The best AI strategy might be fixing your SharePoint experience

AI is driving a SharePoint resurgence.
It’s also exposing old problems.

For years, employees have worked around poor SharePoint experiences. They bookmarked documents, asked coworkers where things lived, kept local copies “just in case,” or typed the same search in three different ways hoping for a better result.

Those workarounds were frustrating, but they worked. AI changes the equation. As organizations invest in AI-powered workplace tools, SharePoint is suddenly moving back into the spotlight because AI is only as effective as the content, structure, and digital foundation behind it. If you’ve ever asked Copilot a question and thought, “That’s not the file I was looking for,” you’ve already experienced this issue.

Many leaders approach AI readiness as a technical exercise, focusing on governance, permissions, metadata, and security. Those components are essential, but AI doesn’t operate solely within the technical layer. It sits at the intersection of content, design, and employee behavior. As a result, AI is exposing weaknesses not just in how information is managed, but in how information is accessed and consumed.

AI may be the world’s most expensive usability test.

• Poor governance becomes a trust problem.
• Poor user experience becomes an adoption problem.
• Both become AI problems.

AI is exposing a false choice that organizations have made for years. They think they must prioritize either employee experience or governance.

The organizations seeing the greatest value from AI right now aren’t choosing one or the other. They’re building digital workplaces where user experience and technical foundations work together.

A beautiful intranet without governance looks good but can’t be trusted, and employees will still ask, “Is this the latest version?”

A secure intranet without usability can be trusted but won’t be used, and employees will still message a coworker asking where the file is.

Employees expect an experience that removes these frustrations and gives them what they need with a few clicks. Meeting that expectation means that clear information architecture, intuitive design, strong governance, and well-managed permissions must become inseparable.

AI is forcing two conversations to become one.

For years, organizations could afford to treat governance and user adoption as separate conversations. AI is making that increasingly difficult. Employees no longer want to navigate through three sites, six folders, and a PDF to find an answer. They expect the answer to surface on its own, and whether that answer is correct depends on the underlying governance and permissions.

AI may be driving SharePoint’s resurgence, but employees’ SharePoint experience will determine whether it succeeds. Employees don’t care whether a problem is caused by information architecture, permissions, search, or design. They just want to be able to find what they need.