AI is raising the bar for document management. It’s no longer enough to store and share files— content needs to be governed, structured, and connected to the way teams actually work so AI can reason over it responsibly and help people move from information to action.
That’s why we’re excited to share that Microsoft has been named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Document Management, positioned highest for Ability to Execute.
We believe this recognition reflects the investments we’ve made in making SharePoint and OneDrive the unified knowledge platform at the heart of Microsoft 365, keeping content trusted and compliant, while making it more discoverable, more actionable, and more valuable as AI adoption accelerates.
In our view, this recognition is also a reflection of the customers and partners who build with us. Every day, users create 2 million new SharePoint sites, add 2 billion files, and run 3 billion automated workflows on SharePoint content each week, a scale that reflects how deeply document management is embedded in daily work. We’re excited to keep building what’s next with you.
Grounding Copilot in governed content
SharePoint and OneDrive serve as the trusted content layer for Microsoft 365 Copilot, giving AI a single, governed foundation to reason over. Over the past year we’ve deepened that connection across sites, files, and even encrypted content.
- Reasoning over sites: Copilot reasons across SharePoint sites and libraries, understanding pages, files, and metadata together to answer questions with full site context and governance.
- Reasoning over files (including encrypted content): Copilot can reason over individual SharePoint files — including image-level understanding in PowerPoint — and it can do so even when content is encrypted, while honoring permissions, sensitivity labels, and security policies.
- Connect Copilot Studio and Foundry to SharePoint: Use SharePoint and OneDrive as a trusted knowledge source for agents built in Copilot Studio and Foundry, so they can retrieve grounded answers from governed content while respecting the same permissions and compliance controls.
- AI-powered document insights: Every SharePoint site has an agent that can answer questions about site and library contents. Users can do scoped Q&A over one or many files, summarize, compare, and generate FAQs in one click, or listen to an Audio Overview of a file on the go.
AI-assisted work in SharePoint
AI in SharePoint is available now in public preview, so you can go beyond answering questions to getting real content work done right where your files live.
- Turn ideas into execution: Describe the outcome you want and SharePoint proposes a structured plan — spanning sites, pages, libraries, lists, and starter content — so you can review and iterate before anything is created. With a single prompt, you can also kick off multi-step content work across SharePoint assets, staying in control to review, adjust, or interrupt as SharePoint executes.
- Teach AI how your team works: Capture shared skills and context at the site level so one person can encode standards and everyone benefits. Skills help ensure consistent outputs, applying the same rules regardless of who asks or when.
- From content chaos to Copilot ready: SharePoint keeps content structured, current, and governed with automated metadata tagging and proactive site health monitoring, so Copilot and agent experiences across Microsoft 365 are more relevant and reliable.
A modern, intuitive experience
We continue to invest in the fundamentals — fresh, clean, consumer-grade experiences that make content easier to find, author, and act on.
- New SharePoint experience (rolling out now): A visual refresh and simpler navigation oriented around three core jobs: discovering what’s new, publishing content, and building solutions. Includes new front doors like Discover, Publish, and Build plus a new app bar that makes it faster to move across SharePoint and get back to the content you need.
- Refreshed document libraries: A modernized UX with built-in AI actions and forms for file intake, bringing insights, actions, and collection into the library experience.
- Page authoring and news publication: Best-in-class web authoring with flex sections, editorial cards, design ideas, motion, fine-grained image controls, and hero carousels. Viva Connections dashboards are now available on all SharePoint sites, with a new news feed that’s both user-personalized and tenant-programmable.
Strengthened governance and trust
Scaling AI on content only works if the content layer is governed and secure. This past year we delivered significant advances across governance, lifecycle, and data protection.
- Copilot-ready content governance: SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM) delivers permission state reports to detect overshared sites and content, and Restricted Content Discovery lets admins exclude sites that aren’t ready for Copilot.
- Content lifecycle management: SAM’s Inactive Sites Policy and Ownership Policy identify stale or unmanaged sites and drive remediation at scale.
- Unified data protection with Microsoft Purview: Dynamic watermarking and broader label support extend protection across content types.
- Records management in Purview: Multi-stage disposition through retention labels (up to five stages) enables multiphase review, relabeling, extension, and defensible deletion across Microsoft 365.
Content management and industry solutions at scale
As content management needs grow, customers want a single solution that blends secure collaboration with records, compliance, and line-of-business content, built for how specific industries and roles operate. SharePoint and OneDrive provide a flexible, governed foundation for regulated and high-volume content processes.
- Governance by default: Metadata, retention, sensitivity labels, and permissions stay with content, supporting audit-ready control for regulated industries like financial services, healthcare, and the public sector.
- Role-based experiences: Build repeatable journeys for HR, legal, and operations, from onboarding and case files to contract review, approvals, and publishing.
- Secure internal and external collaboration: Enable controlled sharing for customer onboarding, vendor management, and partner workflows while maintaining policy enforcement and admin visibility.
- AI-ready content: Keep information organized and trusted so Copilot and agents can deliver more relevant, permission-aware answers and next actions, especially for high-stakes roles working with sensitive content.
- Connected with Microsoft 365 apps: Enter and update SharePoint metadata directly from Word; request and sign documents with eSignature from Word and PDFs in SharePoint; use AI-powered document assembly to generate compliant Word documents from approved templates; and rely on a single “hero link” per file that controls all access — no more juggling multiple sharing links.
Learn more about SharePoint, OneDrive, and Microsoft 365 Copilot
We remain committed to making content governed, intelligent, and AI-ready — so every document in your organization can become knowledge that moves work forward.
- Start using Microsoft 365 Copilot today. Visit Microsoft365.com/copilot or download the Microsoft 365 Copilot app.
- Learn about Microsoft SharePoint: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/sharepoint/
- Learn about SharePoint’s latest AI capabilities: https://aka.ms/SharePointAI
- Read more about 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Document Management: https://aka.ms/2026GartnerDocMgmtMQReport
Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Document Management, Tim Nelms, Jed Cawthorne, Rachel O’Farrel, Marko Sillanpaa, Stephen Emmott, April 28, 2026.
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s Research & Advisory organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
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*This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request here.
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