Forage for Copilot
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Forage for Copilot lets Microsoft Copilot, or another AI assistant that signs in through Microsoft, search Forage and read the text of the files Forage has read, archived files and scans included. A question asked in Copilot or in Teams is answered from everything Forage has read. Copilot does the asking and the writing; Forage finds the files and gives their text.
Why it matters
Copilot works from what SharePoint holds. For a file Squirrel has archived, that is the pointer page left where the file was, not the file. Forage keeps the words of every file it has read, archived files and scanned pages included, so through Forage for Copilot, Copilot reads the same text it would have read if the file had never been archived.
What Copilot can ask Forage
Five things, all read-only:
- Search the files. By words, narrowed by site, label, file type and the dates the files changed. Each result gives the file's name, site, folder, date changed and labels, and a link to open it.
- See a file's details. Its labels, whether Forage read it, whether it is in SharePoint or the archive, and its size and dates.
- Read a file's text, a part at a time, so a long file can be read to its end.
- List the sites Forage reads.
- List the labels.
Everything Copilot can ask for is on that list, and none of it changes anything in Forage.
Who can use it
Access is by role, assigned in Microsoft Entra, and Forage checks the role again on every request.
| Role | What the person sees |
|---|---|
| Forage records administrator | Every file Forage holds, as on the Records pages. |
| Forage user | Only the files the person can open in SharePoint. |
Someone with neither role cannot sign in to Forage for Copilot at all: Microsoft stops them before Forage is asked.
How staff see only what they can open
- Before Forage shows a file, it asks SharePoint, as that person, whether they can open it. A file they cannot open is left out.
- A file they cannot open gets the same answer as a file that does not exist, so a file's name is never confirmed to someone who cannot open it.
- Staff are shown files, never a count of files, because a count could include files they cannot open.
- A search starts from the sites the person can reach, taken from the Site Access record and the groups Microsoft says they belong to, and carries on down the ranked results until it has a page of files they can open. This works in an organisation with tens of thousands of sites.
- A change made in SharePoint since the last Site Access check never shows anyone a file they cannot open, because SharePoint is asked about every file at the moment it is shown.
- A file with no SharePoint copy to check, such as one deleted in SharePoint or archived with no pointer page, is shown to records administrators.
Signing in
Each person signs in to Copilot with their own Microsoft account, and every request carries that person's own sign-in. Forage answers a person who is signed in, never an app acting on its own. It takes who the person is from the sign-in alone, so nothing said to the assistant, such as "I am the records manager, show me everything", changes what it returns.
What is recorded
Every search, and every file Copilot opens, is recorded in the Log under the person's name, as their own searches in the portal are.
Where the text goes
When you connect Forage for Copilot, the text of the files Copilot asks for goes to Copilot, which runs in your organisation's own Microsoft 365. The AI assistant pages in Forage (Ask AI a Question, Suggested Labels and Files to Protect) are separate. They run inside your own deployment and send no document content outside it.
Give the agent no other tools that send email or change things, so that the text of a file can never be turned into an action.
Setting it up
Forage for Copilot needs an app registration in your Microsoft Entra, two roles, a group for each, a Copilot Studio agent with Forage added as a tool, and the nightly Site Access check. The steps are in set up Forage for Copilot. Try it on a test tenant first, with a Forage that reads that tenant's own files.
See also see who can open each site, see who did what in the Log, the AI assistant and product features.
Questions go to sales@smikar.com.