AI Is Reshaping How We Use SharePoint
Microsoft has been rolling out Copilot — its AI-powered assistant built on large language models — across the Microsoft 365 suite. SharePoint is no exception. In 2025, several Copilot and AI-driven features have landed in SharePoint Online that fundamentally change how users create sites, find content, and work with documents. Here's what you need to know.
Copilot in SharePoint: Site and Page Creation
One of the most significant updates is the ability to use Copilot to create SharePoint sites and pages from a natural language prompt. Instead of manually building a communication site from scratch, you can describe what you need and Copilot will scaffold the site structure, suggest layouts, and even populate sections with relevant web parts.
For example, you might type: "Create a team site for our product launch with pages for timelines, key contacts, and FAQs." Copilot generates a ready-to-use starting point that you can then refine.
This feature is available to Microsoft 365 Copilot license holders and is being progressively rolled out across tenants.
Autofill Columns with AI
SharePoint Online has introduced Copilot-powered autofill columns in document libraries. This feature uses AI to automatically extract information from documents and populate metadata columns — without any manual input from users.
Use cases include:
- Automatically tagging a contract with its Vendor Name, Contract Value, and Expiry Date extracted from the document body.
- Classifying uploaded files into categories based on content.
- Extracting key data points from forms or reports for searchable metadata.
This significantly reduces the time employees spend manually tagging files and improves the consistency of metadata across large libraries.
Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and SharePoint Content
When users interact with Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat (formerly Bing Chat for Enterprise), it can now surface and reason over SharePoint content your organization has stored. You can ask questions like:
- "What is our current parental leave policy?" — and Copilot finds the answer in your SharePoint HR site.
- "Summarize the Q4 project report uploaded by the Finance team."
- "Who is the owner of the IT infrastructure governance document?"
This works through Microsoft Graph connectors, which index SharePoint content and make it available to Copilot in a security-trimmed way — so users only get answers from content they're permitted to see.
SharePoint Agent: Site-Specific AI Assistants
A newer feature rolling out in 2025 is the ability to create a SharePoint Agent — an AI assistant scoped specifically to a SharePoint site or set of sites. Site owners can configure an agent that answers questions based on the content within their site, acting as an always-available expert on that site's information.
This is particularly valuable for:
- HR portals — employees can ask the agent policy questions directly.
- IT support sites — the agent can troubleshoot issues using your knowledge base articles.
- Project sites — team members can get instant answers about project status, documents, and contacts.
What You Need to Access These Features
| Feature | License Required |
|---|---|
| Copilot Site/Page Creation | Microsoft 365 Copilot |
| Autofill Columns | Microsoft 365 Copilot or SharePoint Premium |
| Copilot Chat over SharePoint Content | Microsoft 365 Copilot |
| SharePoint Agents | Microsoft 365 Copilot |
Looking Ahead
Microsoft's roadmap signals that AI integration in SharePoint will only deepen throughout 2025 and beyond. Expect further enhancements to content classification, search intelligence, and workflow automation as Copilot capabilities mature. Organizations investing in SharePoint governance and metadata quality today will be best positioned to take advantage of these AI features as they roll out.
Keep an eye on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap for the latest feature release dates and availability details.