Copilot Studio: Local JSON/Text Knowledge Sources Result in Non‑Clickable Citations After Publishing

Question

Hello everyone,

I would like to seek clarification on a behavior we are currently observing with Copilot Studio agents and knowledge sources, to understand whether this is a known limitation or if there is a supported way to address it—especially in a production setup.

At the moment, Copilot Studio does not support JSON or plain text files as knowledge sources. We initially attempted to host the JSON files in SharePoint and OneDrive; however, this did not resolve the issue, as Copilot Studio does not allow JSON files to be uploaded as knowledge sources even when they are stored in these locations.

As a workaround, we uploaded the JSON file locally while working with the agent in the default environment. The agent functions as expected in terms of answering questions, and citations are generated after publishing the agent.

However, after publishing, we noticed that the citation/source links are not clickable. This appears to be because the referenced file is stored locally rather than being hosted in a location that Copilot can resolve as a link (for example, SharePoint or another supported online repository).

My main concern is to understand the following:

• Is this expected behavior, even when the agent is deployed or promoted to a production environment within the organization?
• Or is there an alternative or recommended approach that would allow JSON/text-based knowledge to be used in a way that ensures clickable and usable citation links for end users?

In other words, I would like to confirm whether:

• This limitation persists across environments (default → production), or
• There is a supported solution (e.g., different storage mechanism, transformation, or ingestion method) that enables proper source attribution and clickable citations.

Any guidance on whether this is a known product limitation, a roadmap item, or if there is a best practice to resolve this would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much for your time and support.

Best regards,

Jahnavi

Answer 1

Hello Kalla, Jahnavi ,
The root cause is that Microsoft Copilot Studio knowledge grounding does not support structured formats like JSON, TXT, or CSV, and only indexes document-style sources such as PDFs, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, web URLs, and SharePoint pages. Because JSON lacks semantic layout, hierarchy, and chunkable text structure, the ingestion pipeline skips citation metadata generation, which results in citations that work during local testing but become non-clickable after publishing since no tenant-hosted URI or Graph resource ID exists. Clickable citations require a supported document type hosted in SharePoint or OneDrive with indexable layout and Graph-mapped chunks, which JSON fails to provide.

Recommended production workarounds include converting JSON into document-style content (PDF/Word/SharePoint pages), using Azure AI Search for structured data retrieval via plugins, or auto-generating SharePoint pages from JSON. This limitation persists across environments and is expected to remain, as the platform currently focuses on unstructured document grounding rather than structured file ingestion.

Answer 2

This is expected behavior with locally embedded files and there is no supported way in Copilot Studio today to make those citations clickable, even in production. Clickable citations require that the underlying content be in a supported online knowledge source that Copilot can reference as a resolvable URL.

Key points from current capabilities and limits:

1. Supported knowledge sources and hosting
   Copilot Studio supports knowledge from:
   • Public websites
   • Documents uploaded to Dataverse
   • SharePoint
   • Dataverse tables
   • Enterprise data via Microsoft Search connectors
     These are all online or Dataverse-backed sources that Copilot can index and reference. Citations from these sources can be surfaced with links that point back to the original location.
2. Embedded/local files vs. hosted sources
   • Files embedded directly in an agent (for example, uploaded during agent building) are stored as internal content and used for answering, but they are not hosted as user-accessible URLs.
   • As a result, citations that reference such embedded content cannot be turned into clickable links for end users, because there is no external address to navigate to.
   • This behavior is consistent regardless of environment (default vs. production). Promotion to production does not change how embedded content is stored or exposed.
3. Supported file types and limits
   • Copilot Studio supports JSON and text as uploaded document types when used as knowledge sources backed by Dataverse: JSON (.json) and text (.txt, .md, .log) are explicitly listed as supported document types.
   • Files larger than 512 MB, or files with encryption/sensitivity labels or password protection, are not supported as uploaded documents.
4. Recommended approach to get clickable citations
   To have JSON/text-based knowledge with clickable citations:
   • Store the JSON or text content in a supported online knowledge source rather than as a purely local/embedded file. Options include:
     • Uploading the JSON/text file as a document knowledge source (Dataverse-backed) in Copilot Studio.
     • Hosting the file in SharePoint or another supported repository and connecting that location as a knowledge source.
   • When the content is ingested from these supported sources, Copilot Studio can associate citations with the underlying document or SharePoint item, enabling clickable references.
5. Behavior across environments
   • The limitation of non-clickable citations for purely local/embedded files is architectural and persists across environments. Moving from default to production does not convert embedded files into linkable, hosted artifacts.
   • To change citation behavior, the content must be moved to and consumed from a supported knowledge source type (Dataverse documents, SharePoint, etc.), not just promoted between environments.

In practice, the best practice is to:

• Avoid relying on purely local/embedded files for any knowledge that must provide clickable citations.
• Place JSON/text content in a supported document or SharePoint-based knowledge source and connect that source in Copilot Studio so that citations can resolve to real, user-accessible locations.

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References:

• Knowledge sources summary
• Upload files as a knowledge source
• Unstructured data as a knowledge source
• Add knowledge sources to your declarative agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot
• Agents for customer engagement and handoff
• Use SharePoint content for generative answers
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