SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM) is Microsoft’s premium governance toolkit for SharePoint and OneDrive, designed to help organizations manage content sprawl, enforce compliance, and prepare for AI‑driven experiences like Microsoft Copilot
SAM provides Comprehensive governance solution for SharePoint and OneDrive. It enhances SharePoint capabilities by providing advanced Security, Compliance and Lifecycle management features
You can manage:
- Content growth
- Secure access
- Manage changes across org
SAM features are managed by IT admins and is accessed through SharePoint Admin Centre
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The high level SAM feature list are
- Block download policy for SharePoint and OneDrive
- Catalog management
- Change history
- Conditional access policies for SharePoint and One Drive
- Data access governance reports
- One Drive access restrictions
- Recent actions
- Site lifecycle management
- Site level access restriction
Key Features
| Category | Capabilities |
|---|---|
| Content Governance | Detect inactive sites, automate ownership policies, and request site attestations to confirm accuracy of site details. |
| Lifecycle Management | Create change history reports (up to 180 days), monitor configuration updates, and group sites by region, department, or compliance category. |
| Oversharing Prevention | Generate Data Access Governance (DAG) reports, restrict site creation by non‑Microsoft apps, and enforce least‑privilege access. |
| Security Controls | Apply site‑level conditional access, block downloads, and define default sharing link types. |
| Copilot Readiness | Identify oversharing sites and exclude sensitive content from Copilot grounding to ensure responsible AI use. |
| Audit & Compliance | Maintain traceability of admin actions and configuration changes for operational reviews and incident investigations. |
Licensing
Offered as a paid add‑on for Microsoft 365 tenants or included in Microsoft 365 E5 and Copilot bundles
SharePoint Admin Centre provides a single pane of entry to manage Advanced Management related features
Site Life cycle management
Inactive Site Policy
- Check Inactive Site
- Send monthly emails
- Act on site
Site Ownership Policy
- Generate monthly report of non-compliant site
- Send notification to site owner or admin
- Act on non-compliance site
Site Attestation Policy
- With site attestation policy
- You can ensure your sites are secure and compliant by reducing risk of unmanaged site
- Checks includes
- Confirm accuracy of site information
- Sites necessity
- Owners / Members
- Permissions / Sharing Settings
- Process
- Generate monthly report of site attestation
- Send notification
- Act on site
Recent Actions
- Review and monitor last 30 changes made to SharePoint sites properties like
- Renaming site
- Deleting site
- Change storage quota
OneDrive Access Restriction
- You can restrict access and sharing of OneDrive content to users in specific EntraID security groups
- Even if user has license, they will not be able to access OneDrive if they are not part of security group
- Use this to prevent new users, guest users, frontline workers from accessing OneDrive content
- Users who are not member of specified security groups lose access to their own OneDrive and any shared OneDrive content
Data Access Governance Reports
These are the different categories of report that can be generated by single click of a button
- Site permissions across organisations
- Everyone permissions
- External users
- Guest access
- Sharing links
- Unique permissions
- Site permissions for users
- All sites user can access
- Direct or Indirect access through groups
- Sensitive labels
- Sensitive labels applied to files
- Special SharePoint Groups
- Everyone access
- External user access
- Activity reports
- Oversharing
- New sharing links
- Shared with everyone
- Except external users
Change History
Create & Download custom reports for
- Site actions
- Organization setting changes
You can view Last 180 days changes in report
Block download Policy
ENABLE BLOCKING
Set-SPOSite -Identity https://girishmvp.sharepoint.com/sites/Brisbane -BlockDownloadPolicy $true
DISABLE BLOCKING
Set-SPOSite -Identity https://girishmvp-my.sharepoint.com/ personal/Alex -BlockDownloadPolicy $false
Catalog Management
- Catalog management helps you understand how content is organized across SharePoint environment
- Uses existing M365 metadata to automatically group sites into meaningful categories
- The structure helps understand how content is distributed and governed across organization
- Catalog management uses metadata from multiple sources to define categories and groups
- By categorization you can
- Analyse content
- Apply governance actions at scale
- View insights for content mgt
- Categories are high level classifications like
- Departments
- User Type
- Region
- Each category has label that identifies type
- BUILT-IN
- UPLOADED
- CUSTOM PROPERTIES
- ENTRA ID
- SharePoint site metadata – uses site properties like
- Property bag values
- Site keywords
- Other SharePoint defined properties
- Microsoft Entra ID
- Org attributes like department, user type an extension attributes
SharePoint Advanced Management provides the foundation for secure, intelligent collaboration.
By combining governance, lifecycle automation, and Copilot readiness, SAM empowers administrators to manage complexity with confidence and clarity
