Purpose: 
The purpose of this document is to provide the Terms of Use for Office 365 SharePoint (herein referred to as "SharePoint").  This document outlines the roles and responsibilities, policies and processes that guide, direct, and govern the management and operation of SharePoint as a broadly-scoped document management and collaboration platform for the University of Guelph.  

SharePoint is a cloud-based content management and collaboration service managed by Microsoft that is constantly changing. As such, this is a "living" document that will be reviewed and/or updated monthly by CCS.  All users are responsible for ensuring they are up-to-date with the Terms of Use. Users will be made aware when major changes to the Terms of Use have been made.

Scope:
The scope of this document covers all aspects and content within SharePoint Online Site Collection.  

University Policies:

All users are required to read and adhere to the following University policies and guidelines: 

• Acceptable Use Policy [1] 
• Data Storage [2] 
• University’s Privacy Policies [3]
• Major Security Incident [4]  
• Social Media Guidelines [5] 

Appropriate Use:

• Public-Facing Websites are not permitted. SharePoint is currently for authenticated users only. The University offers a Drupal service, which is the preferred platform for public websites.
• SharePoint must not, under any circumstances, be used for e-commerce related activities.
• SharePoint must not, under any circumstances, be used as a learning/course management system as there are campus services in place to fulfill this role.
• SharePoint must not be used to create alternative business process solutions that are the jurisdiction of another department or that are intended to replace or circumvent an enterprise level solutions (e.g. HR, Student Information System, Financial systems) without the explicit permission and sponsorship of the service and/or data owner.

All users are required to read and adhere to Microsoft's Terms of Use: 

• Microsoft Licensing Terms and Documentation [6]
• Microsoft Trademarks [7]  

While SharePoint can be used by any University member, requests for SharePoint site collections can only be made by faculty and staff with express agreement from the Department/Unit head.  Undergraduate and graduate students are not eligible to request site collections, sites or be granted admin privileges, however they may have Site Member or Site Visitor access. If admin access is required by a student, it must require approval by Department/Unit head.  If a faculty or staff member is requesting a student have admin privileges, they must put in a request via the CCS Help Centre [8]. Student organizations may request sites provided they have received approval from the Central Students Association (CSA). 

For all intents and purposes in this document:

• CCS refers to the service owner and administrator of SharePoint.  CCS staff are subject to the same Terms of Use.
• Site Owner refers to users who have been granted full access to a site collection.
• Site Member refers to users who have been granted read-write access to a site collection.
• Site Visitor refers to users who have been granted read-only access to a site collection.

CCS is responsible for: 

• Configuring and securing the system. 
• Developing and maintaining any processes associated with the maintenance, monitoring, and security of the system.
• Provisioning of site collections. 
• Developing, updating and publishing the governance for SharePoint, which includes this Terms of Use document. 
• Developing best practices for using SharePoint.
• Reviewing and installing requests for third-party apps. 

 CCS is NOT responsible for: 

• Providing, delivering or developing training and/or training material. 
• Supporting, designing, developing and maintaining solutions within SharePoint. 
• Managing, creating, editing, deleting, monitoring or maintaining content within SharePoint. 
• Managing and delegating end user permissions settings within SharePoint. 

Site Owners

Site owners are ultimately responsible for the content on the site and its lifecycle management.  Responsibilities of the site owner include:

• Reading, understanding and adhering to the Terms of Use (this document), which includes ensuring their site follows the data storage guideline [2] and Acceptable Use Policy [1]. 
• Configuring sites to meet user requirements.
• Managing permissions for their site collection and site(s).
• Troubleshooting any end-user issues with their site(s).
• Ensuring that users of the sites are adhering to the Terms of Use (this document), and coordinating with Site Members to address instances of non-compliance.
• Ensure that the site content is properly maintained over time and properly archived when the site has reached the end of its useful life.
• Ensure that the site always has an active Site Owner and a backup (if the current owner is going to leave, they must ensure that a new site owner has been appointed).

Site Members

Site Members have control over content, as they may have the ability to add, edit and delete.  Responsibilities of the Site Member include:

• Reading, understanding and agreeing to the Terms of Use (this document), which includes ensuring the content they post follows the data storage guideline [2] and Acceptable Use Policy [1].

Site Visitors

Site Visitors have read-only access to content.  Responsibilities of the Site Visitor include:

• Reading, understanding and agreeing to the Terms of Use (this document).

Site Removal
To ensure security and good governance, site owners must regularly review their SharePoint sites to ensure: adherence with U of G Data Classification Guidelines; there are no stale or inactive data; and that user access is still relevant.  Data management and review is an important concept from storage, security and legal perspectives.  If data is never purged, it accumulates, which can be costly in terms of storage, but may also have potential legal ramifications.  

While the University does not have a campus-wide data retention policy, each Site Owner must determine how long to keep the site data, and where applicable, when to delete the SharePoint site and/or data.  This helps to reduce redundant, outdated and trivial (ROT) content. 

SharePoint will be removed under the following scenarios: 

1. By request from the corresponding department head 
2. Violation of the Terms of Use - CCS reserves the right to block, restrict or remove any sites found in violation.
3. After 12 months of inactivity, which is defined by the content not being accessed (read or modified) for 12 months* 

 *Before a site is deleted due to inactivity, the following process will occur: 

1. After 12 months of inactivity, the Site owner(s) will be sent an initial email detailing this policy along with a warning that the Site will be automatically removed in three months. A specific removal date will be indicated in the email.  Site owners can keep the Site by responding to the email. 
2. If no response is received to the first email, one month later, a second email warning will be sent indicating the Site will be removed in two months on the date indicated in the first email. 
3. One month later, a final email warning will be sent indicating the Site will be removed in one month on the date indicated in the first email. 

The policies around SharePoint backups, restores and rollbacks are defined by Microsoft’s service level agreement, to which no exceptions or accommodations can be made. Users are encouraged to read Microsoft’s Service Level Agreement on a regular basis to ensure that they are up-to-date on any changes. 

At the time of writing, anything deleted in SharePoint (files, folders, libraries, lists, and complete sites) will go into the “first stage recycle bin”. Each user will have the ability to restore from recycle bin where deleted items will be kept for a maximum of 93 days before being permanently deleted.  If a user empties the “first stage recycle bin” the deleted items will be moved to the “second stage recycle bin”, which only the site collection administrator or the SharePoint administrator has the ability to empty. Whether in first or second stage, anything deleted will only be kept for 93 days in total from date of deletion.  There are no exceptions to this.  

Users can restore deleted items from the first stage recycle bin. Restores from the second stage recycle bin will need to be performed by either the site collection administrator or the SharePoint administrator.

If backups are required of previous versions of documents that have NOT been deleted, users can roll the document back to a previous version if versioning is enabled on a document library.