In the digital era, providing quick and accurate information to your employees or website visitors is crucial. Copilot Studio allows you to create a Custom Copilot for your Intranet or other SharePoint sites using your SharePoint content as a data source. Visitors to the SharePoint site, Microsoft Team, or even public websites can ask questions and get answers from your content. This is perfect for employee self-help, researching knowledge bases, or finding answers from your information quickly.

Setting Up Your Custom Copilot

Using Copilot Studio, you can create a Custom Copilot that uses Word documents, PDF files, PowerPoint files, and Modern Pages from a list of SharePoint sites specified in the content source list. Additionally, the Custom Copilot can be accessed from Microsoft Teams and websites.

Review Content

Before you begin, review the content you will be using and ensure it is up to date and doesn’t include sensitive information. End users will need access to the sites for this to work well.

How to Build a Custom Copilot

Follow these steps to get started with your Custom Copilot:

• Choose “Create a custom Copilot” to begin.
• Start at Copilot Studio. If you don’t have a subscription, you can enable a trial license to get started (https://copilotstudio.microsoft.com).
• Give the Copilot a name (note that this name will appear when the Bot starts up, so choose a good name).
• Enter your SharePoint site URL in the website field (you can add more later). You can also add any public website’s url too here for fetching information from public website
• Create.

Adding SharePoint’s site url later on by going to Generative AI option where you can add SharePoint sites, documents and public websites.

Authentication and Permissions

SharePoint Content will not appear in the Custom Copilot without setting up authentication in the Azure Portal. Follow these steps to configure an App Registration for your Custom Copilot:

• Microsoft Graph needs File Read and Site Read permission (instructions).
• Ensure you have Read All Sites and Read All Files approved in Graph API permissions.

I noticed that older Custom Copilots didn’t need the SharePoint API permission in the App Registration. However, when I created another Custom Copilot recently, I needed to add SharePoint AllSites.Read and Files.Read to get the Copilot to respond.

Testing and Publishing

Once this is configured, you should be able to query the Custom Copilot in Copilot Studio. If this doesn’t work, then it is usually an authentication issue. You can identify this by entering a prompt in Copilot Studio that worked when you had the default “Authenticate with Microsoft” option selected but fails if the “Authenticate manually” configuration.

Test the Copilot in Copilot Studio and once you are ready to go, publish the Custom Copilot.

Multiple Custom Copilots

You can create multiple Custom Copilots, for example, one for HR, another for a Knowledgebase, or a subject area. Custom Copilots are a great way to help people self-serve and discover content.

Integrating Custom Copilots with SharePoint Online can significantly enhance user experience by providing quick access to information. By following the steps outlined, you can set up and deploy a Custom Copilot tailored to your organizational needs, ensuring that your content is accessible, up-to-date, and secure.