How to Create a SharePoint Team Site

A team site is where a group of people share documents, news, and resources in SharePoint. Every Teams channel already has one behind the scenes — but sometimes you need a standalone site for a department, project, or client.

Here's how to set one up properly so it doesn't turn into another dumping ground.

Creating the site

Go to sharepoint.com (sign in with your work account) and click Create site.

Choose Team site. Give it a name — keep it short and clear. 'Finance Team' not 'The Finance Department Resources and Document Hub'.

Add the owners and members. Owners can manage settings and permissions. Members can add and edit content.

Choose your privacy setting. Private means only members can see it. Public means anyone in your organisation can find and access it.

Setting up document libraries

Every team site comes with a default Documents library. For most teams, one library is enough — use folders or metadata columns to organise within it.

If you have clearly separate types of documents (policies vs project files vs templates), create separate libraries. But don't go overboard — three libraries is usually the max before it gets confusing.

Add metadata columns if you want people to tag documents by client, project, or status. This is way more useful than folders for finding things later.

Connecting it to Teams

If you want this site to appear as a tab in Microsoft Teams, open Teams and go to the channel where you want it.

Click the + icon to add a tab, select SharePoint, and choose your site or a specific document library.

Or create the team site directly from Teams by creating a new Team — this automatically creates a connected SharePoint site.

Permissions — get this right early

The default permission groups are Owners, Members, and Visitors. Keep it simple.

Don't give everyone Owner access. Owners can delete the site and change permissions. Two or three owners is plenty.

If you need to share specific folders with people outside the team, use the Share button on that folder rather than adding them to the whole site.

Review permissions every quarter. People leave, change roles, and the access list gets stale.

Things people forget

Set up versioning. It's on by default but check that it's keeping enough versions (we recommend at least 50). This is your safety net when someone overwrites a file.

Add a site description so people know what the site is for when they find it in search.

Turn on the document approval workflow if you have content that needs sign-off before it's visible to everyone.

If your SharePoint is growing beyond a few team sites and you want a proper structure, we can help plan it out. We specialise in SharePoint information architecture — making sure everything is findable and manageable long-term.