please help me in understanding SharePoint hierarchy. I have been provided a Sharepoint account and I have to read files from there. How to read them is not an issue for me. I can use ADF. I am too much stuck in understanding the hierarchy.
Basically, whenever we create a new site, we get sites keyword in the Url. For example:
https://xyz.sharepoint.com/ sites /Engineering
https://xyz.sharepoint.com/sites/TalentManagement
etc.
But the SharePoint account provided to me by my client, for some sites, it has sites keyword in the Url and for some sites, it does not have sites keyword in the Url. I am super super confused. For example:
https://xyz.sharepoint.com/Engineering
https://xyz.sharepoint.com/Management
https://xyz.sharepoint.com/sites/TalentManagement
Now for the above 2 highlighted sites, where is the sites keyword in the Url? Is it a site? I think it is. When I visit it, looks like 100% same as other sites.
I have one more scenario, there is a site with this Url:
https://xyz.sharepoint.com /Department/Engineering
Now what is this? Is it a site? looks like a site to me. Super super confused. Is it something nested site? Please guide. Thanks
Default Site Collection URL https://companyname.sharepoint.com
This is the URL of your tenant and URL of a default site collection. Any SharePoint Site in SharePoint Online starts with this string. As of the writing of this post, it is permanent and cannot be changed. The default site collection is created for you automatically when you sign up for Office 365.
Custom Site Collection URL https://companyname.sharepoint.com/sites/site-name/
Anytime you see a suffix /sites/site-name at the end of default site collection URL, it means you are in a custom-created site collection. Click here to read more about custom site collections. Now, you will probably have lots of custom site collections in your environment, all with various /sites/site-name addresses. This could be because you created some manually from SharePoint Admin Center or are using Office 365 Groups. Every time you create an Office 365 Group, it provisions a new site collection for you!
Page URL https:/companyname.sharepoint.com/sites/site-name/SitePages/page-name.aspx
or
https://companyname.sharepoint.com/sites/site-name/Pages/page-name.aspx
In case your URL looks like any of the two above, that means you are on a page! Default page name is Home.aspx. If you created new pages or renamed them, the name would be different. If you see /SitePages/page-name.aspx – you are on a regular Wiki or Site Page. If you see /Pages/page-name.aspx, that means you enabled publishing features on your site. Site Pages and Pages happen to be special document libraries for storing pages. I talk about this more in this post.
Subsite URL https://companyname.sharepoint.com/sites/site-name/subsite-name/SitePages/page-name.aspx
If you see a suffix after /sites/site-name, but it also precedes SitePages or Pages I explained above, it means you are on a subsite under the root of the site collection. Of course, you can have as many subsite levels as you wish so you could have lots of such suffixes in a string of a URL. So it might look like this:
Document Library URL https://companyname.sharepoint.com/sites/site-name/Shared%20Documents/Forms/AllItems.aspx
Any time you see /Shared%20Documents/Forms/AllItems.aspx string at the end of URL, you are inside of a document library. Shared%20Documents happens to be the name of a default document library you have on each site. So in case you created additional libraries on your site, your URL will change accordingly, for example:
https://companyname.sharepoint.com/sites/site-name/Invoices/Forms/AllItems.aspx
List URL https://companyname.sharepoint.com/sites/site-name/Lists/list-name/AllItems.aspx
For any lists you have in your SharePoint site, like a custom list, calendar, task list, Issues Tracker, Contacts, your URL will look like the one above. List Name will be different, depending on what kind of list it is (calendar, task list or custom list and name you created).
OneDrive URL https://companyname-my.sharepoint.com/personal/name_companyname_com/_layouts/15/onedrive.aspx
In case you see a URL that looks like this, you are in your own OneDrive account.
Sharing/Copy Link URL If you tried to share files and folders from within SharePoint, you might have noticed very long URLs being generated by SharePoint. One example of such a URL can be found below.
The extra long random mix of characters at the end is essentially a hard-coded URL that changes depending on the type of link you generate (Anyone, Specific people, etc.)
Characters right after the main URL: https://companyname.sharepoint.com change depending on what you are sharing:
“:f” means Folder sharing “:w” means Word document sharing “:x” means Excel document sharing “:p” means PowerPoint document sharing “:b” means PDF document sharing The letters will change depending on the type of file being shared (documents, images, videos, etc.). Probably does not mean much to you, but thought would share, in case you are curious. By the way, the credit for the info on those sharing URL special characters goes to my loyal blog follower, Julian Orange from New Zealand, who brought this to my attention.