Connecting SharePoint to AlphaSense

This is the updated documentation for SharePoint.

1. Check Common Info for other details.
2. Check for multi-app documentation SharePoint Multi-App Documentation.

Before you connect to SharePoint

Connecting SharePoint to AlphaSense requires a one-time approval from your Microsoft 365 tenant administrator. Once an admin has granted consent for your organization, anyone at your company can connect their SharePoint account without encountering the "Need admin approval" screen.

• If you're an IT administrator setting this up for your organization, complete the Admin Consent Steps (via Microsoft Entra) section below before rolling SharePoint out to your users.
• If you're an end user and you've hit the "Need admin approval" screen, share the Admin Consent Steps (via Microsoft Entra) section with your IT team — they only need to do this once for your whole organization.

Note: Admin consent is required once per organization, not once per user.

Choosing a connection type

When you connect to SharePoint, you'll choose between two connection types depending on whether you're syncing content for yourself or for your whole organization.

Individual Connection

Best for: A single user who wants to sync their own SharePoint content into AlphaSense.

What gets synced: Content from the Documents and Site Assets libraries on any SharePoint sites and subsites you personally have access to.

Who can see it: Only you, by default. You can manually share synced content with colleagues inside AlphaSense.

What's required:

• You sign in with your Microsoft Work account.
• Your tenant administrator must have granted consent for AlphaSense, either tenant-wide (Part 1 above) or by approving your individual consent request (Part 2 above).

Workspace Connection

Best for: Rolling SharePoint out to your whole organization so that everyone sees the SharePoint content they're entitled to, with permissions mirrored from SharePoint.

What gets synced: Content from the Documents and Site Assets libraries across the connected SharePoint sites and subsites.

Who can see it: Anyone in your AlphaSense workspace who has Can view (or higher) access to the original site or subsite in SharePoint. Native SharePoint permissions are always respected and cannot be overridden inside AlphaSense.

What's required:

• The user setting up the connection must be a site owner (or have site-collection administrator rights) on the SharePoint site being connected. Without that level of access, the connection completes, but no sites will be available to sync.
• A one-time tenant admin consent for AlphaSense.
• Depending on your organization's setup, AlphaSense uses one of three Microsoft access levels, described below.

Workspace access levels

For Workspace connections, AlphaSense supports three levels of SharePoint access. Selected Sites and Read All Sites are chosen during connection setup; Full Control is enabled separately by AlphaSense on request and is not exposed as a customer-facing toggle. Your IT admin or client team selects the customer-facing access level that fits your organization's security posture.

In every case, an individual user only ever sees content they already have permission to view in SharePoint — these access levels control what AlphaSense as a service is allowed to fetch, not what any individual sees.

Scopes used in different connections

Connect and configure SharePoint (walkthrough)

The following walkthrough uses an Individual Connection with Full Access as the example. The screens for a Workspace Connection are nearly identical.

Step 1. Open the AlphaSense Integration Center and click Connect SharePoint.

Navigate to https://research.alpha-sense.com/integration/sharepoint and click Connect SharePoint. You can make the connection via any active AlphaSense Licensed User.

When making the connection: The user making the connection will see all content they are entitled to see within the source system and have the ability to ingest any of that content. By default, no content is ingested until directed by the user.

Step 2. Choose Full Access or Reduced Access.

• Full Access displays all SharePoint sites and folder structure you are permitted to within your organization, but you still need to select the specific sites and folders you want to sync.
• Reduced Access displays only the sites/folders you manually enter, and you will still choose the specific folders to ingest during setup.

For this walkthrough, we select Full Access and click Continue.

Step 3. Choose your connection type.

You will be asked to select between the individual or workspace connections discussed above.

Step 4. Sign in with Microsoft and review access.

You will be prompted to log in with your Microsoft credentials. After logging in, review the access details. What happens next depends on whether you have admin rights in your identity provider:

• If you have admin rights: select the "Consent on behalf of your organization" checkbox and click Accept at the bottom. The connection will proceed.
• If you don't have admin rights: you will be asked to provide a reason for the request, and your IDP administrator will receive a notification to approve it. The approving admin's procedure is documented in the Admin Consent Steps (via Microsoft Entra).

Step 5. (Sites.Selected) Enter the site URLs to grant access to.

Skip this step if you are setting up an Individual Connection, or a Workspace Connection with the Sites.Read.All scope. In those cases, AlphaSense can already see every site you have native access to and will show them in the site picker without any URL entry. Proceed directly to the next step.

If you are setting up a Workspace Connection with the Sites.Selected scope by selecting Reduced Access shown below, an extra step is required before AlphaSense can show you any sites. On the SharePoint Connection Page in AlphaSense, paste in the URL of each SharePoint site.

Enter one site URL per line. Use the root site URL only — for example, https://<tenant>.sharepoint.com/sites/Deals. Sub-sites, document libraries, and folder paths are not valid entries.

Only the sites listed here will appear in the site picker in the next step.

From here, follow the standard sync setup flow in the Integration Center — select the sites and folders to ingest, configure sharing (Individual Connections only), apply company and topic tags, and click Confirm & Sync to start ingestion. Track progress under Integration Center → Monitoring.

Admin Consent Steps (via Microsoft Entra)

There are two admin-consent scenarios for SharePoint:

• Part 1 — Granting admin consent for the entire organization (proactive, before any user connects)
• Part 2 — Approving an access request from a user (reactive, when an individual user clicks "Request Approval" from the AlphaSense connection flow)

Part 1 — Granting admin consent for the entire organization

An IT administrator with Global Administrator or Cloud Application Administrator privileges can grant tenant-wide consent using these steps:

• Log into Microsoft Entra: Sign in to the Microsoft Entra admin center using your corporate administrator credentials.
• Navigate to Enterprise Apps: In the left-hand navigation menu, expand the Identity section, click on Applications, and select Enterprise applications.

• Find the AlphaSense-Sharepoint application: Use the search bar to look up AlphaSense-Sharepoint and click on the application name from the results list to open its overview page.
• Open the Permissions settings: Under the Security section in the left-side menu of the application page, click on Permissions.

• Grant admin consent: Click the blue button labeled "Grant admin consent for [Your Organization Name]". This will open a Microsoft authentication pop-up window.

• Confirm and finalize consent: Authenticate with your admin account if prompted. On the permissions review screen, select the checkbox that says "Consent on behalf of your organization" and click Accept.

Why this matters: Checking the "Consent on behalf of your organization" box ensures that individual team members can instantly connect their SharePoint accounts to AlphaSense without encountering the "Need admin approval" screen.

Part 2 — Approving an access request from a user

Once the admin consent workflow is configured and an end user or service account has raised a request from the AlphaSense connection flow, an approving Entra admin completes the following steps. The request remains pending until an approver acts on it; until then, the AlphaSense connection cannot complete.

Step 1. Navigate to Enterprise Apps in the Entra admin center.

Sign in to https://entra.microsoft.com as a configured reviewer and open the Enterprise apps blade.

Step 2. Open Admin Consent Requests and select the AlphaSense-Sharepoint entry.

In Enterprise apps, choose Admin consent requests from the left rail. Locate the row for AlphaSense-Sharepoint (screenshot is for reference only) in the My Pending list and click it.

Step 3. Click "Review permissions and consent."

From the request details pane on the right, click Review permissions and consent to open the Microsoft Permissions requested screen (screenshot is for reference only).

Step 4. Review the listed permissions and click Accept.

Carefully review the scopes the application is requesting (these match the scope profile chosen at connection time). If the scopes are correct for your security posture, click Accept. The request will close, and the AlphaSense connection workflow will be able to complete.

Connecting Your Account

Update the screenshot in “You'll choose between two connection types:”

Disconnecting Your Account

• Click Disconnect.

Monitoring Added Documents

Reconciling Added Documents

To manage your added documents:

AlphaSense integration configuration page allows for management of user permissions, folder hierarchies and labeling. Click into Manage Configuration to make any necessary changes.

What happens to my content when I disconnect my SharePoint connection?

SharePoint Workspace Connection

Can I sync all the content from my SharePoint site to AlphaSense?

AlphaSense only syncs content from the Documents and Site Assets libraries for individual and workspace connections. This capability extends to both your main SharePoint sites and any subsites. Other SharePoint elements—including pages, conversations, and general site content—are currently not supported.

Can I sync my SharePoint Notebooks to AlphaSense?

Yes! You can sync your SharePoint OneNote Notebooks to AlphaSense. To ensure they sync successfully, your notebooks must be stored in either the Documents or Site Assets library of your connected site or subsite.

FAQ and Troubleshooting

Q: How often does SharePoint content sync?

Synced folders automatically refresh every 15 minutes to keep your content up to date. This 15-minute refresh applies to both individual and workspace connections.

Additionally, for workspace connections, a full permissions recrawl runs once every 24 hours, scheduled to start at 10:00 AM IST (≈12:30 AM US Eastern Time), to ensure user access rights remain accurate and secure. Each recrawl only starts once the previous one has finished — for large-volume tenants, a single full permission sync can take multiple days, which defers the next cycle until it completes. For Workspace connections on the Full Control access level, permission changes are picked up incrementally during the 15-minute sync via Microsoft Graph delta APIs — the 24-hour recrawl does not apply.

Q: Will newly created SharePoint folders sync automatically?

Yes, as long as they are created within an already synced location. If your new folder is created inside a site, drive, or folder that you have already connected to AlphaSense, it will sync automatically during the next 15-minute refresh.

However, if you create a completely new top-level folder or drive that sits outside of your current connected items, it will not sync automatically. In that case, you must manually add the new item by going to Manage Configuration in your SharePoint connection.

Q: Can my organization have multiple SharePoint connections?

No. Once a Workspace connection is established on your tenant, no other SharePoint connection — Individual or Workspace — can be created on the same AlphaSense tenant. The Connect SharePoint button will appear grayed out for all other users in your organization.

If you need to set up a different SharePoint connection, the existing Workspace owner (typically the service account that created it) must first disconnect via Integration Center → Manage Configuration → Disconnect. After that, a new connection can be established.

Q: What permissions are required to view SharePoint content in AlphaSense?

• For an Individual Connection: Synced content is private to you by default. If you want others to see it, you must share the content manually within AlphaSense.
• For a Workspace Connection: Anyone who has Can view, or higher access to the original SharePoint site or subsite can view that content in AlphaSense. AlphaSense mirrors your SharePoint permissions exactly — individual user grants, Azure AD security group memberships, and SharePoint-native groups are all honored at the site, library, folder, and file level. Native SharePoint permissions are always respected and cannot be overridden within AlphaSense.

Q: I connected successfully, but my colleague can't see the content. Why?

This depends on the type of connection you established:

• Individual Connection: Synced content is strictly private to you by default. To make it visible to others, you must manually share it within AlphaSense.
• Workspace Connection: Access is determined entirely by your existing SharePoint setup. Anyone with Can view or higher access to the original SharePoint site or subsite can view that content in AlphaSense. AlphaSense mirrors your SharePoint permissions exactly — individual user grants, Azure AD security group memberships, and SharePoint-native groups are all honored at the site, library, folder, and file level. Native SharePoint permissions are always strictly respected and cannot be overridden.

To resolve this for a Workspace connection, update the user's permissions within SharePoint, and the change will be reflected in AlphaSense after the next 24-hour permissions recrawl. If your Workspace connection uses the Full Control access level, the change is reflected during the next 15-minute sync instead — there's no 24-hour wait.

Q: What happens if SharePoint permissions change after content is synced?

For a Workspace Connection, AlphaSense strictly mirrors your SharePoint permissions, but updates are not instantaneous.

• File and folder modifications (like editing or adding a document) are caught quickly during regular 15-minute sync refreshes.
• Permission-only changes (like adding or removing a user's access to a folder without changing the files themselves) are not updated incrementally. Instead, AlphaSense updates these access rights during the full 24-hour permissions recrawl. Exception: Workspace connections on the Full Control access level pick up permission-only changes incrementally during the 15-minute sync via Microsoft Graph delta APIs — no 24-hour wait.

Q: The sharing setup is correct and my colleagues are in the right groups, but they still can't see the documents. Why?

If your SharePoint permissions are correctly configured, check the following:

• Confirm AlphaSense Account Email: Ensure your colleagues have successfully onboarded and logged into AlphaSense using the same professional email address that holds permissions in your SharePoint environment.
• Verify Microsoft Account Email Mapping: Check that their primary email address is correctly populated and matches exactly across both AlphaSense and your Microsoft 365/SharePoint directory. If they are logging into AlphaSense with an alias or a different format (e.g., user@domain.com vs user@subdomain.domain.com), AlphaSense won't be able to map their SharePoint permissions.
• Wait for the next permission recrawl: If permissions were recently added or modified in SharePoint, allow up to one 24-hour permissions recrawl cycle for the change to reflect in AlphaSense. This applies to Workspace connections on the Selected Sites and Read All Sites access levels. Workspace connections on the Full Control access level reflect permission changes during the next 15-minute sync.

Q: I am not able to log in due to the “Need admin approval” screen. What should I do?

A: When connecting AlphaSense to your SharePoint environment for the first time, your organization's Microsoft 365 Tenant Administrator must approve the connection.

Q: I am not able to see the "Request admin consent" button on the login screen.

A: Requesting admin consent for login is not enabled for your tenant. In this case, follow these steps: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15NEOZQzXLq78GKn2vJfXXk_twWmhCRmkuq5mvQiGB4s/edit?usp=sharing and then request admin consent.

Q: How do I remove the AlphaSense-Sharepoint app's permissions?

Step 1: Go to the AlphaSense-Sharepoint app from the Enterprise apps menu.

Step 2: Revoke the relevant permission.