There are lots of great new features coming to Microsoft Syntex (or SharePoint Premium) and many of these can be used in a PAYG manner tied to an Azure subscription. This is much like the Power Platform PAYG configuration I have detailed previously.
Before you configure anything in Microsoft 365, you’ll need an Azure subscription to bill against that is in the same tenant as Microsoft 365. I would also suggest you create a new unique Resource Group which you can target for Syntex PAYG services. This will make it much easier to determine the costs of the Syntex services that you consume. I’m not going to cover how to add a resource group to Azure here, but make sure you have the subscription in place before proceeding.
To enable Syntex PAYG you need to login to the Microsoft 365 portal as an administrator and navigate to the Admin center as shown above. Select Setup from the menu on the left. On the right enter “use con” into the search box as shown in step two above. This will filter out all the other options except the one you want which is:
Use content AI with Microsoft Syntex
as shown in step 3 above. Select this.
You should see the screen shown above. If you have not yet configured the PAYG billing for Syntex the only option available will be the Set up billing option on the left, as shown, which you should select.
A dialog will appear from the right hand side with a number of options as shown above. Here you’ll need to select your Azure information from the drop down menus presented.
When you have completed all the fields (including the Resource Group which I suggest you create just for this purpose), select the I accept Microsoft pay-as-you-go billing terms of service. Finally, select the Save button at the bottom of the dialog.
The system will then display the above screen for a few minutes (be patient, it takes a little while to fully configure).
All going well, you should receive a confirmation of success at the top of the page as shown above. You can now close this dialog.
With the billing complete you should now be able to select the Manage Microsoft Syntex option on the right as shown above.
You should now see the current list of services that can be utilised with Syntex PAYG. More will be added over time, so don’t forget to check back regularly. To configure any of these simply select that service.
In this case, the Archive option was selected and you can see the Turn on button on the bottom of the dialog you would need to select to enable SharePoint Site archiving in your Microsoft 365 tenant. There are more configuration steps required to enable the service and all this really does is bill the service in a PAYG manner to your Azure subscription.
You can now close out of all these windows and leave everything turned off for now, ready for when you do want to start using those capabilities. There will be no costs until you actually start using these services (i.e. PAYG. Don’t use, don’t pay!)
It is really good that these advanced options are being made available in a PAYG manner, allowing greater access to such capabilities, without necessarily having to pay high monthly fees with a lock in contract. A very SMB friendly option in my opinion!
I look forward to seeing more services appear here for Syntex which I can star using, including eSignatures which is coming real soon. Stay tuned.
