How to customize permissions on your site

Office Content Publishing

As a Site Owner, you have the ability to choose which permissions are associated with a particular permission level and/or add new permission levels to combine different sets of permissions.

I recently ran into an issue on our internal support site where contributors were accidentally deleting pages and content from the wikis. I wanted our wiki writers to have permissions to view, create and modify as needed. But I wanted to prevent them from deleting any wiki content. In order to accomplish this, I created a custom permission level and removed ‘delete’ as an option. Following are the steps to create a custom permission level and then apply it to a user/group for a site.

PART 1: Create a custom permission level on your site

1. Click Site Actions, then Site Settings.
2. Under Users and Permissions, click Advanced Permissions.
3. Click Settings, and then click Permission levels.
   
   On the Permission Levels page you can create a new level (where you manually choose all the appropriate fields) OR you can copy from an existing permission level from which you add/remove the specific permissions you want to make available to your users. The following steps show how to COPY from an existing permission level.
4. Click the link for the existing permission level from which you will copy. (In this example I clicked Contribute).
5. On the Edit Permission Level page for the group, scroll down to the bottom and click Copy Permission Level.
   
   The page title should now read “Copy Permission Level … “.
6. Enter the Name and Description you want to give your new permission level in the corresponding boxes. (For example, I entered Name = Contribute – No Delete in the Name box and Can view, add and update but not delete in the Description box.)
7. In the Permissions section, review each of the checked boxes and select or deselect any of the check boxes as appropriate for your new permission level. For example, I deselected the check box for Delete Versions - Delete past versions of a list item or document.
8. When you are done editing the new permission level, click Create.
9. The new permission level will display in the list (see my example below).
   
   
10. NEXT… apply your new permission level to specific users/groups on your site.

PART 2: Apply your new permission level to a specific users/groups on your site

1. Click Site Actions, and then Site Settings.
2. Under Users and Permissions, select Advanced Permissions.
3. Locate the User/Group in your list to which you want to apply the newly created permission level and select the check box. (In this example I’ve selected our team site permissions group called SOS Team Site – Contributor Perms.)
   
   BEFORE
4. Click Actions, and then click Edit User Permissions.
5. Locate your new permission level under Choose Permissions and select the check box. Be sure to deselect any other permissions boxes.
6. Click Okay, which returns you to the Permissions page, and verify the new permissions are associated to your User/Group.

AFTER

Congrats! You’ve now created a new permission level, applied it to a user/group on your site, and have successfully customized your site’s permissions. For more information on managing permissions, see Manage Permission Levels