7.5. Connectors: Reaching Sources Beyond Microsoft 365
💡 First Principle: Copilot can only ground on what it can reach, and a lot of business truth lives outside Microsoft 365: deals in Salesforce, tickets in ServiceNow, files in Box or Google Drive. Copilot connectors are the bridges your admin builds to those systems. Once a bridge exists, Copilot can answer from that data and cite it, but only for the records you could already see in the source system.
Microsoft 365 Copilot connectors (formerly called Graph connectors) extend Copilot and Microsoft Search to data beyond Microsoft 365. There are more than 100 prebuilt connectors, including Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, Confluence, Salesforce, ServiceNow, SAP, Workday, Zendesk and Jira, and organizations can build custom ones.
Two kinds of connector:
| Kind | How it works | Who sets it up |
|---|---|---|
| Synced | Indexes the external data into Microsoft Graph, so it's searchable alongside your Microsoft 365 content | The admin configures it for the tenant, or (self-serve) the admin enables it and each user signs in |
| Federated | Fetches data live from the source when you ask, without indexing it | The admin enables it, and users authenticate with their own account |
What business users need to know:
- Your admin enables connectors for your organization. You don't add a connector yourself, though with self-serve and federated connectors you may be asked to sign in to the source system.
- Viewing connector content requires a Microsoft Copilot (formerly Microsoft 365 Copilot) license.
- Results are permission-trimmed: you see only the items you can access in the source system.
- Connectors are read-only by default. Microsoft has announced write actions starting in October 2026, so for now treat connectors as a way to read and cite external data, not to update it.
- Copilot cites connector sources. Ask "Give me a summary of the Contoso deal" and the answer can cite the Salesforce record it came from. Copilot Search also includes indexed connector content automatically.
Prompting with connectors: name the system ("in ServiceNow"), add a time bound ("tickets opened this month"), and ask for sources so you can verify the answer.
| Business task | What the connector adds |
|---|---|
| Draft a renewal email for a key account | The account's deal history from the CRM |
| Summarize this week's escalations for leadership | Ticket data from the service desk system |
| Write a project update | Status from a project tracker outside Microsoft 365 |
Researcher also draws on connector content (2.3.1), and Cowork plugins can bring their own connectors (6.4.2).
⚠️ Exam Trap: "The user should install the Salesforce connector from the Agent Store" is wrong: admins enable connectors. And don't confuse these with the connectors in the consumer Microsoft Copilot app (linking personal Gmail or Outlook.com), which are a different experience from Microsoft 365 Copilot connectors.
Reflection Question: An account manager asks Copilot for the open opportunities with a client, and the answer includes nothing from the company's CRM. Name three things that could explain it, and say which one only an admin can fix.
