---
name: Site Lifecycle Review
description: Identify inactive, ownerless, and stale SharePoint Online sites and recommend a keep, archive, or decommission action for each governance cycle.
---

# Site Lifecycle Review

> **TL;DR:** This skill reviews every SharePoint Online site in scope, flags those that are inactive, ownerless, or hold stale content, and recommends a lifecycle action — keep, reassign owner, archive, or decommission — as an exportable governance record.

## What does the site lifecycle review do?

The review examines every SharePoint Online site in scope and identifies sites that are inactive, ownerless, or contain stale content, reading activity and ownership signals through Microsoft Graph. It recommends a lifecycle action for each site: keep, reassign owner, archive, or decommission. Beyond tidiness, lifecycle hygiene is foundational Copilot-readiness work: abandoned and ownerless sites are where stale, mislabelled, and over-shared content accumulates, which degrades the quality and trustworthiness of Microsoft 365 Copilot answers. Decommissioning dead sites and reassigning owners shrinks the grounding surface to content that is current and accountable, and pairs well with Microsoft Purview retention and labelling.

## When should you run this skill?

- "Run a site lifecycle review"
- "Find inactive sites"
- "Which sites have no owner?"
- "Pre-assessment cleanup"

## Definitions

| Flag | Definition |
| --- | --- |
| Inactive | No edits or visits in the previous 180 days |
| Ownerless | No active site owner in the owner group |
| Stale content | More than 50% of files unchanged in 12 months |

## How this skill works, step by step

1. Enumerate sites in scope.
2. For each site, retrieve: last activity date, owner group membership, file change count over 12 months.
3. Apply the three flags (inactive / ownerless / stale).
4. Recommend an action: Keep, Reassign owner, Archive, Decommission.
5. Compile into a table sorted by recommended action.

## Output format

| Site | URL | Last Activity | Owner Count | Stale % | Flags | Recommendation |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |

Summary:

- Total sites reviewed: N
- Recommended for decommission: N
- Ownerless sites: N
- Stale sites: N

## Scope and safety

This skill is read-only and produces recommendations only. It does NOT:

- Delete, archive, or modify sites (recommendation only)
- Send notifications to owners (this is a reporting skill)

## Licensing and permissions

### Licences and add-ons

| Capability used | Minimum licence |
| --- | --- |
| SharePoint Online sites, activity, and ownership read through Microsoft Graph | Microsoft 365 E3 (or any plan including SharePoint Online and Microsoft Entra ID) |
| Site usage and activity reports via the audit log | Microsoft 365 E3 |

### Least-privilege roles

- Global Reader — read-only visibility across sites, groups, and reports
- SharePoint Administrator (read use only) — where broader site enumeration is needed

### Microsoft Graph permissions (read-only)

- `Sites.Read.All` — enumerate sites and read site properties and last activity
- `Files.Read.All` — read file change counts to assess stale content
- `Group.Read.All` — read owner group membership to detect ownerless sites
- `Directory.Read.All` — resolve owner identities in Microsoft Entra ID
- `AuditLog.Read.All` — read activity signals used to flag inactive sites

## Sources and compliance

- Run monthly as a standing governance cycle
- Recommendations can be actioned after review through your chosen workflow tooling once a steward has approved each change
- [SharePoint site lifecycle management](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/governance/effective-governance-of-your-sharepoint-environment)
- Output in Australian English