Microsoft is adding AI-powered features to SharePoint to help customers manage and optimize content for usability and value. The new features come in the form of the AI-based Knowledge Agent, which has entered public preview.
In detailing the features, Microsoft said Knowledge Agent enriches, organizes, and structures content so Copilot and agents can go beyond answering questions to delivering tangible business value. Given the volume and complexity of data that is often stored in SharePoint, an agent that can help govern that data and ensure its accuracy has great potential to improve data quality and governance.
Microsoft laid out several functions that should derive significant benefit from Knowledge Agent including:
- For IT and project teams, it will fix broken links, flag outdated pages, and locate missing content to ensure employees can find accurate and up-to-date content.
- For human resources teams, Knowledge Agent will tag policies with review dates and categories, pinpoint outdated content, and create views that support timely updates and risk management requirements.
- Sales teams will be able to find technical answers without the help of subject matter experts. They can use metadata to locate responses from product documentation, contracts, and specs, quickly and independently.
Knowledge Agent Features
Knowledge Agent assists customers in ensuring content is ready for use by AI models, is fresh and discoverable, and no longer requires major time investments in manual governance.
It improves answers supplied by AI by tagging and classifying files with auto-filled metadata. When grounded on libraries with pre-populated metadata, Microsoft said there should be a significant benefit to response quality for users of Copilot, Knowledge Agent, and custom agents.
Knowledge Agent maintains metadata hygiene and policy alignment by providing suggestions, labeling and admin controls. This ensures AI-powered responses are trustworthy and aligned with organizational standards.
The agent suggests autofill columns based on content and user input, ensuring consistent organization and better discoverability across libraries and sites for improved metadata hygiene —without manual maintenance.
It creates AI-generated views that sort, filter, and group documents based on their metadata so users can quickly find content relevant to their needs and get immediate value from content.
Users can describe what they need — such as identifying new invoices that exceed a specified threshold — and Knowledge Agent builds a workflow to manage that process.
Adaptability
Knowledge Agent ensures SharePoint documents remain clean and current by analyzing search behavior to detect content gaps and unmet user needs. In response, it will take actions such as automatically fixing broken links and retiring inactive pages.
Knowledge Agent’s menu adapts to individuals’ roles, surfacing useful actions they can take. For example, from a SharePoint site that a user owns, they’ll see options such as “Improve this site,” which can prompt them to fill content gaps in response to user behavior.
From within a document library that a user owns or manages, they’ll see “Organize this library,” “Set up rules,” and “Create new views,” which helps autofill metadata, classify documents, generate workflows, and create views to make content easier to navigate.
Knowledge Agent is built directly into SharePoint. It’s available through a new floating button that appears across SharePoint surfaces. Users can click the button to activate Knowledge Agent and open a context-aware menu tailored to the file, page, or document library they’re working on.
Users can access the Public Preview of Knowledge Agent via tenant-level opt-in through their Microsoft 365 Copilot license.
More on Microsoft Agents and Copilots:
Microsoft Strengthens Copilot Studio With Real-Time Agent Security
Microsoft Delivers Role-Specific Copilots
Microsoft Introduces Copilot Studio for All Users
How Microsoft Copilot Mode Could Revolutionize Web Browsing
2 Models Developed Internally at Microsoft Underscore Rapid AI Rampup
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