Microsoft SharePoint Online external content connector

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated August 4, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Microsoft SharePoint Online External Content Connector

    The Microsoft SharePoint Online external content connector allows users to retrieve and index content from their SharePoint Online sites, enabling search capabilities within AI Search applications. It supports both content and user permission crawls to ensure that the latest content and access permissions are accurately reflected in search results.

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    Key Features

    • Content Crawls: Run or schedule crawls to retrieve updated content and access permissions from SharePoint Online.
    • User Permission Crawls: Collect security principals to maintain accurate user access information.
    • Indexing: Indexed content is stored as records, which can be linked to search profiles for searchability in AI Search applications.
    • Static vs. Dynamic Content: Primarily retrieves static content from .aspx files while dynamic content may be partially accessible depending on user context.
    • API Interaction: Utilizes SharePoint REST API to query and retrieve metadata and content from pages.

    Key Outcomes

    By implementing the Microsoft SharePoint Online external content connector, customers can enhance the searchability of their SharePoint Online content, ensuring users can find relevant information quickly. Proper configuration of OAuth access and crawl settings allows for comprehensive indexing, making it easier to manage and retrieve content tailored to user permissions.

    The Microsoft SharePoint Online external content connector retrieves pages from sites in your Microsoft SharePoint Online source system and makes their content and metadata searchable in AI Search applications.

    Search administrators can run or schedule content crawls to retrieve updated content and access permissions from your source system, or user permission crawls to retrieve updated security principals from your source system. Both types of crawl feed their data to AI Search for indexing.

    The indexed content and metadata are stored as records in a connector-specific indexed source. Search administrators can create search sources from this indexed source and link them to search profiles to make the indexed records searchable in AI Search applications.

    Microsoft SharePoint Online static and dynamic page content

    Microsoft SharePoint Online pages built primarily with static text content authored in the Microsoft SharePoint Online editor produce searchable content that more closely matches what users see in a web browser. By contrast, pages that rely on dynamic web parts may not contain all of the content that users see in a web browser.

    Microsoft SharePoint Online pages are stored as .aspx files in a site's Site Pages library. These files can include static content in their CanvasContent1 and WikiFields metadata fields, but they can also include scripts that call a server-side engine to dynamically render viewable content at request time. The exact content rendered depends on user context, permissions, and web parts loaded as part of the page request.

    Rendering a page's full viewable content requires an authenticated user session. The Microsoft SharePoint Online connector can't impersonate a user to trigger this rendering process. As a result, the connector cannot capture the final HTML output that a web browser would display.

    For each page retrieved, the Microsoft SharePoint Online connector queries the SharePoint REST API's _api/web/lists('<list-id>')/items(<item-id>) endpoint to access the page's underlying list item. Via this API endpoint, the connector retrieves content primarily from the page's CanvasContent1 and WikiFields metadata fields, and also captures the page's other metadata fields such as title, author, and modification date where available. Page content stored exclusively in dynamic web parts may be retrieved only partially or not at all, since that content doesn't exist in the list item metadata.

    To learn how to view the portion of a page's content that can be retrieved using the Microsoft SharePoint Online connector, see View retrievable page content using the Microsoft SharePoint Online REST API.