#Get Started

This section details how to get started with AvePoint Cloud Governance.

If you are new to AvePoint Cloud Governance, it may be helpful to review the AvePoint Cloud Governance Key Terms and Phrases to familiarize yourself with the key terms that are used throughout this user guide.

Once you are familiar with AvePoint Cloud Governance terminology, it is important to understand how the different features and functionalities work together. This knowledge is essential to properly configure the solution for your organization.

In AvePoint Cloud Governance, administrators can set up services that perform Microsoft 365 or AvePoint Cloud Management operations. These services can be made available and customized for specific departments/purposes. A service may have a policy associated with it so that if your organization has specific rules on certain Microsoft 365 operations, you can ensure that all services with the same associated policy will be compliant with your organization’s standards. Services will also have at least one approval process associated with it so that when a user submits a request for a specific service, the appropriate parties are notified and can provide the necessary approval. Once the service request has been fully approved, AvePoint Cloud Governance performs the Microsoft 365 and/or AvePoint Cloud Management processes according to the customized settings configured for that service.

#AvePoint Cloud Governance Key Terms and Phrases

To help better understand how to use the features and functions in AvePoint Cloud Governance, refer to the following list of key terms and phrases:

• Administrator – An Administrator in AvePoint Cloud Governance has full control of all settings, reports, and applications in AvePoint Cloud Governance, as well as full control of their organization’s Microsoft 365 tenant.

• Administrator Contact – The Administrator Contact is the IT administrator to be contacted if the service request is unable to properly complete.

• Approval Process – An approval process is a defined process to obtain approval for a Microsoft 365 or AvePoint Cloud Management procedure to start.

• Category – Categories are used for organizational purposes. For example, by placing policies used for SharePoint Online administration purposes in the Administration category, you can then sort policies by categories and more easily find the policy of your choice.

• Inactivity Threshold – A definable amount of time during which an object and contents within its associated site are neither accessed nor modified. Inactivity threshold management actions can be triggered if the threshold is reached. If not explicitly configured to calculate from an object's imported date, or if such a configuration is unavailable, the measurement begins from the object's last activity time.

  The last activity time for an object is retrieved from Microsoft 365.

  • If your tenant has configured one of the following app profiles: Microsoft 365 (All permissions), Cloud Governance for Microsoft 365, and a custom app profile with the Reports.Read.All permission granted to your Azure app, meanwhile, the option to Display concealed user, group, and site names in all reports is not enabled in your Microsoft 365 admin center, the last activity time is sourced from the Microsoft activity detail report:

    • For site collections, the last activity time is obtained from the latest value in the site activity detail report.

    • For teams, the last activity time is the latest value among activity detail reports of the team, and its associated Microsoft 365 Group and group team site.

    • For Microsoft 365 Groups, the last activity time is the latest value among activity detail reports of the group and its group team site.

    • For Viva Engage communities, the last activity time is the latest value among activity detail reports of the community, the connected Microsoft 365 Group, and the community site

  • For tenants without the above configurations, or tenants using the Microsoft 365 US Government GCC High environment, the last activity time is retrieved via the Microsoft Graph API:

    • For site collections, the last activity time is the last modification time of the item within the site.

    • For teams, the last activity time is the latest time between the most recent activity from team conversations and the last modification time of items in the group team site.

    • For Microsoft 365 Groups, the last activity time is the last modification time of the item within the group team site.

    • For Viva Engage communities, the last activity time is the latest time between the most recent message in the community and the last modification time of the item in the community site.

• Site Collection Lease Period – A lease period is the amount of time a site collection is expected to be used. Once the lease period has reached its expiration date, the designated user will be prompted to decide on the action to perform on the site collection. This allows for the automation of content lifecycle management.

• Microsoft 365 Group/Microsoft Team Lease Period – A lease period is the amount of time allotted wherein a group/team is valid in Microsoft 365. Once the lease period has reached its expiration date, the designated user will be prompted to decide on the action to perform on the group/team. This allows for the automation of group/team lifecycle management.

• Microsoft 365 User Contract Term – A contract term is the amount of time allotted wherein a user is a valid account in Microsoft 365. Once the contract term has reached its expiration date, the designated user will be prompted to decide on the action to perform on the Microsoft 365 user. This allows for the automation of Microsoft 365 user lifecycle management.

• Policy – A policy is an organization-wide rule or standard that can be applied to a site collection, Microsoft 365 user, Microsoft 365 Group, or Microsoft Team. Policies are configured by AvePoint Cloud Governance Administrators.

• References – A reference is a parameter that will call up the corresponding information for each request, task, or event, such as Request Summary and Approver. For a full list of all supported references and the corresponding descriptions, see Appendix G - Supported References in Email Templates.

• Service – A service is a set of configured settings for a management operation in Microsoft 365 that can be leveraged by business users when submitting a service request. Services are configured by AvePoint Cloud Governance Administrators.

• Service Request – A service request is a request for a management operation in Microsoft 365. Service requests are submitted by business users, and depending on the service that is requested, they may require approval from both business users and AvePoint Cloud Governance Administrators.

• Service Contact – The Service Contact is the business user who owns the business process for a service.