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In Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services, new administrative options allow you to automatically send notices to site collection owners requiring them to confirm that their sites collections are in use. You can also delete unconfirmed site collections automatically. These features give you a way to control the number of unused Web sites on your server.
Use confirmation is similar to alerts. When you create a site collection, Windows SharePoint Services adds it to the database and logs it as an active site. After a specified time, Windows SharePoint Services sends the site collection owner an e-mail notification asking the owner to either reactivate or delete the unused site collection. The e-mail notification contains links to confirm that a site collection is active or to delete a site collection. After Windows SharePoint Services sends the notification, there are three possible outcomes:
You can use automatic deletion to delete unneeded site collections without any administrative intervention and without any backup mechanism. To prevent a site collection from being deleted without any notification, you must turn on site collection use confirmation before you can turn on automatic deletion. Also, Windows SharePoint Services must always send the site collection owner mat least two confirmation notices before deleting a site collection. You can configure automatic deletion from SharePoint Central Administration pages or from the command line. For more information, see the Windows SharePoint Services Resource Kit. In addition to these basic safeguards included as defaults, it is recommended that you consider the following best practices:
By default, the site collection creator is listed as site collection owner. Depending on your configuration, the user must also specify a secondary contact for the site collection. Windows SharePoint Services automatically sends confirmation notifications to the site collection owner and the secondary contact, if one exists.
For example, if a site collection owner is unavailable for four weeks, and Windows SharePoint Services deletes site collections after four missed weekly confirmations, Windows SharePoint Services may delete the site collection without allowing the owner a chance to confirm usage. If you enable this feature inside a corporation, make sure you consider your organization's policies regarding vacations and leaves of absence when you configure the intervals for confirmation and deletion.
For example, if you configure confirmation and automatic deletion to happen on the fifth day of each month, back up your server on the fourth day. To automate this process, create a stored process in Microsoft SQL Server to check the sites table and automatically back up any items scheduled for deletion.
It is recommended that you configure the following settings to control how much time elapses between site collection usage confirmation and automatic deletion:
The initial notification value controls when Windows SharePoint Services sends the first confirmation notice to a site collection. This value does not control the frequency of notifications, only the number of days to wait before the first notification.
The frequency value affects both how often Windows SharePoint Services checks the server and how often Windows SharePoint Services sends confirmation notices. If you set the frequency to weekly, Windows SharePoint Services checks the server weekly, and Windows SharePoint Services also sends notifications weekly, immediately after checking the server.
Change this time to suit your environment. For example, if most of your users are online and use the server during the day, pick a time during the night when the server is not as busy.
Adjust this number to ensure site collection owners receive notification before Windows SharePoint Services deletes a site collection. The number of notifications also depends on the frequency, so if you specify daily checks, with thirty reminders before deletion, Windows SharePoint Services notifies the site collection owner every day for a month before deleting the site collection.
Configure these times according to the requirements of your organization. In a large organization, where users may need long term storage of data, specify longer intervals. For example, send notifications at 180 days, notify every month, and delete after six months without a confirmation. If you host free sites for customers, you may choose to shorten these intervals. For example, send notifications at 45 days, notify weekly, delete after four weeks. If you host paid sites for customers, you may not use this feature, unless you have an automated backup strategy that allows you to restore sites on request.
The following table shows each of these settings as you see them on the Configure Site Collection Use Confirmation and Auto-Deletion page and the default and minimum values.
| Setting | Default value | Minimum value |
|---|---|---|
| Start sending notifications ___ days after site collection creation, or use is confirmed | 90 days | 30 days |
| Check for unused site collections, and send notices <Daily Weekly Monthly> and run the check at <time> | Weekly
12:00 AM |
Daily |
| Delete the site collection after sending ___ notices | 4 | Daily minimum: 28 Weekly minimum: 4 Monthly minimum: 2 |
In a scenario using the default values above, Windows SharePoint Services sends the first notice at 90 days. Windows SharePoint Services sends additional notices every week for five additional weeks. On the sixth week after the initial notification, if the site collection owner or secondary contact does not confirm site collection usage, Windows SharePoint Services deletes the site collection. If at any point the site collection owner or secondary contact confirms site collection usage, Windows SharePoint Services resets the count, and does not send another e-mail notification for 90 days.
Note If for any reason Windows SharePoint Services cannot send the e-mail notification, then Windows SharePoint Services does not increment the count. For example, if Windows SharePoint Services sends three notices, and fails to send the fourth notification, the count is not incremented until such time as Windows SharePoint Services successfully sends the fourth notice.
Microsoft SharePoint Timer service performs timed jobs such as the confirmation and automatic deletion feature. The times and intervals you specify here follow the same rules as any other job performed by using the SharePoint Timer service in Windows SharePoint Services.