Microsoft expands Copilot’s connector catalogue — but access and indexing still need scrutiny

New business, healthcare and specialist data sources broaden Copilot’s reach, alongside tools for managing access and monitoring crawls. But connector capabilities vary, and organisations must check permissions, indexing and data quality before a wider rollout.

Microsoft’s October 2026 update to Copilot connectors is designed to make business data easier to discover across Microsoft’s AI tools while giving organisations more ways to manage how that information is accessed. The company says a shared plugin registry will bring approved connectors, skills and business data into a common catalogue for Copilot Chat, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Researcher. Microsoft’s earlier announcement of the registry describes it as a shared place to find and govern plugins, but a common catalogue does not mean every connector works in the same way or is available in every application.

The additions range from Trello Enterprise to specialist HR research and more than 25 healthcare and life-sciences sources. Microsoft says the Trello connector can surface boards, cards and project information, while Galileo, from The Josh Bersin Company, brings HR research into Copilot. The life-sciences offering spans scientific publications, clinical and regulatory information, and drug data, with named sources including PubMed, ClinicalTrials.gov and DrugBank. These integrations expand the material available to users; the announcement does not establish that AI-generated answers are clinically validated or suitable for consequential decisions without expert review.

The update also separates two kinds of connector capability. Microsoft Learn explains that synchronised connectors copy external content into Microsoft Graph for indexing, while federated connectors retrieve information in real time through Model Context Protocol interfaces without indexing it in Graph. That distinction matters in practice: crawl progress and indexing faults are relevant to synchronised data, whereas federated connections depend on live retrieval and their own authentication arrangements.

Microsoft is also introducing connector skills and support for longer-running Tasks. Skills are intended to help Copilot respond in ways suited to particular applications, with Notion and HubSpot given as live examples. Tasks, meanwhile, allow federated tools to run for longer while users see progress; Microsoft names providers including Bloomberg, Power BI and Thomson Reuters. These features address different needs, and the announcement does not imply that every connector supports the same operations or can change source-system records.

For users, new controls include selecting particular sources for a question, reviewing available sources in a central menu and choosing to bring connector results into an answer when they were initially left out. Microsoft also describes inline reauthentication for federated connections. These options give users more influence over where Copilot looks, but selecting a source cannot by itself guarantee that an answer is complete, accurate or based on current material.

For administrators, Microsoft says published connections can be edited without deleting and recreating them, while diagnostics and crawl-progress reporting are being improved. The company is also adding organisation-specific connector recommendations and lifecycle emails about releases, upgrades and initial crawl completion. Such visibility can help teams identify whether ingestion is progressing or has failed, but a completed crawl still needs to be followed by checks that expected content is searchable and access rules are working.

Changes to existing integrations include broader Salesforce CRM coverage, with additional content such as tasks, events, campaigns, comments and attachments. Microsoft’s setup guidance says Salesforce fields restricted by field-level security are excluded from crawling by default. Administrators can choose to include individual restricted fields, but Microsoft warns that doing so can make them available to Microsoft 365 users who can access the relevant records. Organisations should therefore review field permissions and the account used to configure the connector before enabling sensitive data.

Salesforce ingestion also has limits that can affect what Copilot finds. Microsoft’s troubleshooting guidance says a full crawl must complete after custom fields are selected, and renamed or removed fields may be deselected during a later crawl. The connector indexes text extracted from attachments rather than returning the original files, with a 20 MB per-record limit for attachment content; files are processed from smaller to larger, and remaining files may be represented by their names alone. These constraints make crawl status and representative content checks important parts of testing.

Microsoft reports that ServiceNow Knowledge attachments can now reach a combined 64 MB, while its documentation describes a limit of up to 100 attachments per article and notes that some file types, including images, are not indexed. This is a connector-specific allowance, not a general limit for Copilot integrations. Confluence changes include support for comments, attachments and attachment metadata in its cloud connector, while the update also highlights improved crawl tracking and clearer troubleshooting for on-premises deployments.

A cautious rollout would begin by identifying which connections use synchronisation and which use federation, then confirming prerequisites, permissions and availability in the organisation’s tenant. Teams can test with a limited group, using representative records and accounts with different access rights. For Salesforce in particular, administrators should check that selected fields and attachment text appear after crawling, and that restricted information remains unavailable to users who should not see it. Microsoft’s documentation and announcement describe features and setup considerations, but organisations need to verify their own configurations rather than assume that a new catalogue entry means a connection is ready for broad use.

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Source: Fuse Wire Services