Compliance failures are expensive, and manual policy management is just a slower way to fail. For organisations using Microsoft 365, SharePoint is a critical application that employees rely on to find, access, share, update, and manage documents. It is usually the de facto document management system (DMS) for day-to-day work.
Despite this, when it comes to policy management, SharePoint is often underused or not used at all. It rarely fulfils its potential as the single source of truth for corporate policies and procedures:
Policies and procedures may sometimes be managed and housed in a different compliance system altogether, making them harder to access and find.
Policies sometimes have to be copied over to SharePoint for employees to access, creating more than one version.
The distribution of policies within SharePoint is haphazard and inconsistent, creating problems with version control, findability and trust.
Policy management in SharePoint requires custom development to extend the necessary governance to manage policies, leading to additional cost, effort and technical debt.
A missed opportunity: using SharePoint for policy management
The disconnect between SharePoint use as a popular DMS and not using it effectively for compliance automation represents a massive missed opportunity. When done well, it means organisations can get better ROI from SharePoint, reduce compliance risk, achieve permanent audit-readiness, and improve the employee experience without adding another system.
SharePoint offers several key advantages for policy management.
Why SharePoint falls short for policy management out of the box
Despite those advantages, several significant gaps stop organisations from using SharePoint effectively for policy management.
Extending SharePoint for policy governance
There are many benefits of using SharePoint for policy management, but there are some significant challenges. Organisations wanting to extend the use of SharePoint for policy management have two main choices:
Use custom development, but swallow the risks around technical debt and ongoing additional maintenance and cost, as well as take on the effort.
Procure a product that builds on SharePoint’s strengths, overcomes the challenges, completes the feature gaps, avoids technical debt and effort, and overall will be more cost-effective.
How does a compliance automation platform like Xoralia overcome the challenges of SharePoint policy management?
Here’s how Xoralia overcomes many of the challenges and closes the gaps.
Challenge
How Xoralia meets the challenge
Feature gaps around SharePoint policy governance
Xoralia automates the complete compliance lifecycle: employee attestation, scheduled policy review, and audit-ready evidence trails, all within your existing Microsoft 365 tenant. Trusted by 200+ regulated organisations, with up to 99% attestation rates and implementation measured in days, not months.
Search and findability
Xoralia makes it easy for employees to find what they need through a single personalised policy library with its own search, custom metadata for browsing, content governance, and version control to reduce search noise. There are even out-of-the-box web parts to present policies in context.
Gaps in review workflow
Xoralia comes with lifecycle management features and configurable workflows for each policy, for both creation and review. Each stakeholder can also check the status of a policy, which covers the end-to-end process, from using a Word template to publishing it to your central policy library.
Lack of integration with other systems
Xoralia has an API to configure integrations with other compliance tools and legacy systems. As Xoralia is built natively for Microsoft 365, all data stays within your own tenant, with no external transfers, no third-party hosting, and SSO via Entra ID as standard.
Templates and reporting
Xoralia lets you use different Word templates for different policy types. There is extensive reporting as well as targeted views to meet multiple use cases and support compliance.
Stakeholder reluctance
Xoralia delivers the compliance automation features compliance teams need, while keeping IT happy, with no new infrastructure, no third-party hosting, and full data sovereignty within your Microsoft tenant. For both audiences, it removes the friction that has held back SharePoint-based compliance.
Potential for technical debt
As a fully supported, Microsoft 365-native compliance automation platform, Xoralia delivers everything required without custom code, custom maintenance, or ongoing technical debt. Updates and new features are managed by Xoralia, not your IT team.
Extending SharePoint policy governance
SharePoint is a strong foundation for compliance management, but without automation for attestation, review cycles, and evidence trails, manual burden persists, and audit-readiness is never guaranteed. Xoralia is the compliance automation platform that closes those gaps, so your organisation moves from chasing policy reviews to having evidence prepared before the auditor asks. Stop managing compliance. Start proving it. Book a free demo to see how it works.
Frequently asked questions
Can SharePoint be used for policy management?
Yes, SharePoint provides strong foundations for compliance management within Microsoft 365, giving employees single sign-on access to policies through familiar tools. However, SharePoint out of the box lacks the compliance automation features that regulated organisations require, including automated employee attestation, scheduled review workflows, and audit-ready evidence trails. A purpose-built compliance automation platform like Xoralia closes those gaps.
How do I extend SharePoint for policy governance?
There are two choices: invest in custom development (with associated technical debt, costs, and maintenance overhead) or deploy a purpose-built compliance automation platform like Xoralia. A platform built natively for Microsoft 365 will automate the complete policy lifecycle, from creation and distribution through to employee attestation and audit-ready reporting, without adding new infrastructure or leaving your Microsoft tenant.
Dan Hawtrey is CEO of Content Formula and the driving force behind Xoralia, a policy management platform built natively on Microsoft 365. Dan writes regularly on policy management, compliance, and the evolving role of AI in how organisations manage knowledge. His articles are grounded in real conversations with the companies and teams using Xoralia day to day.
In a 30-minute demo you will see how Xoralia runs inside your own Microsoft 365 tenant - from distribution and attestation through to a continuously built audit trail.
