Have you enabled and started using Knowledge Agent in SharePoint yet? If not, what are you waiting for?
Microsoft finally gave SharePoint a proper brain. The new Knowledge Agent turns your intranet from a glorified file dump into something people can actually talk to. It’s Copilot for your content, built right into your sites.
With it, users can ask questions like “What’s our remote work policy?” and get real answers from the documents and pages they already have access to. No more guessing which library it’s in. No more opening five tabs just to find one sentence.
Let’s walk through how to set it up the right way so it actually works in the real world.
What it actually does
Knowledge Agent lets people chat with your site content in natural language. It only answers based on what they can access, so it respects existing permissions. It can also help site owners by flagging broken links and suggesting improvements.
Think of it as Copilot’s front door inside SharePoint.
Before you start
Get these basics squared away first:
- You must be a SharePoint or global admin
- Your tenant must have the latest SharePoint Online Management Shell, version 16.0.26413.12010 or higher
- Users must have Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses
- The feature is still in preview, so start with a pilot instead of your whole tenant
Step 1. Connect to your tenant
Open PowerShell and connect to your admin center:
Connect-SPOService -Url https://YOURTENANT-admin.sharepoint.com
Sign in with your admin credentials. If you use MFA, you will get a prompt.
Step 2. Enable the Knowledge Agent
You can turn it on everywhere or target specific sites.
Enable for all sites
Set-SPOTenant -KnowledgeAgentScope AllSites
Enable for selected sites
Set-SPOTenant -KnowledgeAgentScope IncludeSelectedSites
Set-SPOTenant -KnowledgeAgentSelectedSitesList @(
"https://YOURTENANT.sharepoint.com/sites/Intranet",
"https://YOURTENANT.sharepoint.com/sites/HR"
)
Verify settings
Get-SPOTenant | Select KnowledgeAgentScope, KnowledgeAgentSelectedSitesList
If you see AllSites {}, it means it is active everywhere.
Step 3. Check your sites
Go to one of your enabled sites, like Intranet or HR. You should see a small SharePoint icon at the bottom right. That is your Knowledge Agent.
If it is missing, give it up to an hour and then try again in a private browser window.
Step 4. Create your first agent
This part of the setup is what turns Knowledge Agent from a background feature into something usable and visible to your people. Without creating a site-level agent, you won’t see the little agent’s button or be able to chat with your content.
So Step 4 is the moment where you instantiate (create) your first Knowledge Agent instance. It’s what users actually experience when they say, “I talked to SharePoint and it found the answer for me.” On your site, select New → Agent. Give it a name and description, like:
HR Assistant, helps employees find HR policies and summarize them clearly.
Pick the sources you want it to use, like a few pages or a single document library.
Then add clear instructions, such as:
Answer in short bullet points. Always cite the document name and review date.
Publish it and test.
Step 5. Try it out
Ask something meaningful:
What is our work from home policy?
When was it last updated?
You should get a short, relevant summary with a link to the original file.
Step 6. Clean up your content
If your site is cluttered with outdated files, the agent will show that junk first. Clean it up:
- Archive old pages
- Fix metadata
- Remove broken links
- Standardize owners and review dates
Good content makes the agent smarter.
Step 7. Pilot and expand
Start with a few well managed sites. Get feedback, fine tune the agent’s scope, and expand once you are confident it is helping.
Users will like it once they realize SharePoint can finally give straight answers.
Final thoughts
Knowledge Agent makes SharePoint feel modern again. It connects content with how people actually think and search. But remember, no AI can save you from bad governance.
Clean content first, Copilot later.
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