SharePoint: Using agents, AI-powered authoring, and automation, for high impact content management
With over 2 billion files added and 2 million sites created per day, SharePoint is the world’s most powerful and flexible content management platform. SharePoint allows you to create stunning intranets, orchestrate powerful workflows and develop business-critical applications, while also powering a breadth of innovations across Microsoft 365 in Teams, OneDrive, and Copilot. The SharePoint event today showcased an exciting breadth of innovations across SharePoint. With these innovations, we believe SharePoint is the best platform for managing content for AI, and the best application for using AI to achieve high impact business outcomes. The innovations shown today span three key areas – SharePoint agents: create and manage AI experts for your SharePoint content with just a few clicks. AI-powered authoring for stunning intranets: use AI to easily create beautiful looking intranet sites using the best of what the web has to offer. Automation for streamlining business workflows: automate critical content-based business processes with AI. Visit the new event microsite on adoption.microsoft.com | Access all new videos, adoption resources, hackathon details, and more: https://aka.ms/SharePointEvent/Adoption https://aka.ms/SharePointEvent/Adoption. SharePoint agents: AI experts for every user At Microsoft Ignite 2024, we announced the general availability of SharePoint agents. These agents are tailored assistants scoped to specific SharePoint sites and content, becoming your subject matter experts working on behalf of a person, team, or organization to handle simple tasks or more complex business processes. Every SharePoint site now includes an agent grounded to that site’s data ready for immediate use. With just a few clicks users can easily create their own custom agents with specialized skills scoped to their specific SharePoint files and folders. And of course, agents adhere to existing SharePoint content permissions and governance polices, ensuring your data and content are used in a safe and secure manner. We see our customers using agents today for a range of scenarios such as onboarding, product support, planning and more. Amey is just one such customer who is using SharePoint Agents to get the most out of their content and knowledge real estate on SharePoint. AI-powered authoring: Create and communicate with AI. Today you saw a range of capabilities that allow you to build SharePoint sites that look better than ever. With improvements like flexible layouts, design ideas, co-authoring, and Copilot throughout the experience, this represents a huge step forward for SharePoint’s UX capabilities. Creating high quality, engaging content on SharePoint has never been easier. Creating with Copilot With the new "create with Copilot" feature you can either use a prompt or use a selection of templates to create an engaging page, grounded in the content of your choosing, in minutes. This allows you to spend less time on the mechanics of creating the page and instead focus on the core message and content to maximize engagement and impact. Using Microsoft 365 Copilot in SharePoint to help create and design the sites you want with ease, and assistance. Design ideas: Augment creativity with AI. Design Ideas leverages your content and provides several professionally designed suggestions, automatically taking your content-specific requirements into account. You can easily invoke Design Ideas with just the click of a single button and in seconds, transform your sections into user-ready content. You can even use Design Ideas starting with blank sections or plain blocks of text! Design Ideas in the right pane of a SharePoint page showcasing different suggestions. Flexible sections: Build unconstrained For the longest time ever, SharePoint restricted you to building within the three columns framework. We heard your feedback - with Flexible sections, you now have access to all 12 columns on the SharePoint canvas! Move images, text, and all your other favorite web parts around with fine control, and freely resize them in an easy, intuitive manner. And with AI-based authoring features like Design Ideas, it allows you to take full advantage of Flexible sections to provide the best possible layout recommendations for your content. 12 column canvas with Flexible Sections on a SharePoint page. These innovations and more have been rolling out to customers over the past several months. See how customers such as Avanade are using these capabilities to create engaging and beautiful content, and how Takeda sees a future with the latest innovations. AI and automation for streamlining your work Billions of pieces of content are added to SharePoint each day relevant to both, small team collaborations, and broad company-wide initiatives. This puts SharePoint in the middle of business processes both big and small. From out of the box simple approvals and automation, to site, doclib, and list templates and all the way to Power Platform integration – Automation in SharePoint spans the continuum of business processes to get work done faster and at higher quality. As just one example, over 3 billion Power Automate flows run against SharePoint every week. In this next phase of innovation, we are excited to share more about how automation and AI integrate together. Enhance business processes with AI Autofill is one feature that enriches content by extracting and generating structured metadata at scale – increasing the value of your content real estate. Using a natural language prompt you can describe the metadata you need, easily classifying, extracting, or generating new content as metadata. This will automate the process of new and modified files, saving you time and enhancing your business processes. Price change updates As part of our commitment to make advanced AI accessible to everyone, we are also excited to announce that SharePoint Autofill pricing has adjusted from $0.05 per page to $0.005 per page starting in March 2025! Learn more about SharePoint pay-as-you-go services. Next steps We are excited to announce the next SharePoint Hackathon - and invite you, our customers, partners, and MVPs, to craft experiences using AI and the latest SharePoint features. See more details and register here! SharePoint Hackathon - Share your designs and engage with likeminded makers: https://aka.ms/SharePointHackathon. And finally, I personally invite you all to attend the Microsoft 365 Community Conference (May 6-8, 2025) in Las Vegas. We’re showcasing the latest news and best practices for SharePoint and M365 with leaders, product makers, partners, and MVPs. We can’t wait to hear more about how you put Microsoft 365 to work in your organization. Thank you! Learn more and explore! To skill up your SharePoint IQ even further – review the full event + AMA, visit our new microsite, register for the hackathon, watch our new, in-depth SharePoint learning series videos from our incredible product team members: "SharePoint: From concept to creation to impact + Live AMA" New SharePoint Event microsite on adoption.microsoft.com SharePoint Hackathon + upcoming webinar series YouTube playlist of all 17 new video assets (Main event, learning series, customer voices, and upcoming hackathon webinars) 5-part SharePoint learning series SharePoint customer stories: Amey, Takeda, and Avanade The trust and feedback from you all, the SharePoint community, developers, customers and MVPs have helped us evolve SharePoint to be the best content cloud solution in the world. Thank you! Related resources Getting started with SharePoint is a breeze! Check out the latest tutorial on building a SharePoint site. NEW SharePoint agent adoption guide (adoption.microsoft.com) SharePoint agents (adoption.microsoft.com) Subscribe to the SharePoint community blog Add and upvote feature request: SharePoint Feedback PortalSJust One Week Away from Our Digital SharePoint Event!
Join us next week Wed, Jan. 29, 2025, at 9 AM – 10 AM PST for our upcoming SharePoint event! 📝Register today-https://aka.ms/SharePointEvent And now, a word from Jeff_Teper about what to expect from the event: From Concept, to Creation, to Impact! Join Jeff Teper, CJ Tan, & Melissa Torres to explore the latest SharePoint capabilities and see how our customers are leveraging some of the latest tools. Discover new features, tips, and tricks to push boundaries. Whether you create sites, publish news, manage workflows, collaborate, or just want to learn more, this event is for you! Skill up your SharePoint IQ with the latest on: Simpler authoring & more compelling content – Lower barriers to create professional-looking content and ensure you can harness the best of what the web has to offer for your intranet Greater engagement & reach – Scale your message to meet people where they work. Copilot and agents, powerful workflows, and automation– Build automated subject matter experts and save your team time while managing and automating content workflows. We will also have dedicated time during the event for live Q&A where you will get to interact with multiple product makers – bring your questions and feedback. Summary of event information Event name | SharePoint: From Concept, to Creation, to Impact + Live AMA Date/time | Wednesday, January 29, 2025, 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM PST. Location | Online - Register today: https://aka.ms/SharePointEvent. Add to calendar | Save this event to your calendar. Engage with us on social You can engage with our current social posts or show us your excitment using #SharePoint or #SharePointevent M365 LinkedIn SharePoint X social handle Related resources Jeff Teper announcement blog-https://aka.ms/SharePointEvent/Blog "Ignite 2024: Agents in SharePoint now in general availability” by Adam Harmetz. Microsoft Ignite 2024 breakout session: Reimagine content management with agents in SharePoint. Subscribe to the SharePoint blog. Follow us on social. Learn more about SharePoint.8 Components of SharePoint Information Architecture
What is Information Architecture (IA)? IA is the practice of organizing, structuring, and labelling content in an effective and sustainable way. It ensures that information is easy to find, manage, and use. In the context of SharePoint, IA involves defining site structures, navigation, content types, metadata, and governance policies. As a business decision maker, investing in robust information architecture can be transformative. The greatest benefit is the enhanced efficiency and productivity it brings to our organization. The goal is to reduce time spent searching while minimizing duplication. Establishing good information architecture early on is crucial. It lays the foundation for growth and scalability. We hope you can avoid the pitfalls of a cluttered and chaotic environment that can hinder productivity. Make your SharePoint intuitive and manageable, and one that can adapt seamlessly to evolving business needs. While designing, or redesigning, your own IA, consider establishing, optimizing, and utilizing the following eight key SharePoint components: Root Site Hub sites Home sites SharePoint start page Organization Assets Application Catalog Learning Hub and Viva Learning SharePoint Premium: Content Center We will spend the rest of this article explaining each component, including screenshots, links, plus tips and tricks along the way. Root Site The root site in SharePoint Online is a special site that is provisioned automatically when you set up your Microsoft 365 subscription. This site serves as the top-level site for your organization's SharePoint environment. The URL of the root site typically follows the format https://yourorganization.sharepoint.com, where "yourorganization" is the name of your organization – i.e., for Contoso, its https://contoso.sharepoint.com. This site is THE base element in information architecture in the cloud. If your environment was set up before April of 2019, then your root site is a Classic Teams Site. To best utilize the Root as your Intranet, we need to replace the Classic Teams Site with a modern communication Site. So, the Root Site has a special functionality which is available to SharePoint admins, and it is called replace site. 💡 Learn how to modernize your root site and then review the Home site information below. Hub sites A second key element is Hub Sites – the connective tissue between sites. Hub sites help organize sites based on any classification like departments/business units, Locations, Projects, etc. As part of Modern Architecture, it is not recommended to use Sub Sites, so if we have all independent site collections, Hub is the component which will establish relationships between sites. Below are some key benefits of using hub sites: Shared navigation and brand Roll-up of content and scoped, connected search A home (page) destination for the hub 💡 Learn more about SharePoint hub sites, and guidance for planning your hub sites. Home site The third key element of information architecture is Home Site. A SharePoint home site provides a customized landing experience that reflects the organization’s brand, voice, and priorities. A SharePoint home site also serves as the gateway to other portals in your organization’s intranet. Additionally, it provides 2 Major Capabilities – Global Navigation – The Navigation you have on your App Bar. So independent of where you are on SharePoint you always have access to Global Navigation. Viva Connections – Using Viva Connections you can design your Dashboard, and which can be directly rendered on teams, even we have capability to render your Intranet on Teams using Viva Connections. showcase how you can design your home site. 💡 Learn more about planning, building, and launching a SharePoint home site for your organization. SharePoint start page This is a page which is built on top of user context and is personalized based on user activity. Users can see the sites they are following, sites they frequently visit, and the latest news published on the site’s user has access to and featured links. This is a key element as it breaks the boundary of working on a specific device. Additionally, the SharePoint start page provides a start’ing point for people to create their own sites and pages. utilize the platform. Organization Assets The next key element in IA is Organization Assets, if your company is looking to save and manage files for the entire organization to use, you have the capability to define one or more libraries as an Organization Assets Library. Examples Images and Office Templates. When a user designs a Modern SharePoint Page by edit it and adding web parts, especially the ones which use file picker, when you have Organization Assets Library configured, users see an additional vertical called “Your Organization” which can store images and logos which can be used across organization. modern SharePoint page with an Image web part in Edit mode, helping people access and use organization images and graphic assets. Another capability is Office Templates, which enables users to select the tab for their organization where they see Office templates when they create a new Office document. an org-approved, published template which can be reused across the company to provide consistency and common branding. 💡 Learn more about Organization Assets Library. Application Catalog It is a special site collection that holds all custom built or third-party applications. The Application Catalog allows Tenant Administrators and Global Administrators to deploy custom code. For the very first time when a tenant is provisioned an Administrator needs to provision the application catalog. There can be 2 types of application catalogs - Tenant App Catalog Site Collection App Catalog Based on governance and information architecture it is a good idea to have a defined approach on which applications should be deployed at tenant level, and which one should be deployed at site collection level. If a custom application is meant to be used by multiple sites on the tenant, it is a good idea to deploy it on Tenant App Catalog. third-party components deployed. 💡 Learn more about Managing Apps on Application Catalog Additionally, for custom code locally scoped for a specific site collection, it is a good idea to use site collection app catalog. These are not created by default; they can be provisioned by running PowerShell cmdlets for any specific site collection. The Above Architecture Diagram explains how Application Catalogs are provisioned in Microsoft 365. 💡 Learn more about Provisioning and using site collection application catalog. Learning Hub Learning hub can be a distinct SharePoint site collection, created as a home for Learning and Trainings in your tenant. As a site collection administrator, one can use this site to host custom training content. t with a Hero Webpart. displaying multiple folders which are security trimmed based on Mail-Enabled Security Groups for that specific Department. Viva Learning can showcase your custom training modules alongside other paid training services you subscribe to, making learning part of daily work as Viva Learning right within Microsoft Teams. This is a great component while thinking about your IA. This can help in having consistent training methodology and better consumption and adoption of training content to increase knowledge and skill building. Viva Learning home page within Teams showing a blend of training from the SharePoint Learning Hub and LinkedIn Learning. 💡 Learn More about Viva Learning here Content Center Syntex Content Center is a site template which is another modern template apart from communication sites and modern team sites. This site template has a very specific function and is used to build and manage document processing models, applying models to document libraries to automatically classify files and extract information. This capability is part of SharePoint Premium and provides capability for processing a lot of documents as you consider planning and implementation across all content types and scale use cases. – Used to host document processing models. 💡 This comprises of 2 key elements Syntex in general and then specific details to learn about content center. Bringing it all together... Overall, these are the eight key elements which define your core information architecture for SharePoint in Microsoft 365. When we connect them together it would define an organized IA, and an expanded use of your SharePoint investment in Microsoft 365. A well-designed Information Architecture is crucial for any organization as it ensures that information is organized, structured, and labeled in an effective and sustainable way. This makes it easy for users to find, manage, and use the information they need, which in turn enhances efficiency and productivity. A well-designed IA involves defining site structures, navigation, content types, metadata, and governance policies. This reduces the time spent searching for information and minimizes duplication, ultimately leading to a more intuitive and manageable environment that can adapt seamlessly to evolving business needs. -Prakul
