Grounding agents in knowledge sources

Building Agents with Microsoft Copilot Studio

Nia Joseph

AI Product Manager, Microsoft

Why grounding matters

Ungrounded → answers from general training
Grounded → answers from sources you trust
Biggest guard against confident made-up answers

Ungrounded guesses vs grounded answers from your source

Open the Knowledge tab

Open your agent
Go to the Knowledge tab

An agent's Knowledge tab with the Add knowledge button

Add a knowledge source

Add knowledge → upload a file
A PDF handbook works well
Turn Web Search off → the file is the only source

The Upload file area of Add knowledge, above the Web Search toggle switched to Disabled

Let it finish processing

Wait for indexing to finish before testing

Studio reads and indexes the document
Expect 5 to 10 minutes
Test too early → "can't find it"

Scope your prompt to the source

Adding the source isn't quite enough
Tell the agent to stay inside it
"Using only the policy handbook..." steers it to the source

A scoped prompt keeps the agent inside the handbook

Test it

A scoped question answered from the policy handbook, with its reference

Open the Test panel
Ask your scoped question
Watch the reply

Read a grounded answer

Wording comes from your document
A reference points back to the source
Click the citation to check it

A citation links the answer back to the source passage

When the source doesn't have it

A grounded agent says not in the handbook instead of inventing

Good agent → "the handbook doesn't mention that"
Better than inventing a number
A sign your grounding is working

Let's practice!

Building Agents with Microsoft Copilot Studio

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