It’s hard to believe that Microsoft 365 Copilot debuted just over a year ago. Since its launch, we’ve reimagined how our SharePoint content platform and workflows can harness Copilot to drive efficiencies and deliver next-generation reasoning and planning capabilities. We've added opportunities for Copilot to help create stunning, impactful sites and accelerate information retrieval and reasoning with SharePoint agents, all while maintaining and adhering to your security and governance protocols.

The rapid pace of SharePoint innovation over the past year has been remarkable and the engagement and feedback from customers has been incredibly collaborative.

As we start the new year we’ve prepared a quick summary of the key AI innovations, enhancements, and new features we have introduced in general availability. You'll also find resources to help you get started making the most of these capabilities in your individual work, team, or organization in 2025.

Also, remember to check out MS Learn and MS Support to dive deeper into these features.

Automate and streamline critical business processes

In 2024, we embraced Copilot to further enhance our content experiences to help boost employee productivity, streamline workflows, and supercharge how knowledge is shared and acted upon. We are working to hone in on the features that enable discovery and optimize content lifecycles in 2025, but let’s look back at 2024....

 

 

SharePoint agents general availability

One of our most significant releases this year was SharePoint agents, which turn SharePoint sites into scoped agents for specific needs, projects, or tasks to enable content discovery and knowledge sharing for better decision-making and productivity.

Every SharePoint site will now include a prebuilt agent, or users can create their own customized agents grounded on SharePoint files, folders, or sites. These agents provide instant access to real-time information and insights from your site content in the flow of your work. Whether it is a simple “prompt and ​response” agent or a more advanced autonomous agent, SharePoint agents help transform how work gets done.​

 

Learn more about our SharePoint agents promotion here

Every SharePoint site includes a ready-made agent based on the site's content, or users can create their own.

Effortlessly build impactful sites

We are entering a new era in site creation. With Copilot in SharePoint, you can simply describe your site's needs and goals, and Copilot takes care of the heavy lifting, helping you create impactful, well-designed sites. With SharePoint brand center you now have a centralized branding management application to help ensure all your most critical brand assets are in one place.

 

Copilot in SharePoint for natural language site authoring

We want to make it easier and faster for anyone to create beautiful, content rich SharePoint sites. Use Copilot in SharePoint to rewrite text or news posts, get text suggestions, use natural language to create pages, apply branding and theming, change tone, adjust typography and fonts, create grids and layouts, add video and imagery, and use animations and motion.

Use Copilot in SharePoint to get suggestions on your web copy.

 

SharePoint brand center launch

New in 2024, the SharePoint brand center introduced a central location for your organization’s site owners to manage and create brand assets for Microsoft 365. The new brand center brings together the power of your organization’s asset libraries and your organization's brand assets to create and manage product application of your brand into Microsoft 365 products.

SharePoint brand center.

 

Expand AI-powered content management features and experiences

We've also continued our efforts to help you enhance, manage, and extend your content with AI- powered content management features and experiences within the SharePoint platform.

 

Autofill columns for managing files and metadata

Autofill columns use AI to extract, summarize, generate, or evaluate content from the files uploaded to a SharePoint library. Users can write a simple prompt in natural language, and the system will auto-populate the answer to a newly added column. For example, you can ask “What is the deadline for this project?” or state “Summarize this document in three sentences,” then run the Autofill action, and the column will populate for each file in that library, and all new files added—whether the answer is short text, longform response, numbers, date, choice, hyperlink, or currency. For example, a procurement team could create an autofill column that lists the different vendor names, contacts, or emails. Alternatively, an inventory management team could create autofill columns to help catalog their documents by supplier, reorder dates, units ordered, etc. These columns can then be used to search, filter, drive workflows and compliance, and more. Best of all, no one had to painstakingly fill in the value for each document, autofill does this for you!

 

 

 

Use SharePoint Autofill columns to set a prompt to extract, summarize, or generate content from files in your SharePoint document library. In this example, an Autofill column is set up to extract the product name from the documents.

 

Digital transformation continues to shape a global workplace where co-workers, partners, and customers are spread across the world. Document translation plays a crucial role in supporting this global marketplace. With the SharePoint platform, we've prioritized innovating document translation through AI. In February, we announced the general availability of document translation to enable instant file translation. Since then, we’ve introduced features to translate at scale and meet the unique translation needs of your business.

 

Simultaneous multiple language document translation

SharePoint and OneDrive now support document translation in multiple languages at once. This feature significantly enhances productivity and efficiency by enabling you to trSimultaneous multiple language document translation anslate documents into multiple languages simultaneously. Previously, translations were limited to one language at a time. 

 

Choose up to ten languages at a time to help expedite document translation.

 

 

Custom glossary support availability

Every sector, industry, and business has its own specialized terminology so we now provide custom glossary support where you can define your unique words and their translation to handle these specialized terms.

 

Use a custom glossary when translating specialized content.

 

Add approvals to any document library

Because document libraries are built on the Microsoft Lists platform, you can now establish simple review and approval business flows. Find this feature in the Automate dropdown menu from the command bar in SharePoint document libraries in Microsoft 365 and move into the Microsoft Teams Approvals app.

 

Once enabled, you'll see the "Approval status" column appear so you can track approvals in SharePoint and connect with the Approvals app in Microsoft Teams.

 

Seeing the need for both flexibility and time to value, we created the simple document processing prebuilt model, which uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and deep learning AI. This is a good option if you need to extract key-value pairs, tables, and selection marks from documents—such as barcodes or checkboxes—that aren’t recognized in our other models. Simple document processing serves as a valuable intermediary between prebuilt and custom models, providing maximum flexibility in analyzing your content. 

 

In the Models library, you will now see an option for Simple document processing.

 

SharePoint eSignature market expansion

SharePoint eSignature platform is now generally available. This is comprised of the native SharePoint eSignature as well as third party integrations such as Adobe Acrobat Sign and DocuSign.

 

Native SharePoint eSignature in now available in Canada, Europe, and APAC, with global availability planned for 2025. We also introduced sequential signing to allow requestors the ability to specify the order of signing.

 

Adobe Acrobat Sign and DocuSign eSignature integration with SharePoint eSignature is now globally available.

 

Private Preview AI-powered SharePoint Agreements Solution

Currently in limited GA, the SharePoint Agreements solution is an AI-powered, end-to-end solution designed to automate and streamline the workflow for managing business critical documents from template to record—right from the Microsoft 365 tools you use each day. The Agreements solution, accessed through a Microsoft Teams app includes standardized native Microsoft Word agreement templates and valuable AI-driven insights to save time, surface insights, and ensure enterprise grade security for your most important high-value content. Features such as automated alerts, deviation analysis, automatic routing and approvals, and AI-based reviews all work to accelerate the document lifecycle workflow while helping to reduce errors with complex tasks. Features such as automated alerts, deviation analysis, automatic routing and approvals, and AI-based reviews all work to accelerate the document lifecycle workflow while helping to reduce errors with complex tasks.

 

 

Strengthen content governance and enhance data protection

Effective content governance has always been crucial for maintaining the integrity, security, and relevance of organizational content. AI’s power to make content more discoverable than ever before amplifies this need. SharePoint Advanced Management has been a critical tool this year for our customers to prepare their content for Copilot.

 

SharePoint Advanced Management capabilities now included within Microsoft 365 Copilot

To meet this need, SharePoint Advanced Management capabilities are included in Microsoft 365 Copilot to help provide built-in content governance reports and controls. These reports and controls help identify and mitigate oversharing and content sprawl.

 

SharePoint Advanced Management.

 

Site access review in SharePoint Advanced Management

Site access reviews in the SharePoint admin center allow IT administrators to delegate the process of reviewing data access governance reports to site owners of overshared sites.

This review process is crucial because:

• IT administrators can't access file-level or item-level details due to compliance reasons.
• Site owners are best positioned to review and address oversharing issues for their own sites.
  
  

Restricted Content Discovery

Ensuring that accountable groups or individuals within the organization can access, describe, protect, and control data quality is fundamental to governance. Restricted Content Discovery (RCD), announced in September, started rolling out in public preview in early December. RCD allows you to configure policies to restrict search and Copilot from reasoning over select data sites, leaving the site access unchanged but preventing the site’s content from being surfaced by Copilot or organization-wide search. It can be controlled granularly for both Team and Communication site types. 

Restricted Access Control

Restricted Access Control (RAC) policy insights, available now in SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM), is a powerful tool for enhancing security and governance. RAC policies allow you to restrict access to specific sites and content exclusively to designated user groups. This ensures that only authorized users can access sensitive information, even if individual files or folders have been overshared. Restricted Access Control policy insights enhance RAC by delivering reports of users who have been denied access to one or more sites through RAC policy enforcement. 

 

Enterprise Application Insights

Understanding how applications interact with your content is as important as understanding how people are accessing content. Enterprise Application Insights, which became available in December, provides detailed reports that help you discover all the SharePoint sites that are allowed access by third-party applications registered in your tenant. It also offers insights into the application's permissions and request counts, enabling you to take further actions to strengthen site security. 

Data Access Governance for OneDrive

Proper file permissions are essential for safeguarding digital assets, preserving confidentiality, and maintaining file integrity. Data access governance, which became available in December, empowers you with the ability to view reports that identify OneDrive sites that contain potentially overshared or sensitive content. You can use these reports to assess and apply appropriate security and compliance policies. 

 

Document processing features now included in pay-as-you-go services

We are now including access to the following content management capabilities at no charge, for users who have pay-as-you-go services. These features include:

• Content query
• Universal annotations
• Contracts management accelerator
• Accounts payable accelerator
• Taxonomy features
• PDF merge and extract pages

We’re excited for the year ahead!

 

As we step into the new year, it’s the perfect time to take a step back and evaluate how we are approaching content management in our organizations. Where are the opportunities to streamline and accelerate processes, surface information more effectively, and uncover deeper insights from data?

 

From automating routine tasks to enhancing search and discovery to foster seamless collaboration, we are committed to advancing how SharePoint empowers you to create, manage, and share content. Our goal is to help you shift your focus from repetitive tasks to high-value, creative work. Let this new year be an opportunity to explore how SharePoint can redefine your approach to content management and set the foundation for lasting success.

 

As the year starts, make a resolution to try the new features released in 2024, using Copilot or with included capacity for many of the services noted above.

 

Join us this month at upcoming SharePoint events

Throughout the year, we want to build connections with our Program Managers, Engineers, Designers, and others so we can continue to share learnings and best practices. Here are just a couple of opportunities coming in January and look for more to come later this year as we gear up for our Microsoft MVP Summit and the Microsoft 365 Conference.

 

• January 9: Agents in SharePoint AMA | Microsoft Community Hub 
• January 14: Intrazone Podcast covering use cases and learnings using agents in SharePoint  
• January 29: Microsoft SharePoint: From concept to creation to impact + Live AMA 

Rachel Plotnick joins us for the first show of 2025 to discuss her book “Power Button” and the research she did, and why we love/hate buttons so much. We also discuss her upcoming book “License to Spill” as well as the research she’s doing on energy drinks.

Join the discussion

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Featuring:

• Rachel Plotnick – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky
• Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
• Jerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

• RachelPlotnick.com
• Touchscreens Are Out, and Tactile Controls Are Back.
• Power Button
• License To Spill

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Download audio: https://op3.dev/e/https://cdn.changelog.com/uploads/podcast/623/the-changelog-623.mp3

As of Monday this week, my company Petabridge turns 10 years old. I’ve been my own boss for longer, but my tenure at Petabridge is nearly 5x my tenure at every other company I’ve founded and at every place I’ve worked.

When you set out on a new venture, rarely do you expect things to go this well or last this long - so I decided to take some time to cobble together 10 lessons that have kept me sane throughout my entire odyssey with Petabridge.

I’m teaching myself some new tricks, practicing that “creative disruption” / “creative destruction” I talk about in the video - hence why we’re doing today’s post in video format.

For those of you who are not inclined to watch the video, the lessons:

1. Enjoy building for its own sake
2. You can’t take things personally
3. No one is going to thank you
4. Be ok with saying “no” regularly
5. Automate everything you do periodically
6. Don’t worry about what others are doing
7. You will never get it all done
8. Practice creative disruption periodically
9. Actively seek negative feedback
10. Celebrate your successes, briefly

Edited By Brandi Neal, Radical Candor podcast writer and producer, and director of content creation for Radical Candor. This article about rebuilding connection and collaboration through Radical Candor has been adapted from the Radical Candor podcast S7, Ep. 2 transcript about the same topic.

In an increasingly polarized world, fostering genuine connection and collaboration in the workplace has become both a challenge and a necessity.

Kim Scott, author and co-founder of Radical Candor, Amy Sandler, principal coach and podcast host at Radical Candor, and Heather McGowan, an author, speaker, and future-of-work strategist, recently shared their insights into overcoming workplace division and building bridges through respect, empathy, and curiosity.

Leaders are struggling to bring people together in an era of increasing polarization and disconnection to create cohesive, high-performing teams.

While the challenge of overcoming polarization seems daunting, it’s also an opportunity to create workplaces and communities that thrive on diversity of thought and genuine human connection.

The Roots of Division

McGowan emphasizes that polarization at work often mirrors broader societal divides. “We stopped spending as much time together about fifty years ago,” she explains, referencing Robert Putnam’s seminal book Bowling Alone. This loss of “bridging capital”—the loose connections that foster trust and shared understanding—has only deepened over time.

Adding to this fragmentation is the loneliness epidemic, which McGowan describes as leaving individuals in a heightened state of “fight or flight” that exacerbates an “us versus them” mentality. “It’s really easy to control people with fear,” she notes.

The result? A workplace culture where collaboration falters and employees segregate themselves based on shared beliefs rather than shared goals.

The Myth of Forced In-Person Work

While some leaders believe mandating in-office work will solve connection issues, McGowan challenges this assumption:

“There’s a lot of people who believe the only way we’re gonna solve this is get everybody back in the office, and I don’t know that that is necessarily true… If we can [form relationships online], and that is now the prevailing trend on how we meet our mates, you can’t tell me that we can’t create culture, we can’t create social connection virtually.”

Finding Common Ground

 Rebuilding workplace connection starts with intention and curiosity. McGowan underscores the importance of engaging with others beyond surface-level differences.

“Start with the right intention, not the assumption that someone’s beliefs are a personal affront to you,” she advises. Instead, seek to understand their perspective by asking, “How did you come to believe that?”

Scott agrees, pointing to the importance of balancing curiosity with respect. “It’s about creating space for understanding,” she says. “When you lead with curiosity, you can uncover shared values and build a foundation for collaboration.”

Practical Strategies for Leaders

Leaders play a pivotal role in fostering connection. Both McGowan and Scott advocate for creating environments where everyone feels seen and heard.

“Organizations need clear values that underline mutual respect,” McGowan asserts. “If your team can agree that everyone deserves to be respected, it creates a foundation for navigating differences.”

Listening to frontline workers is another crucial step. Scott cites research showing that empowering employees at all levels not only boosts morale but also drives innovation.

“When leaders truly listen, they unlock insights that can transform their organizations,” she explains.

The Role of Radical Candor

Scott’s framework of Radical Candor offers actionable tools for addressing workplace challenges. By combining direct feedback with genuine care, leaders can navigate difficult conversations without alienation or judgment.

“Ultimately, I mean, a lot of research shows humans are hardwired to care about each other and to help each other,” McGowan says.   

This is where the principles of Radical Candor can be particularly effective. By encouraging open and honest communication, while also demonstrating care and respect, leaders can create a more inclusive and collaborative environment.

Sandler highlights the importance of getting comfortable with discomfort. “It feels like this moment is not just about curiosity. It’s also about, can I be a little more comfortable in that silence and in that not knowing,” Sandler says.

“Radical Candor isn’t just about giving feedback. It’s about building relationships strong enough to handle it.”

The Power of Curiosity

 Curiosity, McGowan believes, is key to reconnecting in polarized times. She likens our current state to rethinking long-held certainties.

“For almost a century, we all believed the Wicked Witch of the West was evil. Now, thanks to Wicked, we’re reexamining that story. What else in our lives could we see differently if we stayed curious?”

This openness, she notes, extends to leadership. “Leaders who ask questions instead of dictating answers create space for innovation and collective intelligence,” McGowan says. “And that’s what we need to thrive in an ever-changing world.”

Small Steps, Big Impact

Rebuilding connection doesn’t require grand gestures. McGowan encourages simple, intentional actions: “Talk to your neighbors, engage with your colleagues about non-work topics, or even just ask someone about their favorite movie. These small interactions build the social capital we’ve lost.”

Scott echoes this sentiment, urging people to connect both within and outside the workplace. “Call someone you love to recharge your emotional reserves before reaching out to someone you find challenging,” she suggests. “It’s about building bridges, one conversation at a time.”

Tracking Connection in the Workplace

To ensure efforts to reduce polarization are effective, leaders should implement metrics to track progress:

1. Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) to gauge overall satisfaction and loyalty
2. Collaboration metrics, such as cross-departmental project participation
3. Diversity of thought in decision-making processes
4. Frequency and quality of one-on-one conversations between team members with different viewpoints
5. Retention rates, particularly among diverse employee groups

Regularly assess these metrics and adjust strategies accordingly to foster a more connected workplace culture.

Moving Forward

As workplaces navigate polarization and change, fostering connection and collaboration has never been more critical. By embracing curiosity, practicing Radical Candor, and prioritizing shared humanity, leaders and teams can create environments where respect and collaboration flourish—even in the most divided times.

“If we don’t solve polarization and reconnect as humans,” McGowan warns, “AI and technology won’t matter. Our ability to collaborate is what has always set us apart. It’s what will define our future.”

• Take the Radical Candor quiz >>
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• Get the “Radical” books >>
• Get Radical Candor coaching and consulting for your team >>
• Get Radical Candor coaching and consulting for your company >>

If you understand the importance of receiving feedback in the workplace, then you need The Feedback Loop (think Groundhog Day meets The Office), a 5-episode workplace comedy series starring David Alan Grier that brings to life Radical Candor’s simple framework for navigating candid conversations.

You’ll get an hour of hilarious content about a team whose feedback fails are costing them business; improv-inspired exercises to teach everyone the skills they need to work better together; and after-episode action plans you can put into practice immediately to up your helpful feedback EQ.

We’re offering Radical Candor readers 10% off the self-paced e-course. Follow this link and enter the promo code FEEDBACK at checkout.

There are still plenty of “what’s coming in 2025” pieces coming out, and I’ll continue including the ones that catch my eye.

[article] Agents. You want eight thousand words about AI agents? Today’s your lucky day. Chip wrote a fantastic piece that goes into helpful depth on the topic.

[blog] Ultimate guide to CI/CD: Fundamentals to advanced implementation. This doesn’t break new ground, but it’s good to till the current ground. That’s the extent of my farming metaphors.

[article] 5 Mistakes Managers Make When Giving Negative Feedback. Few folks like giving corrective feedback, but it’s a necessary task. This article offers mistakes we make, and how to fix them.

[article] Explore vs Execute. Great essay from Jason here. What happens after you have the “fit” for a given product? What does an operational switch look like?

[article] Developer Productivity in 2025: More AI, but Mixed Results. A batch of experts provide input into what this year may hold for developer experience and productivity.

[blog] Mistakes engineers make in large established codebases. The main mistakes come from “lack of consistency” according to this interesting write up.

[article] How to Overcome Common LLMs Pitfalls and Build Smarter AI Systems. My colleague Mete does a good job outlining a few challenges and opportunities for those working with LLMs.

[youtube-video] The amazing, but unsettling future of technology… Entertaining video, as always from this source. But also a good overview of the hot tech (AI, agents, AR/VR, robotics, etc) and questions surrounding them.

[article] Engineers hit AI development roadblocks: IBM. Fifteen tools to build an AI app seems like … a lot. That statistic, and more in these findings.

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Microsoft is preparing for a “major” Surface announcement later this month. The software giant has started teasing “a major announcement from Surface for Business” this week in a LinkedIn post spotted by Windows Central. The announcement will be made during Microsoft’s AI tour in New York City on January 30th.

Microsoft is rumored to be launching Intel-powered variants of its Surface Laptop 7 and Surface Pro 11 devices soon, and a prototype of a Surface Laptop 7 with Intel’s Lunar Lake chips appeared on a Chinese second-hand marketplace in October. It’s likely that Microsoft will announce Lunar Lake versions of the Surface Laptop 7 and Surface Pro 11 that are designed for businesses.

The Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 both shipped with Intel’s Meteor Lake processors earlier in 2024, before Microsoft went on to launch refreshed Surface Copilot Plus devices with new designs and Qualcomm chips.

The Surface Laptop Studio is also due for an upgrade from the current model’s 13th Gen Intel chips, but that’s less of a business-focused device so it’s unlikely to be part of this event. There are also rumors of an 11-inch Surface Go / Surface Laptop Go hybrid device powered by a Snapdragon X Plus processor, but again that’s unlikely to be targeted to businesses.

We’ll be following Microsoft’s AI tour live later this month, so stay tuned for details on the Surface “major announcement.”