SharePoint Group Naming Conventions

By: Rob Fisch | Comments | Related: > SharePoint

Problem

By default, whenever creating a new site with unique permission in MOSS 2007 or WSS3, the default group name "Members" seems confusing to me. The term member seems too ambiguous.

Solution

Whenever I create a site with unique permissions, I immediately change the default of "Members" to "Contributors". This makes it clear when using the group, the permission applied will be synonymous with the "contribute" permission features (read and write permissions). The word "member" is vague and could mean read or read/write. It is better to be specific when naming groups.

Below is a brief naming convention list I follow:

Group Name	Comments
GroupName Readers	I don't like "Visitors" either. You can see in the above picture that I missed that when setting up my MOSS 2007 environment. (Oh well.) I try not to use that group anyway. When creating new groups, use "Readers" in the name.
GroupName Contributors	Use this for groups that receive read and write permissions to a SharePoint resource.
GroupName Approvers	Use this to designate groups of users when using the Content Approval feature.
GroupName Owners	Contrary to my members/contributors switch, I like the "Owners" naming conventions. The meaning seems clear.