Microsoft 365 enables you to harness the knowledge and expertise of your organization, empowering everyone to make more informed decisions and take action faster. Last year we announced Project Cortex, a Microsoft 365 initiative, that applies advanced artificial intelligence (AI) to empower people with knowledge and expertise in the apps they use every day. Based on customer feedback during private preview, we are delivering these capabilities as a set of unique products and services.

 

SharePoint Syntex, the first product from Project Cortex, will be available to purchase for all Microsoft 365 commercial customers on October 1, 2020. In addition to SharePoint Syntex, other innovations from Project Cortex will become generally available later this year.

 

 

SharePoint Syntex uses advanced AI and machine teaching to amplify human expertise, automate content processing, and transform content into knowledge.

 

Machine teaching accelerates the creation of AI models by acquiring knowledge from people rather than from large datasets alone. Any information processing skill, that an expert can teach a human, should be easily teachable to a machine.

 

SharePoint Syntex mainstreams machine teaching, enabling your experts to capture their knowledge about content in AI models they can build with no code. Your experts train SharePoint Syntex to understand content like they do, to recognize key information, and to tag content automatically. For example, a contract processing expert can teach SharePoint Syntex to extract the contract’s value, along with the expiration date and key terms and conditions.

 

SharePoint Syntex then uses your models to automate the capture, ingestion, and categorization of content, extracting valuable information as metadata. Metadata is critical to managing content, and seamless integration with Microsoft Search, Power Automate, and Microsoft Information Protection enable you to improve knowledge discovery and reuse, accelerate processes, and dynamically apply information protection and compliance policies.

 

Additionally, this year we're announcing a new wave of Preferred Partners in our Microsoft Content Services Partner Program (CSPP). These organizations have been engaged with us throughout the development of Project Cortex and SharePoint Syntex, and they’ve been trained to deliver workshops to envision and support customer solutions based on the Microsoft 365 content services platform.

 

SharePoint Syntex Overview

Today, we’re introducing SharePoint Syntex to the world, showcasing content centers, AI models, taxonomy and more.   Let’s look in more detail.

 

 

SharePoint Syntex content center

Based on the leading content services of SharePoint, Syntex introduces a new experience for managing content at scale, integrating metadata and workflow, and delivering compliance automation – the content center. Content centers supply capabilities to teach the cloud how to read and process documents the same way you would manually. SharePoint Syntex uses those insights to automatically recognize content, extract important information, and apply metadata tags. In addition, you can track the effectiveness of your models with integrated visual analytics.

Content center analytics in SharePoint Syntex

 

Bringing AI to the mainstream

Most information workers spend an inordinate amount of time combing through content, extracting important information, and passing that information forward in a business process. SharePoint Syntex uses advanced AI to automate the capture, ingestion, and categorization of content, to accelerate processes, improve compliance, and facilitate knowledge discovery and reuse. SharePoint Syntex mainstreams AI to process three major types of content: digital images, structured or semi-structured forms, and unstructured documents. 

 

Digital image processing

One of the simplest ways to get started is with our tools for enhanced image processing. SharePoint Syntex can automatically tag images using a new visual dictionary with thousands of commonly recognized objects. In addition, SharePoint Syntex can recognize convert extracted handwritten text into tags for search and further processing.

 

Document understanding

Most organizations generate vast amounts of unstructured documents such as manuals, contracts, or resumes. You can teach SharePoint Syntex to read your content the way you would using machine teaching to build AI models with no code. SharePoint Syntex can automatically suggest or create metadata, invoke custom Power Automate workflows, and attach compliance labels to enforce retention or record management policies. 

Metadata extraction using SharePoint Syntex document understanding

 

Later this year, you’ll also be able to add sensitivity labels to your models, for automated security governance.

 

MIP Sensitivity and Retention Labels applied by SharePoint Syntex

 

Document understanding models are based on Language Understanding models in Azure Cognitive Services. Through the SharePoint Syntex Content Center, you can publish and update your models to any library in any Content Center throughout Syntex.

 

Form processing

If you’re like many information workers, your tasks include processing forms, such as invoices or purchase orders. You spend time extracting information, transferring it to Excel or a database, and passing the information forward in a business process.

 

SharePoint Syntex includes a powerful form processing engine, based on AI Builder, that lets you automatically recognize and extract common values from semi structured or structured documents, such as dates, figures, names, or addresses. These models are built with no code and only require a small number of documents for reliable results.

Form processing in SharePoint Syntex

 

Microsoft Graph content connectors

SharePoint Syntex brings new content services to information stored inside the Microsoft Cloud. But you also have content that lives in dozens of other repositories around your organization and beyond. That's why we're adding capabilities based on our Microsoft Graph content connectors to integrate remote sources -- such as file shares, Azure SQL, or third-party sources such as Box and IBM FileNet -- into the Microsoft Graph, making it searchable and usable throughout Microsoft 365.

 

 

In the future, we'll couple remote content via our content connectors ever more tightly into the applications and services of Microsoft 365. Today, connectors to more than 130 sources are available from Microsoft, along with our partners. Learn more at https://aka.ms/iwantconnectors

 

Taxonomy services

In July, we deployed modern updates to our taxonomy services in Microsoft 365, making classifications easier to manage and use for administrators and information workers alike. We also released a rich set of APIs in the Microsoft Graph for working with taxonomy services, including term stores and content types.

 

Taxonomy services, or managed metadata services, allow you to define a common hierarchy of classifications and synonyms to tag your content. Taxonomy services also provide rules for managing content types, such as document templates or custom columns.

 

SharePoint Syntex is adding new capabilities to allow you to watch and analyze term creation and usage throughout Microsoft 365. These reports will be delivered in the SharePoint admin center.

Taxonomy analytics in SharePoint Syntex

 

You’ll also be able to publish shared content types to SharePoint and Microsoft Teams through hub sites. Hub sites already integrate navigation, security, branding, activity, and search among a cluster of related sites and libraries.  Now, publishing content types from the central gallery to hub sites will provide a much more flexible way to ensure that commonly used content types, enhanced with content understanding, can be rapidly deployed and upgraded across broad sections of your architecture as needed. Sites connected to hubs will automatically receive published and updated content types.

 

You’ll also be able to use a new import format for term sets derived from Simple Knowledge Organization Systems (SKOS) – an industry standard definition for taxonomies. This will allow you to define richer import files with support for defining custom properties & allowing multiple term sets to be defined while importing into a group.  With SKOS formats, you’ll be able to smoothly adapt third party taxonomies into SharePoint Syntex.

 

Administration and configuration

We're also making content services easier for administrators. SharePoint Syntex will ship with wizards to help you configure and deploy SharePoint Syntex from the first day of deployment.

 

SharePoint Syntex setup experience

 

Customers

SharePoint Syntex is one of the innovations coming from our investments in Project Cortex. Over the past year, dozens of preview customers have helped guide our work, and have been running Project Cortex in production since mid-2020. We’d like to acknowledge the contributions of our Project Cortex Preview Program participants, including those showcased below.

 

Selected Project Cortex Preview Program participants

 

 

Content Services Partner Program

Since 2017, the Microsoft Content Services Partner Program has recognized and supported our strategic partners throughout the expansion of our content services platforms and the development of Project Cortex. More than 130 organizations are prepared to deliver joint solutions for our customers. They span the globe, and offer a broad range of software, consulting, training, and adoption solutions. Each has been recognized for proven customer success in envisioning and delivering customer content solutions in Microsoft 365. 

 

Congratulations and thanks to all our new and returning members.  Partners who have been engaged with the CSPP since its founding are highlighted in bold.

 

Preferred Partners

The Preferred designation is reserved for our Charter partners who have also completed deep training on business value and technical delivery of solution for knowledge and insights – including SharePoint Syntex. They work closely with the Microsoft field to plan and deliver solutions directly to customers. We’re proud to recognize them as our launch partners for Project Cortex, including SharePoint Syntex.

 

 

Charter Partners

Our Charter members of the program are noted for their commitment to customer success in the Microsoft 365 content services platform. You can learn more about their success stories on the Content Services Resource Center.

 

 

Packaging and availability

SharePoint Syntex will be available as a user-based add-on for Microsoft 365 plans and will be generally available to Microsoft 365 commercial customers on October 1. For more details, visit our Microsoft 365 Enterprise Licensing page.

 

SharePoint Syntex is the first product coming out of our investments in Project Cortex. In addition to SharePoint Syntex, we will be releasing other innovations later this year that help you organize information into topics and deliver knowledge across Microsoft 365 apps. We will have more details to share on Project Cortex topic experiences later this year.

 

Closing

Every day, our world moves faster. More to do, more to read, more to manage.  You need to move fast and stay ahead.

 

Based on Microsoft’s research, 57% of technology decision makers are accelerating their deployment of knowledge and content management systems as they integrate the explosion of unstructured content with the accelerated demand for remote work in 2020.

 

SharePoint Syntex delivers content services that work the way you do. Take control of your content. Take control of your time. Get back to doing what’s important to you.

 

You can experience SharePoint Syntex for yourself today with our online clickthrough demo. Learn more about these updates on the Microsoft 365 blog, and learn even more about SharePoint Syntex at https://aka.ms/SharePointSyntex. Thank you.