User Policy On Web Applications In SharePoint 2013 Central Administration

This configuration will help admins to map the users based on zones and then provide them access to the web application.

How to configure

Let’s open Central Admin of SharePoint on your machine. On your Windows desktop screen, click Start >> Administrative Tools >> SharePoint 2013 Central Administration.


  • Run it as an administrator to have elevated privileges.
  • You will see the screenshot given below.



  • Central Admin is configured under the categories given below.
  • Click on Application Management.

  • Go to Web Applications >> Manage web applications.
  • You will see the screen, given below.



  • Here, we can see various options to work with the web applications.
  • Let’s see them from left to right in different parts of the article.

We have four categories, where the events have been categorized.

  1. Contribute
  2. Manage
  3. Security
  4. Policy

In this article, we will see “User Policy” under "Policy” category.

Web Part Security


  1. Select the Web Application and click on "User Policy".
  2. You will see the screen below.

  • Here, you add/edit/delete users and configure them according to zones.
  • Click on "Add Users".

  • Zone Select the zone where you want to add the users to.
  • Choose Users Add the users whom you want to provide access on the web application.

  • Choose Permissions
    Choose the level of access from the following options.

    • Full Control
    • Full Read
    • Deny Write
    • Deny All
  • Choose System Settings
    Using this option, you can allow or disallow the user’s account to act like system admin.

Once you click on OK, the configuration selected by you will be added by default in all the sites within the web and all the users will be configured under their zones.

This is an important feature as the policy will be inherited by all the sites under the web applications.

In this article, we saw how to manage user policy on the web application. There are more features under managing the web applications which we will see in the next article.

Until then, keep reading and keep learning !!!