[January 2022 Update: the pricing/licensing changes discussed below have been announced, see the January blog post here for more details.]

 

Content is the lifeblood of organizations, carrying decisions, transactions, and knowledge among employees and stakeholders. But the flood of unstructured content – documents, videos, images, and more – can overwhelm organizations that still use manual tools to handle their content.

 

At Ignite last year, we launched SharePoint Syntex, Microsoft's content management solution that uses AI to turn unstructured files into organized information to help you find, protect, and automate business practices.  And it’s been a busy year as we’ve added new capabilities to support ease of use, precise document modeling, analytics, and compliance.

 

Let’s look at how one of our customers, the London Stock Exchange Group, uses Syntex to help manage complex investment documents.

 

London Stock Exchange Group supercharges investor analysis with Syntex

London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) is one of the world’s largest providers of financial data and infrastructure. Working with over 40,000 customers and over 400,000 end users across 190 countries, LSEG provides information, insights, and technology to enable customers to execute critical investing, trading, and risk decisions with confidence.

 

Every week, LSEG analysts spend 15 to 20 hours, on average, reading and processing hundreds of investor information documents. With Syntex, LSED was able to reduce that weekly time to 90 minutes or less. Learn more in today’s customer story “London Stock Exchange Group supercharges investor analysis process from 20 hours to 90 minutes with SharePoint Syntex”.

 

Looking forward

At Ignite this week, you can learn more about Syntex in our on-demand sessions:

• “Accelerating business content process with Knowledge and Content Services  – Viva Topics, SharePoint Syntex, Search, and more" (OD118) | Speakers: CJ Tan, Chris McNulty, and Sean Squires
• "Learn how SharePoint Syntex uses AI to transform the future of business content processes" | Speakers: Ankit Rastogi and Sugandha Jha

This year we move Syntex beyond document classification - providing more features to deliver broad user value. Let’s look.

 

 

Content assembly

Syntex models create structured metadata from unstructured content to add tags and policy labels to your files. Many times, though, you may need to rebuild common document types – nondisclosure agreements, contracts, purchase orders, and more – where the basics stay the same from one doc to the next. Perhaps only the company name or address change.

 

Content assembly delivers intelligent document templates for Microsoft 365. Launching soon, you’ll be able to build new content from your existing data sources, leveraging our AI models to turn existing documents into automatic templates, to create contracts, invoices, statement of works and more.

Content assembly in Syntex

 

 Content assembly will roll out in December 2021 and is being tracked on the Microsoft 365 public roadmap as item 88717.

 

Contract management

Syntex contract management lets you govern contract creation, analysis, and lifecycles, with standard clause libraries, workflow driven approvals, automatic classification, and lifecycle management. Our solution, which can be installed from the SharePoint lookbook, will allow you to accelerate these common processes. The lookbook is a browsable online catalog of site design and templates published by Microsoft. And although you can use them as a visual guide to your own site configuration, you can also apply the templates to your sites and Syntex content centers on demand.

 

This solution will also roll out in December 2021 and is being tracked on the Microsoft 365 public roadmap as item 88713.

 

Search and analysis

Adding rich metadata is powerful - but how do you use the metadata to get back to your content? You can use advanced Keyword Query Language (KQL) but that’s not always an easy process.

 

With advanced metadata search, Syntex users can select an icon in the search box that unlocks a metadata-based search form in Syntex & SharePoint document libraries. Initially the form shows five fields – keyword, people, name, type, and modified. This enhancement is rolling out now and is being tracked on the Microsoft 365 public roadmap as item 85549.

Metadata search powered by Syntex

 

 

And soon, you’ll be able to filter by custom content types – e.g., not “Document” or “Folder.”  Content type filtering will start rolling out by the end of November 2021.

 

Business process

Alerts and reports

We’re adding a visualization service to let you create beautiful experiences to analyze and automate content processes seamlessly. You’ll be able to automatically build visualizations of library metadata with Power BI and share them with other users. (This capability will also be available for SharePoint users). This feature will roll out in December 2021 and is being tracked on the Microsoft 365 public roadmap as item 88706.

 

We’re also adding a no-code rules engine to drive content alerts. Based on the rules wizard in Microsoft Lists, alerts use a simple, no-code wizard to send updates when documents are added or deleted, or when someone edits metadata.

 

Library alerts will also be available to SharePoint users . The feature is being tracked as roadmap ID 88710 and will begin rollout in December 2021.

 

Finally, we’re adding support for document metadata as a source for the SharePoint-based Quick chart webpart for doc libraries. (Quick chart library support will also be available to legacy SharePoint users.) This integration is being tracked on the roadmap as item 88716 and is rolling out now as well.

 

Model updates

Prebuilt models

Document modeling and automatic classification have been the heart of Syntex since day one. And we’re continuing to enrich our core content processing engine, adding support for prebuilt models to handle files like invoices or receipts. These will be available through the content center. This feature will roll out in December 2021 and is being tracked on the Microsoft 365 public roadmap as item 88713.

 

Other upcoming updates include:

• Local model creation - This capability empowers you to create local document understanding models in Team and Communication sites, in addition to a Syntex content center. This feature will roll out in November 2021.
• Card views - We’re giving you a new “card view” to highlight extracted metadata in libraries with Syntex models attached. This feature will roll out in November 2021.

Content processing is tied to workflow – which is why we’re also proud to roll out our Power Automate integrations. Using the Power Platform, you can use a custom flow to trigger single file or batch processing for existing content with a form processing model. You can also use Power Automate to send a custom email after a file finished processing with a Syntex model. These updates will ship later in November 2021.

 

Starting in December, you’ll be able to run form processing models against structured documents in French, German, Italian, and Spanish. This feature will begin to rollout in December 2021.

 

And we’ll also be shipping additional content center design templates to the online lookbook catalog, as mentioned above, in November 2021.

 

Image Tagging

We’re adding a richer classifier for image tags to make your images easier to recall. Currently, when you upload images to a library, we create a column named Image Tags which extracts tags from within the file and automatically adds any of 37 basic descriptive labels to help with search.

 

With this change, we’re updating our classifier for Syntex users to include thousands of different labels, making your images even easier to discover and recall. This feature will begin rollout to Targeted Release customers with Syntex user licensing in December 2021 and is tracked under roadmap ID 88715.

 

In addition, you’ll be able to manually add or remove tags from the Image Tags column. The tags will be more prominent in the UX and will also appear in the details pane. Also, users will now be able to provide feedback on irrelevant tags by using the “Give feedback” option within the details pane of the document library, to help Microsoft improve the accuracy of future versions of the tagger. Learn more about image tag functionality: Work with Image Tags in a Syntex library              .

 

Working with knowledge and Microsoft Viva Topics

Syntex enriches content with metadata, making it easier to turn that content into knowledge for Microsoft Search and for Viva Topics. Here’s how:

 

Automatic topic access control

Syntex automatically adds Microsoft Information protection labels to content based on your models. Then, Viva Topics uses those sensitivity labels to exclude content from topic discovery, even when shared with overly broad permissions. This improves multi-level security.

Accelerating knowledge capture

Now, you can automatically add Syntex based taxonomy terms to term sets and content. In Viva Topics, knowledge managers can select terms from the taxonomy service to create topics and pull in related content.

 

For example, if you capture a contract from a new customer in Syntex, the customer’s name can be added to the term set and tagged in the doc. Knowledge managers can use the term to create a new topic page with tagged content automatically included.

Improving employee experience

In the future, you will be able to use knowledge from Viva Topics automatically when you generate new content in Syntex content assembly. Accelerating content creation improves the quality of employee experience by minimizing hunting, reading, summarizing, and pasting efforts, allowing employees to focus on what’s important.

 

Licensing Update

We’re going to make it easier for everyone to unleash the power of Syntex. Every Microsoft 365 user will be able to build models to classify documents and extract metadata, access content centers, and work with processed documents. Previously, these capabilities had been limited to licensed Syntex users.

Our new capabilities for document generation, vertical solutions like contracts, advanced metadata search, and image tagging will be available with user subscription licensing, and pay as you go models for users who occasionally need to process documents. These updates and prices will be effective January 1, 2022. Final pricing details on user subscription licenses and capacity plans will be announced soon.

 

[Update: the pricing/licensing changes have been announced, see the January blog post here for more details.]

 

Learn more at Microsoft Ignite

 

Keynotes and core themes

Hear from Microsoft leadership revealing the latest innovations shaping the flexible, innovative, and secure business environments of the future.

• “Microsoft Ignite Opening” (KEY01) | Speaker: Satya Nadella | November 2, 8:15 AM – 8:50 AM
• “Empower everyone for a new world of hybrid work” (CTS01) | Speaker: Jared Spataro | November 2, 8:55 AM – 9:20 AM

Breakout sessions

Take the opportunity to select the sessions best suited for your role and interests. All breakouts are packed with news, demos, customer stories, and insights into product and solution strategy.

• “Rich, secure content and collaboration for hybrid work” (BRK206) | Speakers: Jeff Teper, Lincoln DeMaris, Ian Todd, Naomi Moneypenny, Navjot Virk, Cathy Dew, and Yina Arenas | November 3, 8:30 AM – 9:00 AM
• Related ATE after | “Ask the Experts: Content and collaboration across OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams” (CONATEBRK206) | Speakers: Numerous product experts | November 3, 9:30 AM – 10:00 AM [live, interactive]
• New Microsoft Mechanics show with Omar Shahine, CVP SharePoint and OneDrive | “Improve your hybrid work and collaboration experiences across Microsoft 365”

On-demand sessions

• “Accelerating business content process with Knowledge and Content Services  – Viva Topics, SharePoint Syntex, Search, and more" (OD118) | Speakers: CJ Tan, Chris McNulty, and Sean Squires
• “What's new for file experiences in OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams in Microsoft 365” (OD109) | Speakers: Ankita Kirti, Arjun Tomar, and Carter Green
• “Video and Microsoft Stream in Microsoft 365 - Powering Communication, Training, and Knowledge Sharing for the Hybrid Workplace (OD110) | Speakers: Chris Pratley and Owen Paulus
• “Learn how SharePoint Syntex uses AI to transform the future of business content processes” | Speakers: Ankit Rastogi and Sugandha Jha
• “What’s new for Microsoft Search” | Speaker: Bill Baer 

 

 

And in 2022, look for even more Syntex innovation to help you bring your content into the flow of work. We’ll share those updates here on the Tech Community. Thanks.