Squadron - Permissions Add-In in SharePoint

Squadron is a Free Administrative Tool for SharePoint. You can download it from:

http://www.sharepointcto.com/Squadron/Default.aspx

What is inside the Permissions Add-in?

Permission Add-in helps with the following tasks:

1. Find permissions at the site, list, or item level
2. Distinguish between Unique & Inherited permissions
3. Save Reports
4. Provides wizards to Find, Copy, Delete, Backup and Restore permissions

Types of Permissions

In a quick overview of Permissions, there are basically 2 types:

• Unique Permissions: where we assign unique users/groups & permission levels.
• Inherited Permissions: where the securable object (site, list, item) inherits permissions from its parent.

How to Generate the Report?

Let us examine the procedure to generate a report for a site collection.

Step 1: Enter URL

Run Squadron & in the screen that appears, enter the URL of the site. Please note that you should run this in the SharePoint Farm Account context.



Step 2: Open Permissions

From the left hand side click the Permissions link.



Step 3: Set Options

You can set the options in the screen that appears.

• Site: To include site objects check this item.
• List & Library: To include list & library objects check this item.
• Item: To include items & documents check this item.
• Expand Groups: A permission entry can be a SharePoint Group or User. If it is a SharePoint Group, you might need to include the users contained inside it. Check this item to include users.
• Show User Name: The user item will have a Login Name (eg: "DOMAIN\user") & a Display Name (eg: "Full Name"). You can choose this option to include the Display Name of the user as well.
• Include Hidden: There could be hidden lists that are not visible in Quick Launch or in the All Site content page. Check this option to include those.
• Unique Permissions Only: Check this option if you need only Unique Permission items.
• Expand Inherited Groups: Usually the Inherited Permissions will be expanded in the parent object, as it is unique there. This checkbox enables you to expand the inherited groups too.
• Filter By: Checking this option will enable a URL TextBox where you can enter the URL to filter the result.
• Highlight: Highlight Unique Permissions as Yellow & inherited ones as Green.

For the time being I have checked the following options:



Step 4: Generate

For generating the report, click "View Permissions" from the left. You will see the result as in the following depending on your Site.



Step 5: Save Report

For saving the report, you need to right-click on the grid & choose the option.

1. Save to Excel
2. Save to CSV

You may uncheck the option "Open after save.." if you do not want to launch your report file after saving it.

I have selected the option to save as Excel.



Enter the file name and click the Save button.

You will be viewing the file in Excel after saving.



This concludes our usage of the Squadron Permissions add-in.



I wanted to iterate the Microsoft Recommendation of using SharePoint Groups instead of directly adding users to the site/list/item permissions. Groups are more easily manageable & easier to understand.

About the Wizards

The additional wizards are separately documented. Here is the screen shot of the wizard screens.



References

http://bit.ly/10uiVpB

Summary

In this article we have explored the Squadron Permissions Add-in. I believe in a real-life scenario the add-in is useful to quickly analyze a SharePoint site.