Copilot in SharePoint — Autofill Columns & List Creation

Summary

The Knowledge Agent can autofill metadata for files and generate SharePoint lists from content. By default it processes the first 20 files; you can select additional files and re-run Autofill to apply the same extraction over more items.

How it looks

Create_AutiFill_columns

Create the following autofill columns (suggested)

Claim ID
Policy number
Claimant name
Address (UK cities)
Phone & email
Claim type (motor, health, property, travel, accident)
Incident date & location
Claim description
Claim amount (£)
Report date
Signature

Autofill behaviour

Initially, the agent applies autofill to the first 20 files only:

AutoFill applies to first 20 files only

To apply autofill to more items, select the files you want to update and choose Autofill columns > Autofill. New and edited files are processed automatically.

Select all to autofill

Long-running operations

The UI may warn that processing will take several hours for large batches:

Message autofill will take several hours

Progress is shown while files are being processed:

Files being processed

Generate a list from content

You can ask the agent to create a SharePoint list for a specific purpose (for example, insurance covers). The agent suggests internal names and display names for fields.

Create A list

Example: requested fields for an insurance cover list

claim_id
policy_number
insurer
coverage_type
coverage_limit_gbp
deductible_gbp
annual_premium_gbp
policy_start_date
policy_end_date
status

Create list with columns promt

Result and adjustments

The list is created automatically:

list created

However, display names created by the agent may include whitespace; internal names are preserved and can be corrected if needed:

List created with whitespaces

Columns were created with the provided internal names and the agent updated display names to include spaces where appropriate:

Correct column display name

Gotchas

  1. Columns are created at the library level — verify the target scope before creating fields.
  2. Search within the newly created list may not return all expected results immediately — reindexing or time may be required for accurate search results.

Inaccurate results

Notes

  1. The Modified date and Modified by values remain unchanged after autofill actions are used.
  2. You can change a column’s display name without changing its internal name.

Rename column display name

Next steps

  • Review suggested internal names and update any that need stricter typing or validation.
  • If search results are inaccurate, trigger a list reindex and confirm that columns are crawled.
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