Microsoft 365 in May 2026: AI moves right inside SharePoint
Monthly recap of news in Microsoft 365 and SharePoint Online. May brought the live rollout of the new SharePoint, AI right inside SharePoint, GA of Microsoft 365 E7 and Agent 365 – and kicked off the summer retirement deadlines.
April was a month of announcements – the split of Copilot, the unveiling of the new SharePoint. May is the month those announcements became reality. The new SharePoint started rolling out to tenants for real, AI moved right inside SharePoint, and the July deadlines that still felt distant in April are suddenly around the corner. This is the second instalment of the monthly column – what May 2026 brought and what to do about it.
The main news, in plain terms
Before the detail, a short summary for everyone who just uses SharePoint and Microsoft 365 day to day:
- SharePoint has a new look. The top bar and start page are changing, and everyone gets the new look gradually – there’s no going back. A few minutes to look around and you’ll find where things are.
- A smart helper has arrived in SharePoint. You can now tell it in plain language what you need – like “create a page for this project” or “turn these numbers into a chart” – and it helps you do it.
- The Copilot assistant is smarter and in more places. It now works on mobile and directly in Teams, so it can help during a meeting or on the go.
- Some old things are ending. Very old forms and systems (InfoPath, SharePoint 2016/2019) stop working in July. This mainly affects companies still using them – if you’re not sure whether that’s you, ask your IT.
If that’s all you need, you have the big picture. If you want the context and detail, read on.
The new SharePoint is live – Targeted Release with no opt-out
On 5 May the Targeted Release of the new SharePoint Experience began. That ended the phase where you could only look at the new design in public preview – now it’s actually reaching users, with no opt-out (MC1240699). The new app bar is unified into anchored areas – Discover, Publish, Build, OneDrive and Home – along with a refreshed start page and a set of new templates.
Targeted Release completed around mid-May; full GA runs from mid-June with completion by mid-July. For administrators this means two things: your old training materials and screenshots are now useless, and users need to know what’s changing before it pops up on their screen.
AI moves right inside SharePoint
This is the main story of May. AI in SharePoint brought agentic building into SharePoint – users can plan and create sites, libraries, pages and lists using natural language. After the March public preview it’s rolling out worldwide in May, with the preview running on the Anthropic Claude model.
Two more things changed the way you work with content:
- Copilot Skills in SharePoint. Repeatable, multi-step procedures can be saved as reusable, site-specific “skills”. A team captures its own standards – document rules, review processes, content summaries – and runs them consistently, instead of explaining them by hand every time.
- AI charts on pages. An author describes a chart in natural language and SharePoint generates an interactive visualisation right inside the editor (requires Copilot Premium).
And third, a metric that was missing until now: AI Citations Analytics (from mid-May) shows on a new page in Site Usage how often Copilot and agents cite specific documents and pages. A governance note you can’t skip: once AI builds and reads content inside SharePoint, it reads exactly what the user has permission to. If your libraries carry years of un-cleaned oversharing, AI won’t cause it – but it will make it visible at a speed no one is ready for.
New licence tiers: Microsoft 365 E7 and Agent 365
On 1 May Microsoft 365 E7 and the standalone Agent 365 became generally available. E7 is a new licence tier for companies that want to deploy AI agents at scale – it adds a unified layer for managing them. Agent 365 does the same as a standalone product: enterprise-grade agent governance, predictable costs and built-in identity, security and compliance controls.
One detail for budget planning: from 1 June 2026 Agent 365 requires Microsoft 365 E5 as a prerequisite for new purchases. Anyone counting on agents should run the licence math before deployment – and above all realise that agent governance only works if there’s governance of the data the agents run on.
Copilot in May: Cowork on mobile and stronger models
Copilot itself got several boosts in May:
- Copilot Cowork (the Frontier programme) is now on iOS and Android – you delegate a task “on the go” and come back to a finished output, with integrations to Fabric IQ, Power BI and Dynamics 365.
- Stronger models for deeper reasoning over complex tasks and higher-quality visuals right inside the workflow.
- Copilot Chat in Teams – contextual answers directly in chats, channels and live meetings.
- Teams meetings in Copilot Notebooks – meetings with transcripts, chats and files can now be used as a source.
- Edge → Copilot – with admin consent, Edge can send selected work browsing history to Copilot for better search results.
The common thread: Copilot is increasingly context-aware. It sees more, remembers more and reaches into more sources – which is exactly why you need control over how far that context reaches.
What ended and what’s ticking: the summer deadlines
The other side of the coin is the retirement calendar, which fills up significantly over the summer. The dates that belong on the board:
| Date | What ends |
|---|---|
| 1 Jun 2026 | Sale of standalone SharePoint / OneDrive plans (Plan 1/2) to new customers – move to Microsoft 365 bundles |
| 14 Jul 2026 | SharePoint Server 2016 and 2019 – end of extended support (migrate to SE or SharePoint Online) |
| 14 Jul 2026 | InfoPath Forms Services + SharePoint Designer 2013 (replace with Power Apps, Power Automate, Forms; workflows via SPMT 4.1) |
| Jul 2026 | SharePoint Alerts – email change notifications (replace with Power Automate or SharePoint Rules) |
| late Jun–Jul 2026 | Featured Links on the SharePoint Start Page (MC1197131) – replace with global navigation or Viva Connections |
The hardest of these is the trio on 14 July. If an InfoPath form or a SharePoint Designer workflow is still alive anywhere in your environment, now is the last reasonable moment to map it and plan a replacement. Migrating forms and workflow logic doesn’t happen overnight, and summer is short.
What’s around the corner
June and early summer continue the May AI wave:
- Authoritative Sites (GA, June) – in the admin centre you mark official sources of information (intranet, HR, company news) and Copilot prioritises them in its answers. A direct tool for improving AI grounding quality.
- Agent grounding on SharePoint lists (June) – agents will be able to use lists as a structured knowledge source.
- DocGen and Power Automate form triggers – a completed form turns straight into a finished document.
- Work IQ API (GA, 16 June) – a unified REST endpoint for invoking agents and workflows.
- Adaptive Scopes for DLP in SharePoint (August) – dynamic targeting of DLP policies by site attributes and the end of the static 100-site limit.
Smaller items worth a mention
- News Filmstrip layout – a new, more visually striking layout for the News web part and an expansion of multi-site aggregation to GCC, GCC High and DoD.
- Hand-drawn electronic signatures in SharePoint eSignature – stylus, touch or mouse.
- Copilot Suggested Rename in OneDrive – file name suggestions based on content.
- Hard delete in Microsoft Purview – governed permanent deletion of OneDrive and SharePoint files with a priority cleanup workflow.
- Expanded permission reporting – better visibility of group access and oversharing.
Takeaways from May
Three things to remember:
- AI is no longer next to SharePoint, it’s inside it. And it reads exactly what your permissions are – or aren’t – set up to allow.
- The new SharePoint ships with no opt-out. Prepare users and update training materials before the change surprises them.
- The summer deadlines aren’t far off. InfoPath, SharePoint Server 2016/2019 and Alerts are all close to 14 July – mapping and a replacement plan belong in June, not July.
At EP365 we work through these transitions with companies almost daily – most often the conversation starts around a technical audit (legacy forms, permissions, oversharing before AI), governance (authoritative content for grounding) and user training, which has to run alongside the rollout of the new interface. If any of the above hits home and you’re not sure where to start, take a look at our services or get in touch – we’ll talk it through with no commitment.
The next monthly column will appear at the start of July – a round-up of what June 2026 brought.