How Copilot for Microsoft 365 can work with your external data

Bring external data into your Microsoft 365 Copilot experience to ground generative AI results using connectors and plugins. Use Microsoft Graph connectors to integrate the data sources you want with Semantic Index for Copilot. This option pre-indexes defined read-only information used for retrieval with your prompts to drive the most relevant AI-generated responses. Use managed and trusted plugins, such as OpenAI plugins, Microsoft Teams message extensions, and Power Platform connectors. Instead of pre-indexing information, plugins optimize for real-time API based data retrieval, and they can optionally write-back data.

Mary David Pasch, Microsoft 365 Copilot Principal Product Manager, shares how both options follow Microsoft’s comprehensive security, compliance, and privacy approach, while respecting defined boundaries within your organization’s data services and can work together when responding to a single prompt.

► QUICK LINKS:
00:00 - Bring in external data with Copilot
01:08 - Use a connector and plugin simultaneously
02:45 - See how it works
03:56 - Semantic Index demo
04:55 - Data retrieval with Copilot using connectors
06:19 - Data retrieval with Copilot using plugins
07:23 - Plugins code and how they work
08:45 - Wrap up

► Link References

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[CollaborationSimplified]

Excellent video! So important having secure access to data outside of graph - well done!

[D_AVANTGARDE]

🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:

00:00 📊 Bring external data into Copilot with connectors or plugins for real-time AI responses.
03:21 📚 Semantic Index improves search in Copilot by indexing SharePoint and user documents.
05:15 ⚙️ Enable Graph connectors in Microsoft 365 Admin Center to integrate data.
06:36 📦 Plugins retrieve real-time data without pre-indexing, including OpenAI, Teams, and Power Platform connectors.

Made with HARPA AI

[myomyatsu]

I am new to copilot, one thing i want to know is can we conncet function calling (my customize api) to copilot? I appreciate everyone's knowledge

[dinocool]

can the data stay in australia, or do we have send our data to the USA and back? data sovereignty is a big deal for enterprise.

[csmith]

Can this be used to connect our Microsoft cloud tenant with our Dropbox cloud data? If so, any info on how this process works would be much appreciated. Thank you.

[DevonLehmanJ]

Where can I find the API spec I would need to fulfill to create a connector? Not quite sure what that would be called to know what to search for.

[msand]

Would be interesting to see how we can put user bases access security on top of this. We don't want the entire sharepoint site och external API to be available to anyone using the copilot.

[sonichedgehog]

Will there be any deep dives (the hands-on reviews) into the new Surface products this year on Microsoft Mechanics? I feel like not including that was a huge miss on Microsoft’s part! I would not put all my eggs and videos into the AI bandwagon basket!

[davidgikas]

Thanks for the video. I would like to ask if there is a known way to invoke microsoft 365 copilot through code maby python. :D

[kuldeepshrivastav]

how to configure jira plugin in copilot?

[nghiatran]

How to use copilot to convert xbrl zip files from SEC to excel ? Thank you very much.

[eminacokic]

Can Microsoft Graph connectors and/or plugins be used to bring in SharePoint on-prem data ? Thanks

[ferhatkurt]

Should the copilot not be available today?