scripts and check results behind the work.
Next step
Start with a free scope call.
Tell us what needs to change, what must keep working and the deadline. The call is free, and the price is fixed in writing before anyone is given access.
Price the SharePoint cleanupOr write to [email protected]