Copilot Retrieval API for SharePoint down?

Question

The Copilot Retrieval API for dataSources: Sharepoint has been down since yesterday night

for OneDriveBusiness it works well. Is there anyone else having this issue?

My production app has been partially down ever since

Answer 1

Hi @Victor Fiz Real 

Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. 

As moderators, we don’t have access to Microsoft’s internal backend systems, telemetry, or service diagnostics, so we’re unable to reproduce or verify the Copilot Retrieval API issue from our side.  

Additionally, there is currently no publicly available documentation, service advisory, or discussion indicating a widespread outage specifically affecting the Copilot Retrieval API for SharePoint dataSources. Since your production application is impacted, this may be a tenant-specific issue or a backend service incident that requires direct investigation by Microsoft. 

The best next step is to open a support ticket with Microsoft via Services Hub. This will allow the engineering team to review service logs and provide an official update. 

Please note that access to the Services Hub depends on your organization’s support agreement and may require a paid support plan. You can review the requirements and sign-in conditions in the Services Hub sign-in FAQs before submitting a request. 

If you receive any updates or official communication from Microsoft regarding this issue, please consider sharing them here so that others experiencing the same problem can benefit from the information.

Thank you for your patience and understanding. 

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Answer 2

The context does not indicate any known, general outage of the Copilot Retrieval API specifically for SharePoint. However, it does describe several conditions that commonly cause failures that might look like a “partial outage,” especially when OneDrive queries still work.

Based on the provided information, check the following in order:

1. Confirm licensing / pay-as-you-go status
   • If the affected users do not have a Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on license, verify that pay-as-you-go consumption for the Retrieval API is enabled at the tenant level:
     • In the Microsoft 365 admin center: Copilot → Billing & usage → Pay-as-you-go → Microsoft 365 Copilot Retrieval API.
   • After enabling pay-as-you-go, allow for propagation:
     • It can take about two hours for enablement to propagate.
     • The first API call may fail, and calls from the second call onward should succeed once the Billing Policy finishes updating.
   • If pay-as-you-go is disabled, the same propagation delay applies when turning it off, and a first call after disablement may still be charged.
2. Check for licensing errors in responses
   • If the API returns Forbidden: Authorization Failed - User does not have valid license, this indicates either:
     • Missing Microsoft 365 Copilot license, or
     • Pay-as-you-go not enabled for the user/tenant.
   • Resolution is to either assign a Microsoft 365 Copilot license to the user or enable pay-as-you-go for the Retrieval API.
3. Validate permissions and identity model
   • For the Retrieval API:
     • Delegated permissions required for SharePoint/OneDrive content are Files.Read.All and Sites.Read.All.
     • Application permissions are not supported.
   • If using tools like the SharePoint tool in Microsoft Foundry, ensure:
     • User identity (identity passthrough) is used; application-only authentication is not supported.
     • Cross-tenant access is not being attempted; the user in Foundry and Microsoft 365 must be in the same tenant.
4. Verify user access and SharePoint-specific conditions
   • If OneDrive works but SharePoint does not, confirm that:
     • The user has read access to the SharePoint sites and libraries being queried.
     • The SharePoint site URLs and library paths used in queries are valid and accessible.
     • The content is indexed by Microsoft Search; newly added content may not appear until indexing completes.
   • If responses are slow or incomplete, narrow the SharePoint search scope (specific sites/libraries, more specific queries) and allow time for semantic index sync.
5. Allow for propagation delays after changes
   • The context shows that both licensing changes and Retrieval API enablement can require hours to propagate. A previously reported Authorization Failed - User does not have valid license error disappeared after waiting a few hours with no other change.

If all of the above are correct (licensing/pay-as-you-go, delegated permissions, same-tenant user identity, and SharePoint access/indexing) and SharePoint queries still consistently fail while OneDrive works, this would point to a tenant- or service-level issue. In that case, open a support ticket with Microsoft 365 support and include:

• Exact error messages and HTTP status codes from the Retrieval API responses.
• Confirmation of user licenses or pay-as-you-go configuration.
• Example SharePoint URLs and queries that fail vs. OneDrive queries that succeed.

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References:

• Overview of the Microsoft 365 Copilot Retrieval API
• Retrieve grounding data (graph-preview)
• Use SharePoint tool with the agent API (preview) (rest)
• Use SharePoint tool with the agent API (preview) (csharp)
• Microsoft 365 Copilot Retrieval API pay-as-you-go consumption (preview)
• Microsoft 365 Copilot Retrieval API Pay-as-you-go Terms of Use (Public Preview)
• Microsoft 365 Copilot Retrieval API errors with Authorization Failed - User does not have valid license - Microsoft Q&A