Default SharePoint Groups

SharePoint groups enable you to manage access for sets of users instead of individual users. SharePoint groups are usually composed of many individual users, but a group can also hold one or more Windows security groups. For example, you might add the Windows security group for your team to a SharePoint group, to grant access to the whole team at the same time. When you add users or Windows security groups to a SharePoint group, the added users are assigned the same permission level.

SharePoint assigns a permission level to each default SharePoint group automatically. The permission level applies to all the members of that group.

You can customize default SharePoint groups by assigning them any permission level that you want. You can also create a SharePoint group and assign it the permission levels that you want.

The following table shows the default SharePoint groups and their assigned permission levels.

SharePoint Groups	Default Permission Level
Approvers	Approve
Members	Contribute or Edit, depending on the site template
Owners	Full Control
Visitors	Read
Designers	Design, Limited Access
Hierarchy Managers	Manage Hierarchy
Restricted Readers	Restricted Read
Style Resource Readers	Limited Access
Viewers	View Only
Quick Deploy Users	Contribute

If you are on a public website, you will see Members in your list of SharePoint groups. For example, if Contoso Retail is the name of the website, you’ll see Contoso Retail Members. This is also true if you are on a subsite that has unique permissions. As your site grows, you may notice multiple Members, Visitors, or Owners groups while looking in site permissions from your site collection root. Each group is prefixed with the name of the site, for example Contoso Retail Members, and Contoso Charities Members may both be present.

There are several times when the site name is added to the group name. These are:

• When you break permissions inheritance on subsites that had previously inherited permissions
• When you create new groups for a specific site
• When you create new sites.

In all cases, the site name before the SharePoint group indicates the name of the site to which the group belongs, so Contoso Charities Members belongs to the Contoso Charities site.

Tip: You can change the names that SharePoint automatically assigns to these groups at any time.

Roles for SharePoint Groups

The following table shows suggested uses for default SharePoint groups:

Group Name	Permission Level	Use this group for people who
Approvers	Approve	Approve documents, pages, and list items.
Owners	Full Control	Manage site permissions, settings, and appearance.
Members	Contribute or Edit	Edit site content
Visitors	Read	View site content, but not edit it.
Designers	Design	View, add, update, delete, approve, and customize the site.
Hierarchy Managers	Manage Hierarchy	Create sites and edit pages, list items, and documents.
Restricted Readers	Restricted Read	View pages and documents but not versions or permissions.
Style Resource Readers	Restricted Read	Need only Limited Access to the Style Library and Master Page Gallery.
Viewers	View Only	Need to see content but not edit or download it.
Quick Deploy Users	Contribute	Schedule Quick Deploy jobs.

Special SharePoint Groups

Special SharePoint groups support high-level administration tasks, such as assigning permission levels to a group.

Important: To guarantee full site functionality, make sure that there is always a group of users who have Full Control to the site collection. In addition, make sure that these users appear on the list of site collection administrators.

Site Collection Administrators

Site Collection administrators are not a SharePoint group. However, because they have Full Control on all sites in a site collection, they are mentioned here.

A SharePoint site can have primary and secondary site collection administrators. If you are a site collection administrator, you can also designate additional site collection administrators. These users are the main contacts for the complete site collection. Site collection administrators have full control of all sites within the site collection and can audit all site content. In addition, they receive administrative alerts about site activity, such as whether a site is active.