IT Partner sets up SharePoint Premium (formerly Microsoft Syntex) document processing in one Microsoft 365 tenant on Microsoft's pay-as-you-go billing: we link the pay-as-you-go services to an Azure subscription in your own tenant, build and train one or two document processing models (a prebuilt model such as invoice, receipt or contract, or a custom structured or unstructured model on your own documents), apply them to the libraries that hold the paper, set up the metadata columns, views and content types that make the extracted fields useful, add content assembly or autofill columns where they are in scope, and configure usage monitoring so finance can see what the meters cost. Standard scope is one tenant, up to two models and up to five libraries; larger estates are quoted in writing. Fixed price $3,950, typically two weeks, paid after you approve delivery. Microsoft's per-page and per-transaction pay-as-you-go charges are billed by Microsoft to your Azure subscription and are yours; Microsoft 365 licenses are yours.
SharePoint Premium document processing (the capability set Microsoft shipped as Microsoft Syntex and renamed in late 2023) reads the documents already landing in your SharePoint libraries and turns them into metadata: a vendor name, an invoice total, a contract end date, a form field, a classification. Once that metadata exists, SharePoint can file the document under the right content type, light up views and filters, drive a Power Automate approval, apply a retention label, and give Copilot and search something more useful than a filename. The capability is strong; what stops most organizations is not the technology but the setup, which spans three admin surfaces (Azure, the Microsoft 365 admin center, and the SharePoint content center) and a licensing model that changed from per-user seats to pay-as-you-go meters. This engagement does that setup end to end for one tenant. We start with your documents, not with the product: you give us a handful of real samples from each process you want to automate, and we tell you which model type fits. Prebuilt models (Microsoft-trained models for invoices, receipts, contracts and similar document types) need no training and work in a day. Structured models learn the layout of forms and tables from a small set of labeled examples. Unstructured models learn to classify documents and pull fields from free-form text such as letters, statements of work or agreements. Each has different training effort, different accuracy characteristics and, at the time of writing, different meters, and we choose with you rather than defaulting to the fanciest option. We then switch on pay-as-you-go. SharePoint Premium meters are billed to an Azure subscription in your own tenant, so we identify or create that subscription and resource group, confirm the roles Microsoft requires in both places, activate the pay-as-you-go services in the Microsoft 365 admin center, and connect the specific services you will use. We build and train the models in a content center, test them against documents the model has not seen, apply them to the target libraries, and build the columns, content types and views that make the extracted data visible and filterable. Where content assembly (generating documents from a template and list data) or autofill columns (prompt-driven column population) are part of the agreed scope, we configure one of each. Finally we make the meters legible. We set up Azure Cost Management views and a budget alert on the subscription so the people paying the bill can see pages processed and dollars spent per service, and we hand over a short guide that tells your admins how to read it, how to add a library to a model, and how to turn a service off. The page count Microsoft charges for is yours and is billed by Microsoft; nothing in this fee covers, caps or marks it up.
We meet your SharePoint admin and the owner of each business process, collect three to five representative documents per process (including the messy ones), and agree the target libraries, the fields that matter and whether content assembly or autofill is in scope. We confirm the tenant is in a cloud where pay-as-you-go is offered, look for an Azure subscription in the same tenant, and put anything that would block the setup in writing before touching the tenant.
We identify or create the Azure subscription and resource group, confirm the Owner or Contributor role on the subscription and the Microsoft 365 admin role Microsoft requires, activate pay-as-you-go services in the Microsoft 365 admin center, and connect only the SharePoint Premium services you will use. We create a content center site and confirm the services appear there.
For a prebuilt model we apply it to the sample set and check which fields it returns. For a structured or unstructured model we label the training examples, define the extractors, train, and iterate until the fields you care about come back consistently on documents the model has not seen. The process owner reviews results on the held-out set and signs off on the fields before we publish.
We apply the models to the target libraries, create or map the metadata columns and content types, build the views and filters the process owner asked for, and document any hooks into retention labels or Power Automate flows you already run. If content assembly or an autofill column is in scope, we configure it here and run it against real data.
We set up the Azure Cost Management view for the SharePoint Premium meters, a budget with alert recipients, and run a controlled batch of documents through each library so finance can see the first charges appear and match them to pages processed. Any field or classification misses from the batch are corrected.
We walk your SharePoint admin and the process owner through the handover guide, show how to add a library, retrain a model and disconnect a service, remove our temporary access, and ask for your approval of delivery. Payment is due after that approval.
The fixed fee covers the work on this page for standard scope: one tenant, up to two models, up to five libraries, pay-as-you-go enablement, metadata and views, one content assembly template or autofill column where in scope, usage monitoring and handover. It is quoted in writing before work begins and paid after you approve delivery. Microsoft charges separately for what the services process: a per-page or per-transaction meter, billed by Microsoft to your Azure subscription at its published rate. We help you see and alert on that spend but we do not resell, cap or absorb it. Larger estates are quoted in writing.
The same product line. Microsoft launched the content AI services as SharePoint Syntex in 2020, renamed them Microsoft Syntex, and in late 2023 folded them into SharePoint Premium alongside content management and governance features. Documentation, admin center labels and third-party articles still use both names at the time of writing, so you will see Syntex in some screens we work in. The document processing models, content center and pay-as-you-go billing are what this engagement sets up regardless of the label.
For document processing, pay-as-you-go is enough: any user with a Microsoft 365 license can use a library with a model applied once the tenant is connected to a pay-as-you-go Azure subscription. Per-user SharePoint Premium licenses exist for some features and some organizations prefer the predictability, but they are not required for this scope. We confirm the licensing position for your specific feature set at kickoff against Microsoft's current documentation, because Microsoft has moved features between the two models over time.
It depends on the documents. If they are invoices, receipts or contracts of the type Microsoft has already trained for, a prebuilt model works in a day with no training and returns a fixed set of fields. If they are forms or tables with a consistent layout from one source (a supplier's remittance, an onboarding form), a structured model learns that layout from a small set of labeled examples and lets you choose the fields. If they are free-form text that varies in layout (letters, agreements, statements of work), an unstructured model classifies them and pulls fields from the text. We look at your samples and recommend in writing; often one process gets a prebuilt model and another gets a custom one, which is why the scope allows two.
We will not quote a figure before seeing your documents, because accuracy is a property of your paper, not the product. Clean, consistent documents extract well; poor scans, handwritten fields and layouts that vary from one sender to the next extract less well. What we do promise is a validation step: we train on one set of your documents, test on a set the model has not seen, and report field by field what it got right and wrong before the business owner signs off and we publish. Where a field is unreliable we say so and suggest a fallback, such as leaving it as a human-completed column.
Because Microsoft bills the SharePoint Premium pay-as-you-go meters through Azure Cost Management, the same way it bills Copilot Credits and SharePoint Embedded. The subscription has to be in the same tenant, and the person activating pay-as-you-go needs Owner or Contributor on it plus the right Microsoft 365 admin role. Nothing runs in that subscription; it is purely the billing target. If you do not have one, we create one in Microsoft's wizard or provide an Azure plan through our CSP.
An existing pay-as-you-go or enterprise subscription in the same tenant works. At the time of writing, credit-based subscriptions such as Visual Studio or sponsorship offers do not qualify for Microsoft 365 pay-as-you-go billing, and a tenant whose Azure is managed through a CSP may need an Azure plan from that CSP. We sort out which case you are in at kickoff before anything is activated.
At the time of writing, no. Microsoft offers SharePoint Premium pay-as-you-go to commercial cloud tenants, and GCC, GCC High and DoD tenants are excluded. If you are in a government cloud we confirm Microsoft's current position at the first call and, if it has not changed, tell you plainly that this engagement does not apply rather than take the order.
Content assembly generates documents (a Word or PDF output such as a contract, letter or statement) from a modern template whose placeholders are mapped to SharePoint list or library columns or filled in manually. It is in scope when you name one template at kickoff; we build that template, map the fields and produce an accepted output. Additional templates are an extension. Microsoft's pay-as-you-go position for content assembly has changed over time, so we confirm its current meter and availability at kickoff.
An autofill column uses a prompt to populate a library column from the content of each file as it arrives, for example a one-line summary, a document type, a counterparty name or a due date, without training a model. Microsoft recommends keeping prompts to about ten columns per library and files under about sixty-five pages for predictable results at the time of writing. Where it is in scope we configure one column with its prompt and show your admin how to add more. Autofill is metered under pay-as-you-go (or under Microsoft 365 Copilot where the user is licensed), and that meter is yours.
Three controls. First, every page is charged from the moment a model is applied to a library, so we apply models in a controlled order and start with a validation batch rather than the whole backlog. Second, we set a budget on the Azure subscription with alert recipients you name, and show finance the Cost Management view broken down by SharePoint Premium service. Third, the handover guide shows how to remove a model from a library and how to disconnect a service in the Microsoft 365 admin center, which stops the charge immediately. The historical backlog is run when you decide, with the alert in place.
Yes, and that is usually the point. Extracted fields are ordinary SharePoint columns, so a Power Automate flow can route an invoice over a threshold for approval, a retention label can be applied automatically when a content type is set, and views, search and Copilot can use the fields. This engagement creates the columns, content types and views and documents the trigger hooks; building the flows is covered by our Microsoft 365 business process automation service, and retention and records design by our Purview services.
Not inside this fee, but yes as a companion engagement. Our SharePoint Online migration with metadata service moves content from file shares and legacy systems and preserves or maps metadata on the way in; this service then applies models to the libraries it lands in. Doing the migration first means the backlog run through the models is a single, planned and budgeted event.
For the enablement step, Owner or Contributor on the Azure subscription and the Microsoft 365 admin role that activates pay-as-you-go; for the build, site owner on the content center and the target sites. We ask for granular, time-bound delegated access that you approve rather than standing global admin, and we remove any access granted for the work at closeout and confirm it in writing.
Tell us at the first call. The fixed price covers standard scope of two models and five libraries, which fits most first deployments. Additional models and libraries are quoted in writing as an extension before work starts, so the number you approve is the number you pay. After handover, our hourly SharePoint engineer service or the managed SharePoint care plan covers adding models and libraries as new processes come up.