Last week I had the pleasure of presenting at The M365 User Group of DC all about my favorite SharePoint Premium feature, content assembly.
If you’re unfamiliar with SharePoint Premium, it’s Microsoft’s latest advanced content management experiences and platform that brings together AI, automation, and enhanced security. You may remember it as Microsoft Syntex, which through to June 2024 you can experiment with using it at no extra charge.
Before I dive into content assembly, let me run through some of SharePoint Premium’s other functionality.
What functionality does SharePoint Premium have?
Whilst SharePoint Premium has played second fiddle to Microsoft’s newer shinier tool Copilot, which launched on mass earlier this year, the advanced content management and experiences platform is not to be overlooked. It has come very compelling features.
Content processing
Operating on a pay-as-you-go model, SharePoint Premium includes the following functionality:
- Content assembly (read on for more details and a demo)
- Document translation
- Document processing – which has expanded into pre-built document processing (unstructured, structured, and freeform document processing)
E-signature
This is Microsoft’s premium feature that is not only competing but also integrates with other e-signature solutions out there like DocuSign and Adobe Sign. Using OCR capabilities, it can extract metadata and a tonne more.
Content experiences
SharePoint Premium offers users a set of content experiences; a couple of my favorites include ‘content query’, which is effectively really advanced metadata search and ‘site templates’.
You can use ‘content query’ in SharePoint Online search to select specific metadata. Based off the column type for the metadata, you can search under things like ‘date range’ or other specific field type searches such as pre-defined rules or workflows you can create yourself (akin to a scaled back Power Automate).
Content governance
With SharePoint Premium you have the ability to auto apply labels to secure your content. This one’s very, very powerful.
Microsoft 365 backup & archive
These are two separate, but complementary features, which are suitable for those looking for an entry-level colo solution.
Or if you are running out of space, and you’re getting alerts suggesting you need to buy more SharePoint storage, perhaps a backup or archiving the data is a better solution.
What is SharePoint Premium content assembly and what can it do?
SharePoint Premium’s content assembly is a powerful feature that streamlines document creation by leveraging AI and automation. Here’s a brief overview of what it can do:
Create New Documents from Templates
Content assembly recommends relevant content, images, and metadata to construct new documents based on a template built from an existing Word document. This saves time, ensures consistency, and minimizes the risk of inconsistencies in formatting and duplicating efforts.
Dynamic Templates
Imagine having an intelligent assistant that helps you build contracts, invoices, letters, and other business-specific documents. You can upload an existing document to create a modern template. Then, using this template, you can automatically generate new content by pulling data from SharePoint lists, managed metadata, or manual entries.
Automate Document Generation
Content assembly allows you to automatically generate documents from templates using Power Automate. This allows you to quickly generate documents like MNDAs, SOWs, and more, just by adding a new item to a SharePoint list.
How can SharePoint Premium content assembly streamline document creation?
SharePoint Premium content assembly enables you to create complex documents by assembling content from various sources.
Whether it’s merging data from SharePoint lists, external databases, or taking data from any document library in SharePoint, such as NDAs, SOWs, status reports etc., you can quickly generate standard repetitive business documents, really simplifying the process.
Let’s take a look at my recent demo for a deeper dive into its functionality and what you can do with it…
How much does SharePoint Premium content assembly cost?
From a pricing perspective, content assembly is defined as a pay-as-you-go model. It works out at 15 cents a document.
So, whether you’re creating documents at bulk scale or one off, you can pretty quickly realize your ROI from a document generation perspective.
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For more practical tips on how to transform your documentation, automate status reports, contracts, marketing collateral and more check out my personal blog, which covers lessons learned regarding feature activation, template creation, and how to leverage automation to streamline document workflows to enhance consistency and productivity gains. Or get in touch and I’ll run it through with you.