SharePoint MCP Server

SharePoint MCP: Bringing Enterprise Content into AI Conversations

The SharePoint MCP server addresses a common pain point in modern workplaces: enabling conversational agents to retrieve and surface relevant documents from an organization’s SharePoint Online environment without exposing sensitive credentials or requiring developers to write custom Graph API code. By abstracting the authentication, query construction, and result parsing into a single, reusable service, it lets AI assistants—such as those built on Gemini or Claude—to ask natural‑language questions and receive actionable links, snippets, and metadata from SharePoint sites.

At its core, the server is a .NET‑based API that leverages Semantic Kernel to expose SharePoint functionality as a “skill” or “plugin.” The kernel framework allows the search operation to be defined once and then injected into more complex reasoning pipelines, should future use cases require chaining with other data sources or advanced prompt engineering. The API exposes a simple endpoint (e.g., ) that accepts a query string and forwards it to the underlying connector library.

The SharePoint Connector Library is responsible for all Graph API interactions. It performs app‑only authentication using a client ID and secret, obtains an access token, and then constructs a request against the endpoint. The library is intentionally lightweight—just enough to return search results in a consistent shape (document titles, URLs, snippets). By keeping this logic isolated, developers can swap in alternative authentication flows or extend the library to support additional SharePoint actions (file uploads, metadata updates) without touching the MCP server.

Typical real‑world scenarios include knowledge workers asking a chatbot for policy documents, compliance reports, or project artifacts. In an enterprise setting, the MCP server ensures that only authorized applications can access SharePoint data, and it centralizes permission management in Azure AD. Developers can integrate the MCP server into existing AI workflows by simply calling its REST endpoint whenever a SharePoint‑related intent is detected, then feeding the returned results back into the conversation context.

Unique advantages of this architecture include:

• Security by design – app‑only tokens eliminate the need for user credentials in the chat flow.
• Modularity – separate server, connector, and client layers make maintenance straightforward and allow teams to evolve each component independently.
• Semantic Kernel integration – the server can be expanded into a full‑blown AI skill, enabling more sophisticated reasoning over SharePoint content.

For developers familiar with MCP concepts, the SharePoint MCP server offers a ready‑to‑deploy, secure, and extensible bridge between conversational AI and enterprise document repositories.