Do you need to add users to access a SharePoint site?

Effective collaboration is at the heart of every successful organization. The SharePoint platform from Microsoft is your gateway to achieving this collaborative excellence.

If you’ve ever wondered how to add individuals to your SharePoint site seamlessly, you’re in the right place.

This well-crafted resource will demystify extending access, ensuring that your SharePoint environment becomes the thriving hub for teamwork and productivity you envision.

But here’s the catch: you won’t just limit yourself to just one way. You’ll explore various methods for adding users to your SharePoint site, each with unique advantages.

So, get ready to embark on a trip that will enable you to fully utilize SharePoint’s user management capabilities.

How to Add User to SharePoint Site

You can add users to your SharePoint site using various options. This section will explore these different methods.

Adding Users to an Office 365 Group Site

By default, the permissions for SharePoint Online sites associated with Office 365 groups are initially set to align with the associated Office 365 group.

For example, the Sample Team Site group is added to members with edit permissions in the SharePoint site. This means adding users to this Office 365 group will automatically gain permission to access the respective SharePoint site.

Follow these steps to add users to an Office 365 Group site by adding them to the group.

1. Login to your SharePoint online site.
2. Click on members in the top right corner.

3. Click on Add members in the Group membership panel that opens.

4. Enter the Username of the user you want to add in the Add members panel.
5. Press the Save button.

📝 Note: Some users have multiple accounts and may appear multiple times when you enter their username, if this happens, try, and use the email address instead to confirm you’re adding the correct account.

• From the user selected, click on the little drop-down arrow to set the permission for the user (Member or Owner).

When you assign a Member, the user has access to the group’s resources and content, but with limited administrative privileges.

On the other hand, Owner status grants a user full control and administrative privileges within the Office 365 group.

It’s essential to assign these roles thoughtfully based on the responsibilities and requirements of the individuals within the group.

Typically, you would designate more people as Members for collaboration and content access and limit the number of Owners to those who need administrative control over the group’s settings and resources.

Adding a user to the SharePoint Site Without adding them to Office 365 Group

Users who are added to an Office 365 group have access to all the group’s subordinate objects, including Email, Teams, Planner, etc. However, you may want to grant access only to the SharePoint site. To do so follow these steps:

1. Click on the Settings gear at the top of your screen.
2. Click on the Site permissions link.

3. Click on the Add members button on the Permissions panel.
4. Choose the Share site only option.

After clicking on Share site only, a Share site panel pops up,

5. Enter the Username, and on the little drop-down arrow, pick the permission level such as Edit.
6. Select the Send Email box depending on your requirement
7. Finally, click on the Add button to add the user to the site.

The user is now a member of the SharePoint site!

Adding User to SharePoint Using PowerShell

This is another option used in adding users to your SharePoint site. This is useful and helpful if you need to automate the process or if you just want to save yourself some time by not adding the users manually.

📝 Note: You need to have SharePoint Online Management Shell installed on your computer.

Use the Add-SPOUser cmdlet from the SharePoint Online administration shell to add a specific user to the SharePoint Online site collection group using PowerShell.

Follow the steps to add users to a SharePoint group via PowerShell:

$Credential = Get-credential

1. Connect with the SharePoint Online Admin Center by entering your credentials.

After typing this on the shell, press Enter on your keyboard. This prompts for a username and password. These are the Administrator credentials.

Connect-SPOService -url https://Crescent-admin.sharepoint.com -Credential $Credential

2. Connect to the SharePoint Online service by running this Windows PowerShell cmdlet. Make sure you change the URL parameter to your SharePoint Admin Centre URL.

Add-SPOUser -Site "https://Crescent.sharepoint.com/sites/Sales" -Group "Sales Members" -LoginName salaudeen@Crescent.com

3. Once the connection is established successfully, you can now add the group.

Replace https://examples.sharepoint.com/sites/Sales and Sales Members with the site link and group to which you want to add the user.

The SharePoint Online Management will look like this.

This PowerShell code eventually adds the given user salaudeen@Crescent.com to the group in SharePoint Online.

The primary reason for utilizing this method is for automation and workload reduction. You can add multiple users to a SharePoint Online group efficiently using PowerShell.

You can add as many users as you need and have them swiftly included in the group with just a few lines of code, saving you time. Here’s how you can import a CSV file into SharePoint Online to add numerous members to groups.

1. Create a CSV file and fill it in according to your requirements. The file should contain three unique column names (SiteURL, GroupName, UserAccount). Save the CSV file with your preferred name such as UserToAdd.csv.

#Connection paramaters
$AdminURL = "https://yourdomain.sharepoint.com"
$AdminName = "SPAdmin@example.com"
$CSVFile="C:\UsersToAdd.csv"
 
#User Names Password to connect
$Password = Read-host -assecurestring "Enter Password for $AdminName"
$Credential = new-object -typename System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -argumentlist $AdminName, $Password
 
#Connect to SharePoint Online
Connect-SPOService -url $AdminURL -credential $Credential
 
#add multiple users to sharepoint online group powershell - Import Users from CSV
Import-Csv $CSVFile | ForEach-Object { Add-SPOUser -Site $_.SiteURL -Group $_.GroupName -LoginName $_.UserAccount}

2. Use this PowerShell script to read from the CSV and import bulk users to the SharePoint Group.

Make sure you replace https://yourdomain.sharepoint.com and SPAdmin@example.com with your respective SharePoint URL and admin username.

Adding Users to Office 365 Group Using PowerShell

As stated earlier, the main reason for using PowerShell is for automation and reduction of time spent in adding multiple users.

📝 Note: You need to have SharePoint Online Management Shell installed on your computer.

To add a member to an Office 365 Group, you’ll need the group’s ID and the email address of the person you want to add to the group.

For instance, let’s add John@example.com to the Account@example.com Office 365 group using the Exchange Online Management PowerShell cmdlet  Add-UnifiedGroupLinks.

#Get Credentials to connect
$Credential = Get-Credential
  
#Connect to Exchange Online
Connect-ExchangeOnline -Credential $Credential -ShowBanner:$False
 
#PowerShell to add a user to office 365 group
Add-UnifiedGroupLinks -Identity "Accounts@example.com" -LinkType "Members" -Links "john@example.com"
 
#Disconnect Exchange Online
Disconnect-ExchangeOnline -Confirm:$False

This adds john@example.com to the Office 365 group named Accounts.

To achieve the goal of using PowerShell, which is to add multiple users, you can add multiple users and separate each user by a comma character.

Add-UnifiedGroupLinks -Identity "Accounts@example.com" -LinkType "Members" -Links "john@example.com","peter@example.com"

This shell command will add both john@example.com, and peter@example.com to the Accounts group.

In your exploration of adding users to a SharePoint site, you’ll discover distinct methods that provide flexibility and convenience. These methods empower you to select the most suitable approach for your SharePoint user management needs.

How to Create a Group in SharePoint

Groups are a crucial component of managing permissions and regulating access to site resources in SharePoint. You may manage a group of users and give them the proper access levels and permissions for site resources by forming a group.

Instead of granting access directly, it’s recommended to give permissions to groups and include users in those groups. If the default groups don’t meet your needs, you can create new ones. To create a new SharePoint group, follow these steps:

1. Login to the site where you want to create the group.
2. On the home page, click on the Settings gear at the top of the page and choose Site Settings from the drop-down menu.
3. Now, a Settings panel pops up, click on the Site permissions link.
4. Click on the Advanced Permissions settings options.

5. Next, click on the Create Group icon from the ribbon to create your desired group.

6. Give your group a desired name and a brief description on the Create Group page.

7. Optionally, you can designate a group owner or add another group owner. Editing group membership will be available to the owner. Decide who can edit group members and who can view the membership of the group.
8. In the Membership Requests section, select the settings that you want requests to join or leave the group. You can specify the email address to which requests should be sent.
9. In the Give Group Permissions to this Site section, choose a permission level for this group.
10. Click on the Create button. The permission levels selected would be applied to the entire site.

You can set the group’s permissions by clicking on the group name and then choosing Settings from the ribbon at the top of the page. From here, you can manage the group’s membership, permissions, and settings.

How to Create Group in SharePoint Using PowerShell

If you’re okay with writing a few lines of PowerShell codes to automate the entire process, this is the perfect method for you. Here is a script to create a new SharePoint group using PowerShell.

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
 
#Custom Function to Create new SharePoint Group
function Create-SPGroup
{ 
    param ($SiteURL, $GroupName, $PermissionLevel, $GroupDescription) 
 
    try
    {
        #Get the Web
        $web = Get-SPWeb -Identity $SiteURL
         
        if($web -ne $null)
        {
            #Check if Group Exists already
            if ($web.SiteGroups[$GroupName] -ne $null) 
            { 
                write-Host "Group $GroupName exists Already!" -ForegroundColor Red
            } 
            else 
            { 
                #Create SharePoint Group
                $Web.SiteGroups.Add($GroupName, $web.Site.Owner, $web.Site.Owner, $GroupDescription) 
                #Get the newly created group and assign permission to it
                $Group = $web.SiteGroups[$groupName] 
                $roleAssignment = new-object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPRoleAssignment($group) 
                $roleDefinition = $web.Site.RootWeb.RoleDefinitions[$permissionLevel] 
                $roleAssignment.RoleDefinitionBindings.Add($roleDefinition) 
                $web.RoleAssignments.Add($roleAssignment) 
                $web.Update() 
 
                write-Host "Group: $GroupName created successfully!" -ForegroundColor Green
            } 
  
            $web.Dispose()
        }
    }
    catch [System.Exception]
    {
        write-host $_.Exception.ToString() -ForegroundColor Red
    }
}
 
#Call the function to create Sharepoint group
Create-SPGroup "https://test.example.com" "<Group Name>"  "Edit" "Group for <Group Name>"

Replace https://test.howtoexcel with that of your organization’s SharePoint Site and <Group Name> with the name of the group you want to create.

To add users to created groups on SharePoint, you can use any of the above methods explained above depending on your need.

How to Create a Teams on SharePoint

To build your new Team site, you must use the SharePoint admin centre, which is accessible via the Microsoft 365 Admin Center.

Either a Global Administrator or a SharePoint Administrator position is required. Follow these steps to create a Team on SharePoint.

1. Go to the Microsoft 365 admin center.
2. Navigate to Admin centers and click on the SharePoint option. You may need to click on Show All before you see the SharePoint admin center in the menu.

This will take you to the SharePoint admin center.

3. Click on Active sites and the list of sites that are already present within your Microsoft Office 365 tenant will be displayed.

4. To create your new Team site, click on Create. This will give you other options (Team site, Communication site, and other Options).

The Team site is typically used to share documents within the team. This is the option to select when establishing a new SharePoint online site. The communication site is designed to publish content to your organization to keep them informed.

5. Select the Team site option from the Create a site page.  Choose the option for choosing the design for your site.

6. Now, you can set it up as shown in the image. Here the new Team site is Operation. Assign a Group Owner as well.

7. You can set additional options in advanced settings which include Sensitivity, Time zone, and the Site description.
8. Click on the Next button.
9. You may add the Owner if you want.
10. Now you are done with all the fields, click the Finish button to create your new Team site.

This takes you back to the Active sites list in the SharePoint Admin center, and if we enter the name of our newly created site and press enter, we’ll see our site displayed as follows.

Click on the newly created site under the Site address section and click on the link. Now you have the new Team site.

It is important to double-check permissions in order not to give the wrong permissions to users that are not supposed to have the permissions. To create groups and users on your newly created Team site refer to the various methods described above.

Conclusions

This comprehensive guide has shed light on diverse approaches for managing users in SharePoint, providing you with a wealth of options to meet your specific requirements for adding users to SharePoint.

From adding users individually to creating SharePoint groups and facilitating seamless integration with Teams, you’ve gained a versatile toolkit for tailoring your SharePoint environment.

With these varied methods at your disposal, you’re well-equipped to build a dynamic digital workspace that perfectly aligns with your collaboration needs and supports your team’s productivity and success.