The New SharePoint Experience: A Comprehensive Guide to Discover, Publish, and Build

SharePoint at 25: A New Chapter Begins

For 25 years, SharePoint has been the cornerstone of enterprise content management. More than 2 million SharePoint sites are created every day, and the platform forms the knowledge infrastructure for millions of organizations. Microsoft is celebrating this milestone by announcing a comprehensive update that prepares the platform for the future.

Available in preview since March 3, 2026, the new SharePoint experience is not merely a visual refresh — it is a structural transformation that redefines how users interact with the platform. This update is shaped around three core axes: discovering, publishing, and building.

How to Enable the New SharePoint Experience

Enabling the new experience requires SharePoint Administrator or Global Administrator permissions. The steps are as follows:

• Go to the SharePoint Admin Center and sign in with appropriate credentials
• Click "Settings" in the left navigation
• Find the "New SharePoint experience" item in the settings list
• Check the box in the panel that opens and click "Save"

After activation, the new experience takes effect tenant-wide. During the preview period, individual users can switch back to the previous experience via the "New SharePoint" toggle in the app bar. Microsoft reports a 99 percent retention rate among private preview users.

AI-powered features require users to have a Microsoft 365 Copilot license.

The Modernized App Bar

At the center of the new experience is a completely redesigned SharePoint app bar. This bar provides a new navigation structure that enables users to quickly reach key destinations within SharePoint.

Key features of the app bar:

• Organization Home Site: The top customizable node provides one-click access to your organization's Home Site from anywhere in SharePoint. News, events, resources, and content come together in a single branded destination
• Discover, Publish, Build: Sections providing direct access to three core user scenarios. Each section offers a hover-on flyout panel for quick navigation
• OneDrive integration: A dedicated link in the app bar for quick access to personal files
• Neutral theming: A consistent, neutral color palette that reduces visual noise, improves readability, and elevates customer branding and content forward

Discover: SharePoint's New Front Door

Discover replaces the existing SharePoint Start Page with a personalized front door experience. It helps you quickly get back to the sites and content that matter most.

What Discover offers:

• Faster navigation: A collapsible left panel lets you move easily between sites, news, people, and saved content
• At-a-glance updates: Refreshed site cards, coworker updates, and recent items bring changes and collaborations into a single streamlined view
• Personalized and AI-driven: Surfaces the most relevant sites, files, and updates based on your activity and network. Built-in AI actions let you ask questions and stay current directly

Publish: Create Once, Reach Everywhere

For the first time in SharePoint's history, Publish brings the entire communications workflow into a single central workspace. Content creation, management, and performance tracking can now be done from one place.

Publish unifies core SharePoint and premium Viva Amplify publishing capabilities, giving communicators and site authors the ability to deliver content across all Microsoft 365 channels: SharePoint, email, Viva Engage, and Teams.

Key features of Publish:

• Fewer clicks, faster work: Quick actions and streamlined navigation keep creation, publishing, and measurement always within reach
• Single-pane management: Track pages, news, campaigns, and performance together in a single organized workspace with built-in analytics
• Pick up where you left off: Jump back into drafts instantly and start faster with smart, ready-to-use templates

Full integration of Viva Amplify into the new Publish experience will come later this year.

Build: The Enterprise Solution Building Hub

Build provides a central launchpad for solution creators in SharePoint. For the first time ever, Build allows creators to work with Sites, Lists, Libraries, and Agents from a single, intuitive surface.

For users licensed for AI in SharePoint, the Build experience is where you can describe your needs in natural language and iterate with the new solution planner. For those without the AI license, Build offers rich templates and quick access to previous work.

Key features of Build:

• AI-first, end-to-end building: An AI-first experience guides creators from idea to execution, helping assemble flexible, multi-part solutions across SharePoint building blocks
• Fast start: Creation wizards and natural language input help creators quickly plan and build Sites, Lists, Libraries, and Agents
• Continuous learning: Built-in guidance, best practices, and learning resources help creators move faster as solutions evolve

AI in SharePoint: From Natural Language to Working Solutions

The most striking innovation of the new SharePoint experience is AI-powered solution building. Previously introduced as Knowledge Agent, this capability is now natively integrated into the platform under the name "AI in SharePoint."

What you can do with AI in SharePoint:

• Sites: Describe the solution you need, and SharePoint creates a structured plan spanning sites, pages, lists, and libraries. Iterate with AI like you would with a teammate
• Pages: Draft, refine, and reorganize content directly on the canvas. Use natural language to adjust tone, generate summaries, or reshape sections
• Libraries: Create intelligent libraries by describing how you want information managed. AI-powered skills automatically extract and apply metadata
• Lists: Perform full CRUD operations through natural language — populate lists from files, evolve schemas over time, edit items, format views, and create forms
• Structured Documents: AI detects fields from Word documents, enabling form-based consistent document generation at scale

A notable technical detail: the initial rollout of AI in SharePoint uses Anthropic's Claude model for advanced AI capabilities. Depending on your location, you may need to opt in to allow Anthropic as a sub-processor for Microsoft Online Services.

Enhanced Content Governance

The new SharePoint experience treats security and governance as a foundational design element. New agentic skills are being added to the SharePoint Admin Agent, announced at Microsoft Ignite 2025:

• Storage management skills: Copilot-powered insights into tenant and site storage trends flag risks and surface cleanup actions
• Site lifecycle management skills: Surfaces inactive, ownerless, and high-risk sites with advanced filtering and exportable reporting
• Site permissions skills: Analyzes tenant-wide permissions using natural language, quickly flags oversharing risks, and provides clear remediation guidance

These governance capabilities are particularly critical for organizations in the process of migrating to SharePoint Online. Maintaining a clean permission structure post-migration is a prerequisite for Copilot and AI agents to function correctly.

Viva Connections and SharePoint Home Site Convergence

Another significant dimension of the update is the convergence of Viva Connections and SharePoint Home Site experiences. The best features of Viva Connections are being integrated into the SharePoint Home Site, delivering a consistent branded employee experience across web, Teams desktop, and Teams mobile.

Key changes:

• The Viva Connections app in Microsoft Teams is evolving into the SharePoint app
• No changes for existing Viva Connections customers using a customized name and icon
• The default boot experience for the SharePoint app is configurable: Home Site or existing Teams-optimized templates
• The configuration experience is being centralized within the SharePoint Admin Center

These updates will begin rolling out from April 2026.

Practical Recommendations for Organizations

Steps organizations can take to get the most from the new SharePoint experience:

• Enable the preview and test: Activate the preview through the SharePoint Admin Center and test the experience with a small pilot group. Collect user feedback
• Review your Home Site structure: Your organization's Home Site will be prominent in the new app bar. Ensure the content structure is current and branded
• Assess AI readiness: A Microsoft 365 Copilot license is required for AI in SharePoint features. Evaluate your licensing strategy in conjunction with the advantages offered by the E7 package
• Clean up your permission structure: New governance skills will detect permission issues. But first proactively address existing oversharing risks
• Prepare a change management plan: The new navigation structure and AI capabilities require user training. Start with a pilot group and expand incrementally
• Integrate your Copilot strategy: The new experience offers deep integration with Work IQ and Copilot. Ensure your SharePoint content is properly structured for Copilot

At Fiboo, we provide consulting on SharePoint modernization and AI adoption. Contact us to build your roadmap for transitioning to the new SharePoint experience.