The average knowledge worker spends 1.8 to 2.5 hours each day searching for information. AI can change that – adding intelligent SharePoint search summaries to results has been shown to cut search time by 20–40%. However, integrating AI into enterprise search is not without challenges. Organizations must ensure that these AI-driven summaries comply with data privacy requirements and do not expose information that users should not see. In this post, we explore how PointFire Search Summarizer leverages Azure OpenAI within SharePoint to provide secure, permission-trimmed results that boost productivity without compromising compliance.
How AI summaries boost SharePoint search productivity
Out-of-the-box, SharePoint search results typically show only document titles and a brief snippet – often not enough to judge a result’s relevance. PointFire Search Summarizer addresses this by adding an AI-generated summary to each hit that highlights how that document relates to the query. Users can immediately see key sentences in context without opening the file, helping them quickly see which documents are actually useful. It can even indicate when a result is not truly relevant to the query despite containing the search keywords; this means employees find answers faster, with fewer clicks and less frustration.
Data privacy and compliance with Azure OpenAI
To keep sensitive content secure, PointFire Search Summarizer uses Azure OpenAI in your own Azure tenant instead of a public AI service. You deploy an Azure OpenAI resource in your subscription, so the model runs in the region and environment you specify. In other words, no SharePoint data needs to leave your company’s trusted cloud boundary – all AI processing is designed to stay within your environment, not a shared one. This design ensures compliance with data residency and privacy requirements, since your information is never sent to external servers for processing.
Permission trimming: no unauthorized information
Equally important, the Summarizer respects SharePoint’s security trimming so that no unauthorized content is ever summarized. As an extension of the SharePoint search experience (via PnP Modern Search), it only works with results the user is allowed to see. The tool does not read any document that the user does not have permission to access In fact, summaries are generated only for content the user can open, with the AI not knowing other documents beyond each result. This approach ensures SharePoint permissions are enforced at every step, preventing any confidential information from leaking through the AI.
Boosting productivity without compromising compliance
In the end, organizations can have the best of both worlds. By leveraging Azure OpenAI through PointFire Search Summarizer, you get intelligent SharePoint search summaries that abide by all your compliance rules and permission controls. The result is truly less searching and more finding – employees discover what they need faster, while IT and security teams can rest easy knowing no data is exposed or misused.
