Copilot connector experiences

Microsoft 365 Copilot connectors (formerly Microsoft Graph connectors) offer an intuitive way to bring content from external services into Microsoft Graph and the semantic search index, enabling you to make external data discoverable across a set of Microsoft 365 experiences.

This article describes the experiences that you can enable with Copilot connectors and the requirements to enable those experiences.

To enable these experiences, you must first build a basic Copilot connector. For details about how to create a connection, register your schema, and ingest items with the correct access control list, see Work with the Copilot connectors API.

Microsoft 365 Copilot

Microsoft 365 Copilot with Copilot connectors allows users to easily find, summarize, and learn important details about all content relevant to a user's natural language prompts.

To make sure that Microsoft 365 Copilot uses your content effectively:

• Apply semantic labels. Semantic labels help Microsoft 365 Copilot interpret the semantic meaning of your schema. Apply as many of them to your schema as applicable. The iconUrl, title, and url labels must be applied for content to surface in Copilot. Currently, only the title semantic label can be used in prompts in Microsoft 365 Copilot; however, more semantic labels will be supported as the platform evolves. If you apply all applicable labels, you won't have to recreate your schema in the future.

• Ingest content relevant to external items as text. Users can query against the content property of external items in Microsoft 365 Copilot. Microsoft 365 Copilot performs better on content-rich items.

• Apply the searchable property label to schema properties with stored content that you would like your users' prompts to match against in Copilot. The searchable label is the most important with respect to Copilot because it defines which schema properties can be searched against.

• Add a urlToItemResolver in activitySettings when you create your connection. A urlToItemResolver enables the platform to detect when users share URLs from your external content with each other. Microsoft 365 Copilot has a higher likelihood of displaying content that has been shared with that user.

• Add user activities on your items. For a list of supported activity types, see externalActivity. Items that have more activities are boosted in importance.

• Provide meaningful descriptions in the description property when creating connections. Rich descriptions improve the likelihood of content displayed in Copilot. The connection 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 organizations?
  • During what part of the workflow do users refer to this content in their day-to-day work?
  • What are some characteristics of the content?

In addition, search administrators should ensure that their Copilot connector connections are enabled for inline results by using the following steps:

• Open the Admin Center, go to Search & intelligence > Customizations > Verticals and select the All vertical.
• Select Manage connector result. Ensure that Show results inline is selected and that the connections that you want to enable for Microsoft Search and Copilot are checked.

Microsoft Search and Context IQ (preview)

Microsoft Search with Copilot connectors allows your data to be searchable for users in the Microsoft Search endpoints, including Office.com, Bing at Work, and SharePoint.

To configure your connector for Microsoft Search:

• Apply semantic labels to your schema. Semantic labels help with ranking, relevance, and default display templates in search results.
• Apply property attributes to your schema. Property attributes determine the search functionalities of each property.
• Optionally, add searchSettings when you create your connection to register custom result types for your search results.

Context IQ in Outlook on the web with Copilot connectors allows users to find in-content suggestions from third-party data while composing emails in Outlook on the web. Editors using Context IQ surface relevant people, files, and Copilot connector content that users can select and embed as an adaptive card within the email. Users can access this feature by inserting "/" in an Outlook on the web email and typing keywords. Outlook presents relevant suggestions, based on the context typed, that can be inserted into the body of the email.

To configure your connector for Context IQ:

• Apply the following semantic labels to your schema: title, url, iconUrl. These labels determine which properties are displayed in the experience.
• Add user activities on your items. For supported activity types, see externalActivity. The platform uses these activities to determine which users interacted most recently with which items. Items with activities performed by a given user have a higher likelihood of being displayed to that user in the experience.
• Add a urlToItemResolver in activitySettings when you create your connection. A urlToItemResolver enables the platform to become aware when users share URLs from your external content with each other. The experience has a higher likelihood of displaying content that has been shared with that user.