SharePoint Document Management Best Practices You Need Now

Written By Mohit Kumar Jha

Approved By Anuraag Singh

Modified On September 18th, 2025

Reading Time 6 Min Read

Have you ever wasted half an hour in SharePoint just trying to find the right file? With over 15+ years of experience as a Microsoft 365 admin, I know how frustrating and unproductive it feels. Disorganised libraries, unclear permissions, and version chaos affect SharePoint performance, and users ask why is SharePoint Online so slow today.

From my experience, I’ve learned that a few simple SharePoint document management best practices can completely resolve the data organisation issue. In this article, I’ll walk you through the same step-by-step process. So, let’s proceed with the reasons behind it.

Table of Contents

Why We Need Best Practices for SharePoint Document Management?

SharePoint Document Management Best Practices

Author’s Verdict

People Also Ask

Why We Need Best Practices for SharePoint Document Management?

Many businesses set up SharePoint quickly and hope everything works well, but this often leads to problems later:

Teams are unsure where to find or save documents
Workflows that stop working because the structure is not clear
Lost time searching for files because folders and names are not organised
Risk of exposing sensitive data when permissions are not managed properly
Version confusion occurs when people edit the same document without proper control

These reasons push me to create a proper checklist for managing data effectively. It helps to organise files, set permissions, save time and keep SharePoint easy to use. Next, I’ll provide you what are the steps I followed.

SharePoint Document Management Best Practices

Knowing how to create a document library in SharePoint Online is not enough without a proper management plan. Here I’ll walk you through the 12 checks to verify and maintain the SharePoint environment healthy, whether on-premises or online:

#1. Start with Governance

Before you create a dashboard in SharePoint or a single library, decide how you’ll manage and maintain content, i.e.

Why are we using SharePoint?
Who owns sites, taxonomies, and retention decisions?
When to create a site or a new library?
How often should to check who has access?

This is the most important part of SharePoint document management best practices. With this clear plan, one can avoid conflicts later and make site and compliance audits painless.

#2. Organise with Metadata Instead of Deep Folders

Folders feel familiar, but they quickly become a maze. Metadata makes search and filtering effortless. Additionally, you can copy files with metadata tags in SharePoint site easily, as compared to folders.

Learning how to set it up saves you time and effort:

Choose 4-8 metadata fields, e.g., Project, Client, Status, etc.
Use managed term sets so departments use the same terms.
Build custom views to group or filter files.

#3. Content Types and Templates

Content types bundle metadata, templates, and rules together, so:

Create a content type for each major document type.
Add mandatory fields, e.g., Client Name.
Attach default templates to save time and avoid mistakes.

#4. Control Lifecycle with Microsoft Purview

Purview is where retention and records management belong in 2025. Additionally, it helps prevent accidental deletions. My approach:

Map each document type to a retention period.
Create retention labels and test on a pilot site.
Use adaptive scopes to target sites dynamically.

This keeps documents for as long as required, and no longer.

#5. Keep Permissions Simple and Audited

Complex permissions are not easy to manage. Sticking to the SharePoint groups or Microsoft 365 Groups and rarely breaking inheritance.

SharePoint document management best practices I follow, for the same:

Use standard groups, like Owners, Members, and Visitors.
Review permissions quarterly.
Document exceptions and give them expiry dates.

#6. Turn On Versioning & Use Check-In/Check-Out When Needed

Version history saves you when someone overwrites a file. You:

Enable major versioning everywhere.
Use minor versions for draft-heavy content.
Require check-out only when co-authoring causes conflicts.

#7. Use Document Sets for Related Files

For deliverables like an RFP package, Document Sets work better than folders. They:

Share metadata across all included files.
Support default content templates.
Make search and retention easier.

#8. Automate Repetitive Tasks with Power Automate

Automation prevents human error and speeds up approvals. For example, I:

Automatically archive documents older than a set date.
Send reminders for contract renewals before they expire.

You can trigger an approval workflow according to your work or reference. This is also a necessary part of SharePoint document management best practices for those who need to reduce their manual workload.

#9. Protect Sensitive Data with Labels and DLP

Apply sensitivity labels and DLP policies to control sharing and encryption:

Labels can watermark documents or restrict external sharing.
DLP policies catch credit card numbers, PII, or other sensitive info.

#10. Use Search Tuning and Promoted Content

SharePoint search is powerful, but only if you set it up right. You have to:

Promote important metadata fields in the search schema.
Add synonyms for common terms.
Use highlighted content web parts for quick access to key documents.

Sometimes, users face the SharePoint search not working due to a lack of proper SharePoint document management best practices.

#11. Train and Support Your Users

A clean system is useless if no one knows how to use it. So arrange:

Short how-to videos for common tasks.
One-page cheat sheets for metadata and versioning.

#12. Review and Clean Up Regularly

Quarterly reviews keep everything healthy, which includes:

Auditing permissions and removing unused access.
Checking for duplicates or outdated documents.
Reviewing Purview labels and workflows.
Reporting on metadata completeness.

#13. Back Up Your SharePoint Data

Even with Microsoft 365’s built-in protections, SharePoint is not a full backup solution. Files can still be deleted accidentally or overwritten. To avoid losing important documents, I always include a backup SharePoint Online to local storage plan as part of SharePoint document management best practices:

Use Microsoft retention policies to recover deleted files for a set time.
Turn on version history to restore older copies of documents.
Schedule regular backups and test recovery.
If you want to back up data to a new site or tenant, opt for SysTools SharePoint Migration Tool to securely transfer. It ensures all your documents, lists, and libraries are migrated accurately. Moreover, this solution also minimises the risk of data loss and saves time compared to manual backup methods.

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Author’s Verdict

If you follow these SharePoint document management best practices, your SharePoint environment (both on-premise and online) will stay organised and easy for your team to use. Don’t forget to back up your crucial data, whether offline or online.