Create a connection between a data source and a Microsoft Graph connector

Completed

Microsoft Graph is a gateway to data and intelligence in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft 365 Copilot. With a user at its center, it connects all the rich, relevant formation and insights in the Microsoft cloud. Graph APIs power modern Microsoft 365 experiences. Non-Microsoft workplace applications can also participate in these experiences with the help of Microsoft Graph connectors.

Microsoft Graph connectors provide a platform for organizations to ingest their unstructured, line-of-business data into Microsoft Graph. Doing so enables Microsoft 365 Copilot to analyze and understand the entirety of an organization’s enterprise content. Content ingested through Graph connectors is added to the Microsoft Graph, which unlocks semantic understanding of your users' prompts in Microsoft 365 Copilot. However, Graph connectors aren't limited to Microsoft 365 Copilot. Graph connector content participates in other Microsoft 365 intelligent experiences like Microsoft Search, Context IQ, and the Microsoft 365 app.

Microsoft provides 18 Microsoft Graph connectors, and its ecosystem partners have created over 100 more connectors to date. The Microsoft Graph connectors gallery contains a brief description of each of the connectors created by Microsoft's partners and a link to each partner's website. You can also build your own connector if you prefer.

Note

Building connectors is outside the scope of this training. This training unit examines how administrators should configure between data sources and connectors to ensure that Microsoft 365 Copilot can access a non-Microsoft data source.

As an administrator, one of your responsibilities in preparing your organization for Microsoft 365 Copilot is setting up the Microsoft Graph connectors that your organization uses. When you set up a Graph connector, you must define where the data source is located. A connector can connect to both cloud and on-premises deployments. For example, an on-premises data source might be within your organizational firewall, while a cloud source might be an external web site or application.

Microsoft Search indexes all your Microsoft 365 data to make it searchable for users. With Microsoft Graph connectors, your organization can index non-Microsoft data, ensuring it appears in Microsoft Search and Microsoft 365 Copilot results. This feature enhances the range of content sources searchable within your Microsoft 365 productivity apps and the broader Microsoft Copilot ecosystem. The non-Microsoft data can be hosted on-premises or in the public or private clouds.

Important

Microsoft Graph connectors respect the source permissions configured in your content source. As a result, users can only access content for which they have appropriate permissions.

The following architectural diagram of the Microsoft Graph platform shows how Microsoft Graph connector content flows through content indexing to user results in various Microsoft 365 experiences. These experiences can include Microsoft Search, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft 365 apps, Context IQ in Outlook on the web, and any other service that uses the Microsoft Graph API for data retrieval.

Microsoft Graph connectors can pull data from cloud-based (SaaS) data sources and on-premises data stores. The previous diagram shows connections to only two data sources, but you can add connections to up to 10 sources per tenant. The Microsoft Graph Connectors API instantiates one connection per data source. Then, the API indexes and stores the data. Established connections interact with the Microsoft 365 experience (such as Microsoft Search, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and so on) so that users can get search results.

You can use the Microsoft 365 admin center to set up and manage the connections between data sources and Microsoft Graph connectors. The admin center's user interface makes it easy to establish a connection to your data source and monitor connection status and utilization. To create a connection to a data source, administrators need authenticated access to the data and the entire content repository. The data is fed to the graph connector service for indexing.

Create connections between data sources and connectors in the Microsoft 365 admin center

This section describes the basic process required to create a connection between a data source and a Microsoft Graph connector. You can add a maximum of 30 Microsoft Graph connections to each tenant.

Note

While the setup process is similar for all the Microsoft Graph connectors, it's not exactly the same. In addition to reading this training unit, be sure to examine the connector-specific information for your data source.

Select a data source and create a connection to it

Complete the following steps to create a connection between a data source and a Microsoft Graph connector:

1. Sign into the Microsoft 365 admin center using your administrator account.

2. In the navigation pane, select Settings, and then select Search & intelligence.

3. On the Search & Intelligence page, the Overview tab is displayed by default. Select the Data sources tab.

4. On the Data sources tab, under the Connections section, select +Add Connection.

5. On the Connect to data source page, select the data source of your choice from the menu of available options and then select Next. For example, if you want to configure a connection with your organization's external web site, select Enterprise websites.

   

6. On the detail pane that appears for your selected data source, enter the required attributes. The following screenshot displays the detail pane for the Enterprise websites data source that was referenced in the previous example.

   • If you want to change the Name field or update other options for indexing data from this connection, then select the Advanced settings button and proceed to the next step.

   • If you don't select Advanced settings, then finish configuring the remaining properties for this connection, such as who can search this data source and how the connection results should be managed. You must select the Notice check box to enable the Publish button. Once you're finished configuring this connection, select the Publish button to create it.

     

Optional advanced settings

Back on the detail pane, you had the option of selecting the Advanced settings button. If you select this button, an Advanced settings wizard is initiated that enables you to update the connection's Name and ID, data source settings, access permissions, and other advanced settings.

1. If you select the Advanced settings button, the first page that you can update in the wizard is the Create connection name & ID page. This page allows you to change the connection Name, which defaults to the Connection ID that you entered earlier. You can also change the other name and ID attributes that appeared on the original data source detail pane earlier.

   The Connection ID creates implicit properties for your connector. It can only contain alphanumeric characters and be a maximum of 32 characters.

   To better help administration of the connection and to help Copilot enhance connection results for users, the Description should briefly answer the following questions:

   • What kind of content does this connection have?
   • How do users refer to this content source in their respective orgs?
   • What part of the workflow do users refer to this content in their day-to-day work?
   • What are some characteristics of the content?

   For more information, see Enhancing Microsoft Copilot discovery with Graph Connector Content.
   
   You must select the Notice check box to enable the Save and Proceed button. Select the Save and Proceed button to save your changes and proceed to the Data source settings page.

   

2. The Data source settings page enables you to update the crawl properties in the connection's search schema. The search schema determines how the content that a Graph connector ingests is used in various Microsoft Graph experiences. The schema defines the structure of how content from the data source is collected, indexed, queried, and ultimately retrieved from search index. By changing the search schema, you can control what users can search for, how users can search it, and how you can present the results on Microsoft Search endpoints.

   The data source settings page enables you to define the connection's crawl properties. To build up the search index, you must first crawl content. You can crawl various content sources as listed in the connectors gallery. The contents and metadata of the items that you crawl are represented as crawled properties (or source properties).

   Once you finish entering the properties for your data source, you must select the Test connection button to validate that Microsoft 365 can access the site. If the connection is successful, the Save and Proceed button is enabled. Select the Save and Proceed button to save your changes and proceed to the Manage search permissions page.

   

3. The Manage search permissions page enables you to configure which users in your organization can access each item. Some connectors such as Microsoft SQL and Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 natively support Microsoft Entra ID Access Control Lists (ACLs). ACLs allow administrators to define which users or groups have access to specific resources and what actions they can perform on those resources. Other connectors such as ServiceNow Knowledge, ServiceNow Catalog, Azure DevOps Work Items, and Salesforce support syncing of non-Azure AD users and groups.

   Selecting Everyone allows everyone in your organization to see search results from this data source.

   At this point, you can either continue on and update a series of optional advanced settings for this connection or end your configuration and publish the connection. To complete the connection, select the Quick publish button. To configure the remaining optional settings, select Save and Proceed.

   

4. If you selected the Save and Proceed button in the prior step, the wizard walks you through a series of six pages to update the following optional advanced settings:

   • Meta tags site. Administrators can manage metadata tags associated with SharePoint sites. Meta tags are predefined terms that can be used to categorize and filter content within SharePoint. When you tag sites with specific metadata, you can enhance the search experience, making it easier for users to find relevant content based on these tags.
   • Custom property setup. You can define custom properties for your data sources. Custom properties are other metadata fields that can be used to enrich the information stored in Microsoft Graph. These properties can be used in search queries and results, allowing for a more tailored and precise search experience.
   • Add URLs to exclude. This page enables you to specify URLs that should be excluded from the search index. By adding URLs to this list, you can prevent certain content from appearing in search results. Doing so can be useful for excluding irrelevant or sensitive information from the search experience.
   • Assign property labels. You can assign semantic labels to your source properties. Labels are well-known tags provided by Microsoft that provide semantic meaning. They allow Microsoft to integrate your connector data into Microsoft 365 experiences such as enhanced search, people cards, intelligent discovery, and more.
   • Manage schema. Microsoft recommends that you select a Content Property from the drop-down menu of options, or keep the default if one is present. This property is used for full-text indexing of content, search results page snippet generation, result cluster participation, language detection, HTML/text support, ranking and relevance, and query formulation. You can also add aliases to your properties under the Alias column. Aliases are friendly names for your properties. They're used in queries and in the creation of filters. Lastly, you can set the search schema attributes to control the search functionality of each source property. A search schema helps determine what results display on the search results page and what information end users can view and access.
   • Refresh settings. The refresh interval determines how often your data is synced between the data source and Microsoft Search. Each type of data source has a different set of optimal refresh schedules based on how often data is modified and the type of modifications. There are two types of refresh intervals, Full refresh and Incremental refresh, but incremental refreshes aren't available for some data sources. With a full refresh, the search engine processes and indexes the items that changed in the content source, regardless of previous crawls. With an Incremental refresh, the search engine can process and index only the items that were created or modified since the last successful crawl. As a result, not all the data in the content source is reindexed. Incremental refreshes work best to detect content, metadata, and other updates. You can also configure full and incremental crawls based on the advanced scheduling options present on this page.

5. Once you finish updating all the optional advanced settings, you can review your entire configuration and edit settings as needed before completing the connection. Be sure to read the connector-specific information for your data source if you haven't already done so. When you're ready to complete the connection, you can either select Publish or Publish to limited users. The Publish to limited user option provides a staged rollout to a limited audience. This staged rollout feature allows you to gradually introduce Microsoft Graph connectors to a select group of users in your production environment.