For organizations managing large volumes of sensitive information, applying sensitivity labels at scale can take time. Microsoft is preparing an important enhancement to Microsoft Purview Information Protection that will significantly increase auto-labeling capacity.
🔹 What's changing?
The planned daily processing capacity for server-side auto-labeling across SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business will increase from:
100,000 → 500,000 files per tenant, per day
That's a 5x increase in labeling capacity.
🛡️ Why does this matter?
Sensitivity labels are an important part of discovering, classifying, and protecting organizational data.
Increasing auto-labeling capacity can help organizations:
✅ Label existing content faster
✅ Reduce auto-labeling backlogs
✅ Expand protection across large SharePoint and OneDrive environments
✅ Improve consistency of data classification
✅ Strengthen data governance and compliance
✅ Better prepare sensitive information for AI-powered services such as Microsoft 365 Copilot
Microsoft's server-side auto-labeling policies can automatically evaluate supported files stored in SharePoint and OneDrive and apply sensitivity labels when content matches configured conditions.
⚙️ Good news for administrators
The increased capacity is expected to apply automatically to existing server-side auto-labeling policies.
No redesign of existing policies or changes to the end-user labeling experience should be required.
📅 Expected rollout
🔹 Public Preview: September 2026
🔹 General Availability: October 2026
💡 Bottom line: Moving from 100K to 500K files per day could make a significant difference for organizations with large Microsoft 365 data estates. Faster auto-labeling means faster classification, broader protection, and fewer gaps as organizations strengthen their data security posture for both users and AI.
