Sharepoint - What are the best practices for structuring and managing rights for cross-team folders?

Woods Talia 0 Reputation points
2026-08-25T01:47:38.12+00:00

Hello

As part of the migration of our data to Microsoft 365, we defined a 365 group structure, with each group corresponding to a team in our structure. Some teams work daily with other employees from other teams on various subjects, not projects but daily activity.

Example: the HR group will have a Recruitment folder in its document library. This Recruitment folder is a subfolder of a parent Personnel Management folder. This recruitment file must be available for modification to employees in the Management group. So I can just share it with a link that I'll share with the members of the Executive Group. Is this the best practice?

I'm afraid I'll find myself with a lot of shared subfolders in a lot of groups and no visibility on data sharing.

Another option would be to create another document library for the HR group where they would have all the folders they share with the other teams, so that they have better visibility of all the shared folders. But it breaks the business logic. The Recruitment folder would be in this new library and would not be in the 1st library under the Personnel Management folder.

What do you think? Thank you in advance.

Microsoft 365 and Office | SharePoint | For business | Other
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  1. Dora-T 635 Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2026-08-25T02:41:40.5333333+00:00

    Hi Woods Talia

    Based on my research, sharing a specific folder with another team can be a reasonable option when only a small number of folders require different access. In your example, you can grant the Management group the required permissions on the Recruitment folder while keeping it within the HR library.

    However, I would avoid having too many uniquely permissioned folders, as this can make access difficult to track, audit, and maintain over time.

    As a general approach:

    -Use groups rather than individual users when granting access.

    -Prefer site or library-level permissions where practical.

    -Use folder-level permissions for specific exceptions.

    -If cross-team sharing becomes frequent across many folders, consider a dedicated document library or collaboration site for better visibility and governance.

    For more information about managing permissions and permission inheritance in SharePoint, you may also find this Microsoft Support article helpful: Customize permissions for a SharePoint list or library

    So, in your current example, sharing the Recruitment folder with the Management group can be a reasonable approach. If many folders across different teams require similar cross-team access, a dedicated document library or collaboration site may provide better visibility and make permissions easier to manage.

    I hope this helps.

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  2. AI answer

    2026-08-25T01:48:01.56+00:00

    For this scenario, the better practice is to organize around permission inheritance and minimize unique permissions on subfolders.

    Key guidance:

    1. Prefer separate sites or libraries for content with different security needs
    • For sensitive or differently shared content, create a site or library specifically for that content rather than scattering unique permissions across many folders.
    • This gives better visibility and governance than sharing many subfolders individually.
    1. Avoid relying on many shared subfolders and ad hoc links
    • Sharing individual folders or files creates additional permission scopes.
    • If this is done at large scale, it can become hard to manage and can lead to performance and operational issues as unique ACLs accumulate.
    • A shared link is not the best long-term governance model for recurring cross-team collaboration.
    1. Use folder-level unique permissions only when the folder truly needs different access
    • If the Recruitment folder must be editable by both HR and Management while the parent Personnel Management folder should not be, breaking inheritance on that folder is supported.
    • In that case, assign permissions directly to the appropriate users or groups on the folder, rather than broadly sharing the parent.
    1. Group content by common access pattern
    • If several HR folders are routinely shared with the same other team, placing those folders in a dedicated library can be a good governance choice.
    • That preserves visibility over what is cross-team content, even if it changes the original business hierarchy.
    • This aligns with the recommendation to segment content by security level.
    1. Prefer sharing a folder rather than many individual files inside it
    • If a set of files has the same audience, put them in one folder and share that folder.
    • This uses fewer permission scopes than sharing files one by one.
    1. Be careful with parent-folder sharing
    • If a parent folder is shared, that access can expose child content in ways that make restricted subfolders harder to manage.
    • For restricted structures, share only the specific folders that should be accessible.

    Applied to the example:

    • If Recruitment is a stable cross-team working area, a dedicated library for HR content shared with Management is the cleaner design.
    • If Recruitment is one of only a few exceptions, a uniquely permissioned folder can work, but it should remain the exception, not the pattern.
    • Avoid managing this mainly through links. Manage it through clear library or folder permissions.

    A practical rule:

    • Same audience as parent: inherit permissions.
    • Different audience for a whole category of content: use a separate library or site.
    • Different audience for a small exception: use a uniquely permissioned folder.
    AI-generated content may be incorrect. Read our transparency notes for more information.

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