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Catalog management in SharePoint Advanced Management helps you understand how content is organized across your SharePoint environment. It uses existing Microsoft 365 metadata to automatically group sites into meaningful categories, giving you a centralized view of your content landscape.
Instead of managing sites individually, use catalog management to analyze and apply governance actions across groups of related sites. Catalog management shifts SharePoint governance from a site-by-site approach to a metadata-driven model. By grouping sites into categories and groups, you gain the insight and scale needed to manage content, reduce risk, and prepare for AI-powered experiences like Microsoft 365 Copilot.
How catalog management works
Catalog management organizes SharePoint sites into categories and groups based on metadata already present in your Microsoft 365 tenant.
- Categories are high-level classifications such as department, user type, or region.
- Groups provide more detail within each category. For example, within the Department category, groups might include Marketing, Sales, HR, or Finance.
This structure helps you understand how content is distributed and governed across your organization.
Built-in categories
Catalog management includes built-in categories derived from Microsoft 365 metadata. Common examples include:
- Locale: The region where the content is hosted (for example, North America vs. Europe).
- Department: The organizational units associated with the site (for example, finance department).
- User type: Guest or not Guest.
- Preferred data location (PDL): The multi-geo setup for your sites.
- Information barriers segment: The segment defined by information barriers policies (for organizations that implement information barriers).
These categories are automatically populated and available without configuration.
Metadata sources
Catalog management uses metadata from multiple sources to define categories and groups:
- Microsoft Entra ID: Organizational attributes such as department, user type, and extension attributes
- SharePoint site metadata: Site properties such as property bag values, site keywords, and other SharePoint-defined properties
Because catalog management reflects existing metadata, keeping that metadata accurate and consistent is essential for meaningful results.
Use catalog management to guide governance decisions
Catalog management helps you understand how content is structured and where it resides so you can take targeted governance actions.
You can use it to:
- Identify how content is distributed across departments or regions
- Detect potential oversharing risks in groups of sites
- Prioritize lifecycle actions, such as cleanup or ownership validation
- Scope governance reports, lifecycle policies, and access controls
By applying governance at the group level, you can scale your approach while maintaining consistency across your tenant.
Reporting and insights
Each category and group includes a downloadable site report. These reports help you:
- Analyze how sites are grouped
- Identify trends across your content
- Support governance and compliance scenarios
These insights provide the context you need to make informed administrative decisions.
Integration with the SharePoint Admin Agent
Catalog management provides structure that improves the effectiveness of the SharePoint Admin Agent.
When your sites are categorized:
- Insights become more relevant
- Analysis and anomaly detection improve
- Governance recommendations are more targeted
This integration helps you move from understanding your content to taking action more efficiently.
Get started
Catalog management is automatically enabled when you use SharePoint Advanced Management, so you can start exploring your content distribution right away.
Go to the SharePoint admin center and sign in.
Expand Reports, and then select Catalog management.
Customize property display names
Change the display name of a property by selecting its name, and then typing the display name you prefer.
Changing property names only affects how properties are displayed in Catalog management. It doesn't change the underlying metadata or affect site grouping logic.