Content, sync & limitations

Content types

Drive items (files)

Drive items are files stored in SharePoint document libraries — Word, Excel, PDF, and other supported formats.

Fields synced

• Name — File name. Indexed for full-text search; displayed as the result title.

• URL — Direct link to the file in SharePoint. Used to generate the result link; not searchable.

• Owner / Created by — User who created the file. Displayed in result metadata.

• Updated by — User who last modified the file. Displayed in result metadata.

• Created time — Timestamp the file was created. Displayed in result metadata; used for document age filtering.

• Last modified time — Timestamp of the last update. Used for incremental sync; displayed in result metadata.

• Parent reference — Parent folder or library. Used to generate folder context in the result.

• Object type — Identifies the item as a drive item. Used for object type filtering.

• File extension and size — File type and size in bytes. Used for file extension and file size filtering; displayed as a file type icon.

• MIME type — Content type of the file. Used to determine how the file is rendered in search results.

• Permissions (users and groups) — Access control list for the item. Used to enforce access control — never displayed. 

Applicable filters

Pages

Pages are SharePoint site pages (modern and classic) used to publish content within a site.

Fields synced

• Name / Title — Page title. Indexed for full-text search; displayed as the result title.

• URL — Link to the page. Used to generate the result link.

• Owner / Created by — User who created the page. Displayed in result metadata (Author).

• Updated by — User who last modified the page. Displayed in result metadata.

• Created time — Timestamp the page was created. Displayed in result metadata.

• Last modified time — Timestamp of the last update. Used for incremental sync; displayed in result metadata.

• Parent reference — Parent site. Used to generate site context in the result.

• Permissions (users and groups) — Access control list for the page. Used to enforce access control — never displayed.

Attachments associated with SharePoint Pages are not ingested — only the page content itself is indexed.

Applicable filters

Sites

Sites are SharePoint site containers. Site content itself is indexed through its child drive items and pages; the site object provides the site-level result and metadata.

Fields synced

• Name / Display name — Site name. Indexed for full-text search; displayed as the result title.

• URL — Link to the site. Used to generate the result link.

• Owner — Site owner. Displayed in result metadata.

• Object type — Identifies the item as a site. Used for object type filtering.

• Permissions (users and groups) — Access control list for the site. Used to enforce access control — never displayed.
  

Applicable filters

Sync frequency

Incremental sync

Captures: new items, updates, deletions, moves and renames, and per-item permission changes.

After the initial full sync, the connector runs incremental syncs every hour. Each incremental sync pulls content created, updated, moved, renamed, or deleted since the last sync, based on the item's timestamp.

Full sync

A full sync re-indexes all content from SharePoint. It runs automatically on first setup, then every week, and can be triggered manually from the connector Status page. Full syncs on large tenants may take several hours. Incremental syncs resume automatically once the full sync completes.

Some deep permission-hierarchy changes are only fully reconciled during a full sync — see permission propagation latency on the Permissions & Security page for detail and worst-case timing.

User sync

User sync pulls the latest SharePoint user identities and group memberships and updates the search index accordingly. It runs every hour, on a separate schedule from incremental sync. If a user's group membership changes in SharePoint, the change is reflected in Simpplr search results after the next sync.

Known limitations

• Source permissions are not synced for content shared only via anonymous or public links — this content is not indexed at all, so it is never exposed regardless of audience settings.

• Files larger than 10 MB: content not extracted, metadata only — files remain findable by title.

• Compressed archives (e.g., a .zip file containing a set of PDFs): content not extracted — files remain findable by title.

• Text within images and scanned PDFs: not extracted or searchable.

• Attachments associated with SharePoint Pages are not ingested — only the page content itself is indexed.

• Comments and individual file versions are not indexed as separate items — only the latest file metadata (including last updated time and updated-by user) is indexed.