Use Office 365 for IT Pros PDF Files as Knowledge Sources for Copilot

The announcement in message center notification MC1078671 (20 May 2025) that Copilot Studio can deploy agents to SharePoint Online sites (in Copilot Studio terms, SharePoint Online is a channel) gave me an idea. SharePoint has supported agents since October 2024, but those agents are limited to reasoning over the information contained in a site. Copilot Studio can create more flexible and powerful agents that can consume different forms of knowledge, including external web sites and files. Uploaded files are stored in the Dataverse, or the mysterious SharePoint Embedded containers that appeared in tenants recently.

My idea is to use the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook as a source for a Copilot agent. Our subscribers can download updated book files every month in PDF and EPUB format. Copilot can consume text files, including PDFs, as knowledge sources (message center notification MC1058260, last updated 9 June 2025, Microsoft 365 roadmap item 489214). If you have Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses, it seems logical to create an agent that uses the PDFs for the Office 365 for IT Pros and Automating Microsoft 365 with PowerShell eBooks as knowledge sources.

You could even expand the set of knowledge sources to https://office365itpros.com and https://practical365.com to include articles written by our author team. Once the agent is configured, it can be published to a SharePoint Online site for users to interrogate. Sounds good? Let’s explore what you need to do to make the idea come alive.

Adding Files to a Copilot Agent

During an investigation of the various ways to create Copilot agents, I created an agent in Copilot Studio called the Microsoft 365 Knowledge Agent. The agent already reasoned over office365itpros.com and practical365.com. I uploaded the PDF files for the two books to the agent so that the agent now reasons over the two websites and two PDF files (Figure 1). You might notice that I have disabled the options for the AI to use its LLMs and to search public websites when composing answers. That’s because I want the agent to limit its responses to the set of defined knowledge sources.

The upload dialog says that files cannot be “labeled Confidential or Highly Confidential or contain passwords.” This might reflect old information as Microsoft has support for files protected by sensitivity labels in preview. The implementation seems very like support for sensitivity labels in Bizchat in that a user cannot access a file protected by a label if the label doesn’t grant them access to the content. I also assume that Copilot Studio will eventually support the DLP policy for Microsoft 365 to stop confidential files with specific labels being used as knowledge sources.

It can take some time for Copilot Studio to process uploaded files to prepare their content for reasoning, depending on their size. Office 365 for IT Pros is a 1,280-page 27 MB eBook, so it took several hours before Copilot Studio declared the file to be ready. You can upload a maximum of 500 files as knowledge sources for an agent.

Updating the Copilot Agent Instructions

Next, I adjusted the instructions for the agent. Here’s what I used:

• Respond to requests using information from specific curated websites and the files uploaded as knowledge sources.
• Ensure the information is accurate and relevant to the topic.
• Provide well-structured and engaging content.
• Avoid using information from unverified sources.
• Maintain a professional and informative tone.
• Be responsive and prompt in handling requests.
• Focus on topics related to Microsoft 365 and Entra ID technology.
• Write in a professional, clear, and concise manner.
• Output PowerShell code formatted for easy copying and use by readers.
• Ensure the PowerShell code is accurate and functional.
• Do not guess when answering and create new PowerShell cmdlets that don’t exist. Always check that a cmdlet exists before using it in an answer.

Coming up with good instructions for an agent is an art form. I’m sure that these can be improved, but they work.

Publish the Copilot Agent to SharePoint Online

The next task is to publish the agent. To publish the agent to a SharePoint Online site, I selected SharePoint as the target channel (Figure 2) and then selected the site that I wanted to host the agent. I suspect that Copilot Studio caches site information because it wasn’t possible for search to find a new site for several hours after the site’s creation. Publishing to a site creates an .agent file in the default document library in the site.

An agent can only be deployed to a single site. If you make a mistake and deploy the agent to the wrong site, you’ll need to undeploy and remove the site from the agent configuration and then deploy the agent to the correct site.

Out of the box, the only person who can use the agent at this point is the publisher. To make the agent available to all site members, a site administrator needs to mark the agent as approved. The agent then shows up in the list of agents accessed through the Copilot button in the meu bar. Any user with a Microsoft 365 Copilot agent can use the agent as part of their license. Access for other users must be paid for on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Using the Copilot Agent in SharePoint

Interacting with the agent to ask questions from the knowledge contained in Office 365 for IT Pros is just like any other Copilot interaction. Compose a prompt and submit it to the agent, which contemplates the request and responds based on the knowledge available to it (Figure 3).

SharePoint Online is not the only publication channel available to an agent. I also connect the agent to Microsoft 365 and Teams. Figure 4 shows how to chat with the agent in Teams.

The Only Downside is Our Monthly Updates

We know that Office 365 for IT Pros is a big eBook. Sometimes it’s hard to find the precise information that you’re looking for using the standard search facilities. Being able to have an agent reason over the books (and optionally, associated web sites) is an excellent way to have AI do the heavy lifting of finding and extracting knowledge in a very accessible way. The only downside is that you need to update the agent with the new files and republish to the target channels after we release our monthly updates. But that’s not a difficult task – and I am sure that a way will be found to automate the step in the future.

So much change, all the time. It’s a challenge to stay abreast of all the updates Microsoft makes across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Subscribe to the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook to receive monthly insights into what happens, why it happens, and what new features and capabilities mean for your tenant.