Empower Microsoft Copilot with your non-Microsoft 365 data to unlock powerful agent-driven automations.

Microsoft Copilot remains one of the most secure, compliant, and low-risk AI platforms available to financial services firms. However, it has often been criticised for the quality of its responses and perceived limitations when compared with leading AI platforms such as Anthropic’s Claude.

That landscape is changing rapidly.

Until recently, Microsoft Copilot was powered primarily by OpenAI’s ChatGPT model, but recent developments have now made Anthropic’s Claude Opus model an option, making Copilot a multi-model powerhouse. This enables organisations to take advantage of Claude’s new automation capabilities in Microsoft Office agents and, very recently, Cowork – an autonomous agent. These developments are bringing us closer than ever to a true digital “Co-Pilot”.

However, regardless of how capable the underlying model becomes, AI is only as useful as the information it can access.

The Challenge: Your most important data often sits outside Microsoft 365

By providing AI with the data it needs to answer questions, generate insights and carry out agentic tasks, you significantly increase its ability to do more for your business.

Copilot excels at understanding information stored within Microsoft 365, including Outlook, Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint. However, it doesn’t understand all the other business systems you use, and likely not your most important ones.

Can't I just use a connector?

A common question is whether a connector that has been built by your software vendor or Microsoft can be used to expose third-party data to Copilot. The answer is yes, but only if a suitable connector exists, as these are typically only available for popular software products. If your business relies on bespoke, industry-specific systems, a suitable connector may not exist. In those situations, Copilot remains disconnected from critical business data, limiting its ability to answer questions.

The alternative: Copilot's Index

The answer lies in Copilot’s Index, which forms the foundation of Copilot’s knowledge and retrieval capabilities. Copilot’s Index is where all the information from Microsoft 365 is predominantly stored, and is used by Copilot to generate relevant, context-aware responses.

Microsoft also provides organisations with the ability to push custom data into the Copilot Index, making that information available to Copilot alongside Microsoft 365 content. This extends Copilot’s knowledge and enables it to deliver more relevant insights based on your organisation’s complete information landscape.

Why push data instead of providing direct access?

The primary reason is control. By selectively pushing information into the Copilot Index, you can have ultimate control over the data Copilot can access and use.

This approach can be particularly valuable in financial services firms, helping them meet regulatory and compliance requirements even in complex scenarios where you may not be able to use certain data from within your PMS/OMS for AI.

Rather than exposing entire systems to Copilot, firms can curate and publish only the information that is appropriate and compliant for Copilot to use.

What about data permissions?

Copilot’s Indexing framework includes comprehensive security and permission controls. Permissions from source systems can be applied within the index to mimic the original access controls. This allows you to control, just as you do with Microsoft 365 data, which information is available in Copilot responses based on the permissions of the user who is submitting the prompt.

How much data can be pushed to Copilot?

Microsoft provides substantial out-of-the-box capacity for indexed data, supporting approximately 50 million records and covering the majority of use cases.

How do you interact with the data?

Once indexed, the data appears as an additional source within the Copilot interface alongside Microsoft 365 content and can be easily switched on and off as required.

This works in the same way as Copilot Agents, which can be scoped to specific indexed datasets, enabling them to carry out specific tasks using only the relevant information.

What’s the catch?

The good news is that pushing data to the Copilot Index requires no additional licensing or capacity charges and is already included with your Microsoft 365 licenses.

The challenge lies in creating a mechanism to connect and push data from your OMS/PMS into the Copilot Index. This requires careful planning, technical expertise, and understanding of both your business systems and Microsoft 365 architecture. This is where Lanware can help.

How you can unlock the value of your data!

If you would like to explore how to take your Microsoft Copilot to the next level and unlock the value of data stored in your business systems, get in touch.