Sharepoint - Site collection owners and site collection administrators. Can anyone explain the difference in plain english
The text is due to confusion SharePoint creates by having three different groups which when you create a site collection start out having the same persons, but are in fact different.
The three groups are:
Site Collection Owners
- Are controlled via `Central Administration | Application Management | Change site collection administrators'
- Receive email about site collection: quota warnings, not used warnings ...
- Automatically members of
Site Collection Administrators - Can only be users
Site Collection Administrators
- Are controlled via
Site Settings | Site collection administrators - Have full permissions in the site collection
- Can be users or groups
Site Owners
- A group named
{SiteName} owners - By default have full permissions in the site collection, but are subject to changes in permissions, broken inheritance, only read/edit own items,...
- Is just a standard SharePoint group which can be modified, deleted
- Can be users or groups
Strange things
Part of the problem understanding these groups are some of the strange behaviours of these groups:
- When a site collection is created you specify "Primary Site Collection Administrator" and "Secondary Site Collection Administrator" these two persons are entered into all three groups
- When you add "Site Collection Administrators" in Central Administration these can only be users and there can only be max 2 and they become both "Site Collection Owners" and "Site Collection Administrators"
- When you remove a "Site Collection Administrator" in Central Administration he/she is removed from "Site Collection Owners" and "Site Collection Administrators"
- When you add "Site Collection Administrators" in Site Settings in the Site Collection you can specify any number of users and/or groups they only become "Site Collection Administrators"
- If you remove a person who is "Site Collection Owner" as part of modifying "Site Collection Administrators" in Site Settings in the Site Collection he/she is removed from "Site Collection Owners" as well. If it's the Primary Owner then the Secondary Owner becomes Primary Owner, if there is no Secondary Owner, the first user in the list of Site Collection Administrators become new Primary Owner
Site Collection Administrators
Site collection administrators have full rights to all sites within a site collection. They can add or delete sites or change the settings for any site within a site collection. They can view, add, delete, or change all content within those sites as well. They can add and remove users from sites and send invitations to those sites.
Site Collection Owners
Site collection owners and secondary owners are also site collection administrators. However, owners and secondary owners are the only users who receive e-mail notifications for events, such as the pending automatic deletion of inactive sites. By default, site collection owners also receive requests for access from users who have been denied access. A user who is a member of the Administrator site group can use the Site Administration pages to change the e-mail address that receives requests for access.
When you create a site collection, Windows SharePoint Services automatically lists you as the site collection owner.
For more information, see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288243(v=office.12).aspx.