Plan knowledge sources and delivery channels
An organization's useful knowledge rarely exists in one place. Dynamics 365 articles might contain reviewed service procedures, while policies live in SharePoint, product documentation appears on a public website, and another Dynamics 365 organization maintains specialized articles. Copilot and AI agents might also need approved sources that differ from those used for customer self-service.
A source strategy defines which content belongs in each system, who owns it, how it becomes available, and which audiences can use it. Make these decisions before configuring providers. Adding every available source can increase duplication, conflicting answers, and exposure of content that isn't suitable for service use.
Identify audiences and knowledge needs
Begin with the decisions that each audience must make:
- Representatives need accurate troubleshooting, policy, product, and process guidance during cases and conversations.
- Customers need clear self-service content that is safe to publish outside the organization.
- Copilot needs approved grounding that supports relevant answers and allows representatives to verify source information.
- AI agents need sources aligned with their instructions, actions, permissions, and level of autonomy.
- Knowledge managers and supervisors need ownership and quality signals so they can maintain the source portfolio.
One source can serve multiple audiences, but availability shouldn't be assumed. An internal article can contain operational detail that isn't appropriate for customers. A public product page can be useful to a representative but insufficient for an AI agent that must follow an internal policy. Record the intended audience and approved uses for each source.
Choose an internal or external source
Use native Dynamics 365 knowledge articles when the organization needs control over authoring, review, versions, translations, publication, expiration, feedback, and relationships to service records. This model is appropriate for content the service organization owns and actively maintains.
Keep content in its existing system when another team owns the authoritative source and duplicating it creates maintenance risk. Dynamics 365 supports different approaches for making external content discoverable:
- External search providers federate searches across supported sources without turning the source content into native Dynamics 365 articles. Supported provider types include SharePoint, another Dynamics 365 organization in the Microsoft tenant, and content indexed through a Microsoft Graph connector.
- Integrated search providers ingest content from supported third-party websites that use the site map protocol. The content becomes available in knowledge search alongside internal articles.
- Portal publication exposes approved Dynamics 365 articles through a customer-facing site and provides URLs that representatives can share.
- Copilot knowledge sources ground generated responses in approved information according to the configured Copilot experience.
The knowledge discovery module explains how to configure and monitor these options. In this module, the goal is to select the appropriate ownership and delivery model.
Evaluate source suitability
Assess each proposed source before connecting it to a service experience:
| Consideration | Questions to answer |
|---|---|
| Authority | Is this the approved source, and who resolves conflicting guidance? |
| Ownership | Who updates the content and responds when it is incorrect or unavailable? |
| Audience | Is the content appropriate for representatives, customers, Copilot, AI agents, or a subset of them? |
| Access | Can intended users retrieve the source and follow its citations without receiving broader access? |
| Freshness | How quickly does the source reflect product, policy, or regulatory changes? |
| Structure | Does the content have useful titles, descriptions, headings, languages, and metadata? |
| Data boundaries | Does retrieval or ingestion move data across organizations, tenants, regions, or compliance boundaries? |
| Operations | How does the organization detect failed ingestion, broken links, unavailable sources, or declining quality? |
For example, cross-organizational search can involve data transfer when the selected Dynamics 365 organizations are in different geographical regions. A SharePoint source requires representatives to have access to the underlying content. An integrated website must meet technical ingestion requirements and remain under active maintenance.
Important
A connected source retains its own security and governance requirements. Search or AI grounding shouldn't be used to bypass permissions, audience restrictions, licensing terms, or data-residency policy.
Design for Copilot and AI agents
Grounding connects an AI-generated answer to source information, but source access alone doesn't guarantee an appropriate response. Choose content that is authoritative, current, sufficiently specific, and written for the decisions the AI experience supports.
For each Copilot or AI-agent scenario, define:
- The questions or tasks the source supports.
- The sources that take precedence when information conflicts.
- The users and AI experiences allowed to access the content.
- The citations or review evidence available to a representative.
- The actions taken when a source is unavailable or an answer lacks support.
- The owner who evaluates incorrect, outdated, or low-quality results.
Avoid grounding an AI experience in draft content unless the use case and access controls explicitly allow it. For customer-facing or autonomous scenarios, apply a higher review standard because users might act on an answer without a representative interpreting the source.
Plan delivery channels
Match the delivery method to the audience and task:
- Use Copilot Service workspace for representatives who need knowledge in the context of a case or conversation.
- Use a customer portal for reviewed self-service articles and shareable public links.
- Use Copilot grounding when representatives need generated answers supported by approved sources.
- Use an AI agent's configured knowledge when the agent needs information to answer or act within its defined scope.
Plan what happens when the same topic appears through multiple channels. Maintain one authoritative source where practical, and document how derived or translated content stays synchronized. If internal and external instructions must differ, make that distinction explicit in titles, ownership, and publication controls.
Establish source governance
Create a source register that records the owner, audience, connection type, data location, review frequency, escalation contact, and retirement criteria for each source. Include a test query or scenario that confirms the source produces the intended result.
Review the register when a product changes, an owner leaves, a site moves, a contract ends, or quality signals decline. Removing an unreliable source can be as important as adding a new one. Before rollout, test representative access, customer visibility, citation behavior, conflicting results, and the experience when a source is unavailable.
With a governed source strategy, the organization can expand knowledge access without losing clarity about ownership, audience, or trust.