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

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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.

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Step 2: Open Permissions

From the left hand side click the Permissions link.

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Step 3: Set Options

You can set the options in the screen that appears.

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  • 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:

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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.

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Step 5: Save Report

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

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  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.

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Enter the file name and click the Save button.

You will be viewing the file in Excel after saving.

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

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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.

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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.

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