Describe and Manage SharePoint Administrative Roles

Exam: Microsoft 70-667 - TS: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Configuring

A number of people can be involved in managing SharePoint Server 2010. The advantage that SharePoint 2010 offers over the earlier version is that the roles in this version are more clearly defined. The article discusses the various administrative roles that arise in SharePoint Server 2010. The various administrative roles that arise in SharePoint 2010 at various levels are:

Windows Server/Server Farm Level

• Farm Administrators
• Windows Administrators

Services Level

• Service Application Administrators
• Service Application Feature Administrators

Site Level

• Site Collection Owners
• Site Collection Administrators
• Site Groups

Farm Administrator

The Farm Administrative group includes accounts that are authorized to use the Central Administration for performing administrative tasks. The setup user account, the farm account and the local administrators are members of this group by default. Members of this group are responsible for all the servers on the server farm. The members in this group are able to use Windows PowerShell with the objective of managing and creating configuration, performing command line operations like Stsadm.exe. They are also responsible for assigning administrators for managing service applications.

The members of the Farm Administrators group by default are not able to access individual sites. In case they want access to a site collection, they have to assign themselves the ownership of the site collection. This is done in the Central Administration.

Windows Administrators

The Windows Administrative group runs the Central Administration. The members of the group by default become member of the Farm Administrators. On the local server the members of this group are able to perform all farm administrative functions. They can also perform a number of other functions like - installation of new products, installation of new applications, deployment of web parts and new features and starting new services. Just as in the case of Farm Administrators, members of this group do not have access to site content and can have access to a site only after assigning themselves as the owner.

Like farm administrators, members of the Administrators group on the local server have no access to site content, by default, but can take ownership of a site collection and thereby give themselves access to content.

Service Application Administrators

The members of this group are designated by the farm administrators. These members are responsible for configuring settings in a SharePoint farm. They are not authorized to create service applications, to access any other service application or perform any functions at the farm level.

Service Application Feature Administrators

Feature administrators are members associated with a specific feature of a service application. These can be authorized to manage one or more than one features but not the complete service application.

Site Collection Administrators

These administrators are those members who have complete control over all the web sites comprising a site collection. They have access to all the content on the site even if specific permissions to the content are not there. They are responsible for configuring all the settings of the web sites included in a site collection.

There can be more than one site collection administrators. Both the primary and the secondary owners are site collection administrators. A site collection administrator is authorized to change the list of site collection administrators.

Site Collection Owners

Every site can have two owners - a primary and a secondary owner. Both the owners can be assigned using the Central Administration. The user interface of SharePoint 2010 will suggest that the site collection administrators are the actual owners. A site collection cannot be created without a primary owner. A primary owner can be added or changed while a secondary owner can be removed using the Central Administration.