North Queensland Council

Dozens of Teams and SharePoint sites had sprawled with no shared structure. We reviewed the environment and automated how new sites get created.

Why it mattered

54 SharePoint sites, 3 hub sites and 206 document sets had grown organically, which is what happens when a platform is easy to use and nobody owns the structure. For a council, the consequence is not just untidiness: information becomes hard to retrieve, governance obligations get harder to meet, and every new site compounds the problem.

What we did

• Reviewed the whole environment. Teams and SharePoint together, with best practice and governance recommendations.
• Built a document management system. Structured on SharePoint Online with managed metadata and templates.
• Automated site provisioning. New sites created through PowerShell with taxonomy applied automatically, so structure is the default rather than an afterthought.

The difference it made

• Information that can be found and retrieved rather than searched for hopefully.
• Governance and compliance improved across 54 sites and 206 document sets.
• New sites provisioned consistently, so the sprawl does not start again.
• A modernised environment that staff can work in productively.