Add Copilot connectors as a knowledge source

When you build enterprise-level custom agents in Copilot Studio, you often need more than just Microsoft ecosystem data. You might also want to ground agents in enterprise knowledge stored in non-Microsoft systems. Copilot connectors make this functionality possible by indexing your organization’s external data into Microsoft Graph. This configuration enables the data to be added as a knowledge source for any agent in Copilot Studio. These connectors fully respect source-level permissions, ensuring that users only access content they're authorized to view. This approach delivers secure, comprehensive grounding for richer, more context-aware agent responses.

Use Copilot connectors as a knowledge source for your agent

Now you can ground agent responses with non-Microsoft enterprise data available through Copilot connectors in Copilot Studio. You can select Copilot connectors previously configured by your tenant administrator and add them as knowledge sources to your agent.

1. Open the agent.

2. Select Add knowledge from either the Overview or Knowledge pages, or the Properties of a generative answers node.

3. From the Add knowledge dialog, select the desired Copilot connector.

   Note

   If you don't see the Copilot connector you're searching for, select Advanced. If the connector still doesn't appear, contact your admin.

4. Select the desired connection and then select Add to complete the connection.

Supported enterprise data sources using Microsoft Copilot connectors

Copilot Studio supports all of the Copilot connectors listed under the Microsoft 365 Copilot connectors overview for Microsoft Search article.

Note

• For better search results with Microsoft 365 Copilot connectors, we recommend having a Microsoft 365 Copilot license in the same tenant as your agent, and turn on Tenant graph grounding with semantic search.

• For most Microsoft Copilot connectors, you can use the same data sources to ground agent responses that you use to augment Microsoft Search. To see these enterprise data sources in your agent’s knowledge list, your tenant admin must first configure them.

• You can request your tenant admin to set up a Microsoft Copilot connector. For more information, see Set up Microsoft 365 Copilot connectors in the Microsoft 365 admin center. Alternatively, if a Microsoft Copilot connector isn't available, refer to Add Power Platform connectors as knowledge (preview).

• To learn more about the differences between Copilot connectors and Power Platform connectors, see Copilot connectors versus Power Platform connectors as knowledge sources.

• You must configure agents that use Microsoft Copilot connectors as knowledge sources with the correct authentication settings when publishing to channels. You must provide the ExternalItem.Read.All scope as part of the manual authentication setting. For more information, see Configure user authentication in Copilot Studio.