Inheritance of Sharing Settings in Channel Associated SharePoint Sites
Channel associated SharePoint sites inherit the external and default sharing settings of the parent team except when the parent team default sharing link is set to “People with Existing Access” only during creation.
The two sections highlight the testing I have done by first updating the parent team sharing setting before creating a private or shared channel which creates the corresponding site in the background.
External Sharing
Parent Team | New Channel Site | Inherited |
---|
Anyone | Anyone | Yes |
Only people in your organization | Only people in your organization | Yes |
Default Sharing Link type
Parent Team Setting | New Channel Site Setting | Inherited |
---|
Ticked Same as organization-level setting | Same as organization-level setting | Yes |
Unticked Same as organization-level setting | Unticked Same as organization-level setting | Yes |
Only people in your organization | Only people in your organization | Yes |
People with Existing Access | Current Tenant Setting leaving “Same as organization-level setting” unticked | No |

Default link permission
Parent Team Setting | New Channel Site Setting | Inherited |
---|
Unticked Same as organization-level setting | Ticked Same as organization-level setting | No |

Default Sharing Link type
Parent Team Setting | New Channel Site Setting | Inherited |
---|
Ticked Same as organization-level setting | Same as organization-level setting | Yes |
Unticked Same as organization-level setting | Unticked Same as organization-level setting | Yes |
Only people in your organization | Only people in your organization | Yes |
People with Existing Access | Current Tenant Setting leaving “Same as organization-level setting” unticked | No |

Update of sharing settings
Parent Team Setting | Existing Channel Site Setting | Inherited |
---|
Update | Not Updated | No |
Whenever the parent team sharing settings are updated, the channel site sharing settings are not subsequently updated.
PowerShell script to update default sharing link type and roles for channel sites
param (
[Parameter(Mandatory = $true)]
[string] $domain = "reshmeeauckloo",
[Parameter(Mandatory = $true)]
[string] $teamName = "Company311"
)
$adminSiteURL = "https://$domain-Admin.SharePoint.com"
Connect-PnPOnline -Url $adminSiteURL
$team = Get-PnPTeamsTeam -Identity $teamName
$m365GroupId = $team.GroupId
Get-PnPTenantSite | Where-Object { $_.Template -eq 'TEAMCHANNEL#1' -and $_.RelatedGroupId -eq $m365GroupId } | ForEach-Object{
$site = $_
$siteUrl = $site.Url
$siteTemplate = $site.Template
$siteTitle = $site.Title
Connect-PnPOnline -Url $siteUrl
Set-pnptenantsite -url $siteUrl -DefaultShareLinkRole View -DefaultLinkToExistingAccess $true View -DefaultLinkType View -DefaultSharingLinkType View -DefaultLinkPermission
Write-Output "Url: $siteUrl, Template: $siteTemplate, Title: $siteTitle"
}
Conclusion
Whenever a channel site is created , don’t just assume all sharing settings are inherited as in the case of the specific ‘People with existing access’ does not get updated correctly. Furthermore if parent team has unticked Same as organization-level setting
the default setting may be set to the permissive setting allowed within the tenant. Subsequent tenant level updates of the default sharing settings won’t apply.