SharePoint's Knowledge Agent: A UX + A11y Perspective

SharePoint’s Knowledge Agent

A UX + Accessibility (a11y) Upgrade For The Digital Workplace

Most intranets don’t suffer from a content problem. They suffer from a context problem. SharePoint’s new Knowledge Agent finally bridges that gap, giving your content structure, clarity, and accessibility without asking authors to work harder.

TL;DR

Knowledge Agent is a built‑in, role‑aware assistant for SharePoint that auto‑enriches content with metadata, helps maintain site health, and enables simpler, conversational actions, improving UX, reducing cognitive load, and strengthening accessibility and Copilot grounding.

It’s in Public Preview and requires a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. If your org has both of these things, the Knowledge Agent (Preview) can be enabled today via SharePoint Online PowerShell. Details outlined below.

What is it?

If you’ve been waiting for a practical way to de‑clutter SharePoint, improve findability, and make Copilot answers feel grounded and trustworthy, the new Knowledge Agent in SharePoint is a big deal. It lives right where people work, helps structure content with intelligent metadata, flags stale pages and broken links, and boosts Copilot results by giving AI better context.

In other words, it’s not another app to adopt. It’s a capability that makes your intranet, libraries, and knowledge bases smarter and more accessible. In just a few minutes, it can transform an under‑tagged document library into a rich, AI‑ready resource that dramatically improves your Copilot experiences

Why now?

Knowledge Agent is a built‑in assistant in SharePoint that surfaces a floating, context‑aware menu for actions like organizing libraries, enriching metadata, summarizing files, and generating FAQs. It’s part of Microsoft’s broader shift from Viva Topics toward AI‑assisted knowledge in SharePoint and Copilot.

Who is this for?

The Knowledge Agent is a versatile tool that will greatly help anyone that works in SharePoint.

• HR & Comms teams → cleaner policies, accessible reading experiences
• IT/Admins → healthier sites, easier governance
• Site owners → faster organization, fewer manual updates
• Employees → more trustworthy answers in Copilot

A11y: where the Knowledge Agent quietly shines

Accessibility (a11y) isn’t only about screen readers and contrast. It’s also cognitive load, information density, and the effort required to complete tasks.

Knowledge Agent helps by creating concise summaries and FAQs, while audio overviews support users with visual impairments, reading fatigue, or those who simply prefer listening.

Combined with Immersive Reader on SharePoint pages, employees gain control over spacing, focus, and read‑aloud, valuable for dyslexia, ADHD, and multilingual audiences. Microsoft’s broader commitment to WCAG provides the backdrop for aligning your intranet to perceivable, operable, and understandable content.

How it helps

• Reduces cognitive load with summaries and FAQs. Short, structured versions of long documents help everyone, including neurodivergent users and second‑language readers, extract the signal from noise.
• Audio overviews of documents and news posts support people with visual impairments or reading fatigue, plus anyone on the go.
• Cleaner information architecture on the fly. Suggested columns and automated organization make libraries scannable and keyboard‑navigable, which pairs well with SharePoint’s built‑in accessibility.
• Inclusive reading with Immersive Reader on pages. For SharePoint pages, Immersive Reader adds text spacing, focus, and read‑aloud, valuable for dyslexia, ADHD, and multilingual audiences.
  (Note: historic limitation on some home pages still applies.)
• Aligns to WCAG‑driven practices. While the Knowledge Agent isn’t a compliance tool, its simplification and structure support WCAG principles of perceivable, operable, and understandable content, alongside Microsoft’s broader accessibility commitments.

Bottom line: by curating and simplifying content, Knowledge Agent makes the digital workplace more usable for more people.

Key Features

• Context‑aware entry point: The floating button adapts its skills based on where you are (page, library, file) and your role (owner, editor, viewer), reducing navigation friction and clicks.
• Automated metadata enrichment: The agent can read file contents, create new columns, and populate values, which makes libraries filterable and Copilot responses more grounded.
• Site health checks: It helps site owners identify broken links, stale pages, and content gaps, so your intranet stays tidy and trustworthy.
• Work with files, fast: Summarize, compare, generate FAQs, and even produce an audio overview of documents and pages for quick comprehension.
• Better grounding for Copilot: Metadata reasoning improves answer quality by disambiguating similarly named content, which matters for precision at scale.

Rollout essentials for the preview

During preview, admins enable Knowledge Agent using the SharePoint Online Management Shell and can target all sites or selected ones, including multi‑geo tenants. Start with a few high‑value sites, HR, Legal, Product Docs, to show impact quickly and build momentum.

Users need a Microsoft 365 Copilot license to see and use the floating Agent button in supported SharePoint surfaces, and usage is included with Copilot. Admin enablement via PowerShell adds a small operational step that’s worth planning into your rollout. This will not be required for the general release.

Key Points

• Prereqs: Microsoft 365 Copilot licensing and preview opt‑in.
• Enablement: Set-SPOTenant with KnowledgeAgent parameters; include/exclude sites as needed.
• Where it appears: Floating Agent button in the lower‑right, plus entries in suite navigation and file actions.

Governance, privacy, and trust

Copilot and SharePoint agents respect existing permissions and only surface content a user is allowed to see. That makes permission hygiene critical: review sharing links, inherited access, and connector ACLs if you index external systems into Microsoft Search.

Microsoft documents that prompts, responses, and Graph‑accessed data aren’t used to train foundation LLMs in Microsoft 365 Copilot, so your organizational data stays within established compliance boundaries.

Security FYI's

• Do: Baseline oversharing, align sensitivity labels, and periodically audit connector visibility.
• ‍Don’t: Assume the Agent will “fix” governance. It amplifies your good patterns and exposes weak ones.‍
• Permissions & grounding: Copilot and SharePoint agents use Microsoft Graph and honor the user’s existing access. They can’t “see” what users can’t. Clean up overshared links and review connector ACLs if you index external sources.‍
• External data: If you extend search with Graph connectors, ensure they respect source ACLs and review visibility settings.‍
• Security posture: Prompts, responses, and Graph‑accessed data aren’t used to train foundation LLMs in Microsoft 365 Copilot. Keep labeling and DLP in place as your second line of defense.

How to measure impact

Pick a few metrics and baseline them before you enable the Agent across your entire tenant. Share results widely to reinforce the value of clean, inclusive content.

• “Organize this library by extracting [Field A], [Field B], [Field C] from file contents. Build a view for items where [Field B] is in the next 90 days.”
• “Summarize this document into a 200‑word brief, a 5‑bullet version, and a short audio overview.”
• “Generate an FAQ from these pages and link each answer to the canonical source.”
• “Identify stale pages older than 12 months with low traffic, suggest merges or retirements, and fix broken links.”

Known caveats

Setting expectations early. As a preview, it's important to remember that some features and entry points will evolve and not all surfaces are supported equally.

• Preview scope and entry points will evolve before GA; some surfaces don’t support every skill yet.
• Immersive Reader is available for pages but has known limitations for certain home pages. Plan alternates if your audience relies on it there.
• Admin‑led enablement via PowerShell during preview may add a small ops step to your rollout schedule.

Where this leaves your IA strategy

Metadata isn’t busywork anymore. It’s a design asset. With Knowledge Agent, taxonomy becomes a UX tool that improves both browsing (views, filters, grouping) and AI grounding (better Copilot precision over your content).

Pair your IA plan with Agent skills and you’ll lift search, navigation, and confidence in one move.

The bottom line

If we want an intranet that’s genuinely inclusive, we have to make the right content easy to find, trust, and act on, for everyone.

Knowledge Agent nudges SharePoint toward that future by simplifying your intranet's stewardship and reducing cognitive overhead.

Add accessibility features like Immersive Reader and audio overviews, and you’ve got a pragmatic, human‑centered step forward for the digital workplace.