Cleaning Up Unused Sites


Along with ensuring the quality of available sites, another problem with site proliferation is that there is really no motivation for any user to delete a site after it has served its purpose. If a user creates a site for the annual company sales meeting, they are unlikely to care about the site after the meeting is over. In fact, this is just a larger version of the same issues that affect all file systems. If you were to examine the file system backups at most organizations, you would find that a significant number of the documents being backed up no longer have any use.

The solution in SPS is to implement site use confirmation and deletion. This facility allows SPS to query site owners and determine if a site is still in use. The owners confirm sites that are still in use, whereas sites that are no longer useful may be deleted. If you want, you can even set up SPS to automatically delete sites that have not been confirmed over a period of time.

Site use and confirmation is configured to send e-mail notifications to the owner of a site collection that has not been used for a specified period of time. When the e-mail is received, the owner will have a set of hyperlinks in the e-mail that will allow the owner to confirm that the site is in use or delete the site. If you have enabled automatic site deletion, then the site will automatically be deleted if the site collection owner fails to respond to the request after a configured number of notifications.

To enable site use confirmation and deletion, take these steps:

  1. Log in to SPSPortal as a local administrator.

  2. Select Start All Programs SharePoint Portal Server SharePoint Portal Server Central Administration.

  3. On the SharePoint Portal Server Central Administration page, select Portal Site and Virtual Server Configuration Configure Virtual Server Settings from the Virtual Server List.

  4. On the Virtual Server List page, select Default Web Site.

  5. On the Virtual Server Settings page, select Automated Web Site Collection Management Configure Site Collection Use Confirmation and Deletion.

  6. On the "Configure site collection use confirmation and auto-deletion" page, check the box labeled "Send e-mail notifications to owners of unused site collections."

  7. Set the notification parameters.

  8. Check the box labeled "Automatically delete the site collection if use is not confirmed" if you want to enable automatic site deletion.

  9. Click OK.

Enabling automatic site deletion ensures that unneeded sites are always removed from the SPS installation. However, automatically deleting sites can result in the removal of sites that are seldom used but contain valuable information. For this reason, you should always set reasonable notification intervals that give plenty of opportunity for site collection owners to respond. Finally, you should require that all site collections have a designated secondary owner who can respond to the notifications if the primary owner is unavailable.

In order to make sure that all site collections have a secondary site collection contact, follow these steps:

  1. Log in to SPSPortal as a local administrator.

  2. Select Start All Programs SharePoint Portal Server SharePoint Portal Server Central Administration.

  3. On the SharePoint Portal Server Central Administration page, select Portal Site and Virtual Server Configuration Configure Virtual Server Settings from the Virtual Server List.

  4. On the Virtual Server List page, select Default Web Site.

  5. On the Virtual Server Settings page, select Automated Web Site Collection Management Configure Self-Service Site Creation.

  6. On the Configure Self-Service Site Creation page, ensure that Self-Service Site Creation mode is On.

  7. Check the box labeled Require Secondary Contact.

  8. Click OK.

The site use confirmation and deletion system uses two different message texts to send notifications: one text is used when you enable site confirmation; the other text is used if you have also enabled automatic deletion. Administrators may customize these notices, which are located in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\60\TEMPLATE\1033\XML\DeadWeb.xml . Listing 10-1 shows the contents of the notification file.

Listing 10-1: The Site Notification Message
start example
 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <! _lcid="1033" _version="11.0.5510" _dal="1" > <! _LocalBinding > <Email>     <Confirmation>         <ConfirmationSubject>         Confirm SharePoint Web site in use     </ConfirmationSubject>         <ConfirmationBody>          <![CDATA[Please follow the link below          to your SharePoint Web site to confirm that it is still in use.              <br><a href="0">0</a><br><br>              If the site is not being used, please go to <a href="1">1</a>,              and select "Delete This Site" to remove the Web site.              <br><br>              You will receive reminders of this until you confirm the site is in use, or delete it.]]>         </ConfirmationBody>      </Confirmation>      <AutoDeleteWarning>           <AutoDeleteSubject>           ACTION REQUIRED: Your SharePoint site collection is about to expire      </AutoDeleteSubject>           <AutoDeleteBody>           <![CDATA[To extend the expiration date for this site           collection, click the link below:<br><a href="0">0</a><br><br>           Otherwise this site collection, including all of its subsites, might be deleted.<br><br>              If this site collection is no longer needed, you can delete it by going to <a href="1">1</a>, and selecting          "Delete this site".<br><br>          Please note - When a SharePoint Web site collection is deleted, all Web sites, content and information which          were part of the site collection are completely erased. The site can only be restored if a backup exists.]]>          </AutoDeleteBody>      </AutoDeleteWarning> </Email> 
end example
 



Microsoft SharePoint[c] Building Office 2003 Solutions
Microsoft SharePoint[c] Building Office 2003 Solutions
ISBN: 1590593383
EAN: N/A
Year: 2006
Pages: 92

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