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What did Microsoft give SharePoint for its 25th birthday?
SharePoint just hit a pretty significant milestone, 25 years old. And Microsoft marked the occasion in style, announcing a visual refresh and a wave of new AI capabilities at the platform’s birthday on 3rd March.
Here’s a look at what’s new, and what it means for Fresh clients.
The new SharePoint experience
Microsoft has given SharePoint a proper visual overhaul. The centrepiece is a refreshed app bar (the left-hand navigation) which has been redesigned around the three things most SharePoint users actually spend their time doing: finding content, publishing it, and building things.
Shown in a Fresh demo environment. Content for illustrative purposes only.
The new experience is still in preview and needs to be enabled via the SharePoint admin centre. Importantly, individual users can opt out if they prefer sticking with the current design, which is a thoughtful touch.
That said, in our own testing we haven’t spotted anything that negatively impacts the SharePoint experience. I’d keep it!
Here’s a breakdown of what the updated app bar brings:
Home
There’s a new Home button at the top of the app bar that takes users directly to the organisation’s home site. We’re genuinely excited about this one, it means Fresh clients can set their Fresh intranet homepage here, making it accessible from anywhere in SharePoint with a single click.
Discover
This section gives users a personalised view of recent and favourite sites, news, colleague updates, and file activity. For Fresh clients, it’s a handy place to surface intranet news posts or access pinned content.
Publish
The full content creation and publishing workflow now lives in one place — drafts, templates, and analytics all together. Microsoft is also planning to bring Viva Amplify capabilities into this section down the line, which would let teams create and manage communication campaigns from here. For organisations that need content to follow specific publishing guidelines or include required metadata, Fresh’s content creation wizard goes a step further — giving content owners a guided, structured process.
Build
This is the central launchpad for making things: Sites, Lists, Libraries, and Agents, all from one surface. For Fresh clients with Copilot licences, this is also where you’ll find SharePoint agents created or assigned across your intranet sites. A useful way to get oversight of what’s been built across a multi-site environment.
AI in SharePoint (formerly Knowledge Agent)
Microsoft has renamed the Knowledge Agent (introduced back in September 2025) to AI in SharePoint. (They do love a rename.)
The functionality has expanded too. You can now describe what you want to build using natural language, and SharePoint will build it for you. Think sites, pages, lists, and libraries. It works more like a collaborator than a tool: it asks clarifying questions, proposes a plan, and iterates with you.
The metadata enrichment, content cleanup, and library organisation features from the former Knowledge Agent are all still there. These new capabilities are currently rolling out to targeted tenants, so not everyone will see them straight away.
Worth noting: AI in SharePoint requires a Copilot licence.
Enhanced content governance
For SharePoint administrators, Microsoft has added new skills to the SharePoint Admin Agent, covering permissions analysis, site lifecycle management, and storage insights — all accessible via natural language queries. Less relevant for most day-to-day users, but a meaningful upgrade for those managing SharePoint at scale.
What we think
The updated app bar is the most immediately useful change for the majority of users, it brings a cleaner, more intentional structure to navigating SharePoint. The Home button integration is a particular win for Fresh clients.
The AI capabilities are genuinely promising, but worth keeping in mind that the most powerful features require a Copilot licence, and the rollout is still gradual.
We’ll be keeping a close eye on how the new experience develops and as always, if you want to see how any of this fits with your Fresh intranet setup, we’re happy to talk.
