MC1247902 - SharePoint: AI citations analytics for documents and pages

Updated August 14, 2026: We have updated the timeline. Thank you for your patience. 

Introduction

We are adding copilot citations to SharePoint to help site owners understand how their SharePoint documents, news posts, and pages are referenced by Microsoft 365 Copilot. These insights will help organizations track content value, identify high‑impact information, and understand how AI‑powered workflows use SharePoint content. Tenants must have Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses, and these insights become available only for tenants with more than 50 Copilot licenses (seats).

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 480725.

When this will happen

General Availability (Worldwide): Rollout will begin end of August 2026 (previously start of August) and will complete by early September 2026 (previously end of August).

How this affects your organization

Who is affected:

• SharePoint Online site owners, content authors, and admins.
• Tenants with more than 50 Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses (seats).

What will happen:

The following updates will appear in SharePoint:

• SharePoint Popular content in Site Usage will display documents, news posts, and pages ranked by how often they are cited by Copilot chat.
• SharePoint page analytics will include a new Total citations card showing the number of times a page or news post is referenced in Copilot chat responses.
• SharePoint file statistics will include a new AI citations metric displayed alongside existing metrics such as views and viewers.
• A new Copilot citations analytics page will appear under Site Usage. It will provide:
  • The number of users who consume site content through Copilot chat citations.
  • The total number of citations for the site.
  • The most frequently cited documents, news posts, and pages.

In this release, citations are counted only from Microsoft 365 Copilot chat on desktop and web (Microsoft 365 Copilot chat at m365.cloud.microsoft/chat and the Microsoft 365 Copilot app on desktop). All other Copilot experiences and agents are out of scope, including Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Cowork, Copilot in SharePoint, SharePoint custom agents, Copilot Studio agents accessed outside Copilot, custom engine agents, and agents that use a custom orchestrator. This scope may expand in future releases.

This feature will be on by default and will not require admin action to enable.

Screenshot 1 - AI citations aggregated across site content in the Site analytics view: 

Screenshot 2 - AI citations shown for an individual SharePoint page or news post in Page analytics:

What you can do to prepare

No admin action is required before the rollout.

You may want to:

• Inform site owners and content authors about the new analytics.
• Review your SharePoint usage and analytics processes to understand how the new AI citation metrics may support governance, content lifecycle planning, and content strategy.
• Update internal documentation or training materials.
• Provide guidance to users on Copilot licensing requirements if your organization centrally manages those licenses.

Compliance considerations

No compliance considerations identified. Review as appropriate for your organization.