Microsoft and M-Files have formed a transformative partnership aimed at reimagining how organisations manage and collaborate on digital content.
Once rivals in the document management space, the two companies are now working together to integrate their technologies more deeply, enhancing productivity, compliance, and security across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.
Microsoft principal architect for OneDrive and SharePoint Ian Story reflected on the shift from competition to collaboration, saying, “All the years we would see each other at different events, we would be competing. I’m excited just to be sitting here now as partners.”
For M-Files founder and CEO Antti Nivala, the partnership represents the realisation of his long-standing vision. “Right from the start, my core idea was to offer the best possible experience to end users,” he said. “Most of the customers we work with use Microsoft tools as their digital workplace. So, it’s been important for me to make sure that M-Files integrates with Office tools, with the Windows operating system, and today with Microsoft 365 in the cloud.”
This collaboration allows users to co-author and edit documents in Microsoft 365 desktop applications, while M-Files manages the organisation of content, automates workflows, and ensures compliance. Nivala explained, “Co-authoring is very important for M-Files users. M-Files serves customers best when it’s not just the system of record, but also the system of work. Compliance becomes automatic. You can just do your work while everything else happens behind the scenes.”
Story added that the partnership enables “100 percent of the native co-authoring features of Microsoft 365 – comments, mentions, presence awareness, working with Copilot – not partial functionality.” This integration is powered by SharePoint Embedded, an API-only solution allowing developers to harness Microsoft’s core storage, security, and compliance infrastructure without relying on its user interface.
According to Story, “The solution uses the core storage technology, compliance and security capabilities of SharePoint, but not the user interface. Users only interact through M-Files’ user interface. It’s the best of both worlds.”
The partnership’s impact extends beyond collaboration tools. M-Files’ ability to integrate with enterprise systems like SAP and Salesforce provides context-rich data management within Microsoft 365. “It’s not just document management. From customer data to plant and equipment data – you can pull it all together with metadata inside Microsoft 365. That’s quite unique to M-Files,” said Nivala.
AI and automation are now central to the collaboration’s roadmap. Nivala noted, “Having Copilot natively access content is an exciting prospect. By exposing business context and documents in M-Files to Copilot, alongside the Microsoft Graph, you really get to the right conclusion for whatever the user needs.” Story added that both firms envision developing specialised AI agents across sectors like accounting, engineering, and life sciences.
Security and compliance remain core priorities. Nivala explained, “Now, thanks to the integration, we can create sensitivity labels automatically with metadata. If a document relates to a confidential project, metadata can trigger encryption and prevent oversharing.”
For more, read the full story here.
Read the daily FinTech news
Copyright © 2025 FinTech Global
Copyright © 2018 RegTech Analyst
