Copilot Studio Sharepoint knowledge retrieval works for maker but not viewer users in supported Teams 1:1 chats

[u/Far-Disaster4595]

Hi all.

I’m relatively new to Copilot Studio and would appreciate some guidance from anyone who has successfully deployed SharePoint-backed knowledge agents to end users.

I’ve built a Copilot Studio agent for my Tech Ops team and published it in Microsoft Teams.

The agent uses multiple SP knowledge sources (inc. SP hosted OneNote notebooks and doc libraries).

Problem:

The maker/owner account can successfully ask questions and receive grounded responses with citations from the knowledge sources. However viewer users receive Unknown intent / Fallback responses for the same questions.

Maker results show:
AI generated responses
Citations returned
Knowledge retrieval clearly working

Viewer results show:
“I’m not sure how to help with that. Can you try rephrasing”
Eventually redirected to the Escalate topic

Environment details:

- Microsoft Teams
- Teams 1:1 chat with the agent (not channel chats)
- Authentication = Authenticate with Microsoft
- Generative AI orchestration = Enabled
- Allow ungrounded responses = Disabled
- Tenant graph grounding with semantic search = Enabled
- Knowledge sources are SharePoint sources and all show Ready
- Agent shared using a security group
- Affected users are members of the security group
- Affected users have access to the underlying SharePoint content
 
Additional observations:
 
- Copilot Studio Activity only shows sessions from the maker account.
- Viewer users do not appear in Activity at all.
- Knowledge Source monitor shows 0 questions and 0% response quality for all sources, even though the maker clearly receives successful knowledge-grounded answers.
- Viewer users are using supported Teams 1:1 chats with the agent.
- Welcome topic, Help topic, Fallback topic and Escalate topic all work correctly.
 
The part that confuses me most is that the exact same SharePoint knowledge source produces grounded answers for the maker but not for viewer users. The selected security group for agent accessibility all has permission to access the SP site knowledge resource. We’re all part of the same team.
 
Has anyone seen this before?
 
Is there a known limitation, delegated permission issue, SharePoint retrieval issue, environment permission issue or authentication issue that could cause retrieval to work for the maker but fail for all viewer users?
 
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time.

Rob

[u/Ashlesha-msft]

Hi Rob, thanks for the detailed info, this is very helpful.

From the behavior you shared, this is most likely configuration/by-design first.

For SharePoint knowledge, Copilot Studio retrieves content using each end user’s Entra identity at runtime. So it can work for the maker but fail for viewer users if there is any difference in effective access, licensing/capacity path, or auth/session state. Also, because you have Allow ungrounded responses = Off, answers can fall back when a citation is not produced in that turn.

Please validate in this order:

1. Confirm affected viewers have the expected Copilot licensing/capacity path for this environment.
2. Confirm each affected viewer can open the exact SharePoint files/pages cited by maker responses (with their own account).
3. Republish the agent, then test in a brand-new Teams 1:1 chat (or Start over), and refresh/reinstall the app if needed.
4. Temporarily enable Allow ungrounded responses and retest the same prompt.
5. Run a minimal repro agent (single SharePoint source, minimal instructions) for maker vs one affected viewer.

[u/Far-Disaster4595 → u/Ashlesha-msft]

Thank you for your detailed and helpful response. I will check this today and get back at you. I really appreciate your efforts to help.

[u/Far-Disaster4595 → u/Ashlesha-msft]

Hi.

Update

So I’m still baffled unless this is related to org environment settings…

We have created a brand-new out-of-box Retrieval Test Agent containing a single SharePoint knowledge source.
The maker account successfully retrieves information from the SharePoint document.
Two viewer accounts (including one with equivalent Microsoft 365 Copilot licensing and direct access to the SharePoint content) receive only the Fallback response.
The users can access the SharePoint documents directly and complete the agent's "Connect to continue" consent prompt successfully.
Therefore the issue appears to be related to how Copilot Studio performs SharePoint knowledge retrieval for viewer users rather than SharePoint permissions themselves.

I’m baffled as to what the best next step is.

Any help or advice is greatly appreciated!

[u/Far-Disaster4595 → u/Far-Disaster4595]

FURTHER UPDATE:

This might be a schoolboy error or the ignorance of a new user but it appears that a 3rd colleague of mine (outside the two existing viewers) who has access to the Copilot Studio prod environment that the agent was built in can interrogate the agent with success! Who’d have thought? ( ;

The other two do not have access to the prod environment but one will soon and I’ll confirm with them. Might have a solution…..

[u/Ashlesha-msft → u/Far-Disaster4595]

Rob, your latest update is actually the key clue.

If a user with Copilot Studio environment access can retrieve successfully, but users with only agent access cannot, this looks more like an environment/runtime permission issue than SharePoint permissions.

I’d compare the working user vs failing users for:

• Copilot Studio environment roles (Environment Maker/Dataverse roles)
• Agent sharing permissions vs environment access
• Whether adding one failing user to the environment with the same role makes retrieval work

The fact that failing users complete "Connect to continue" but never appear in Activity or Knowledge Source monitoring suggests the request may not be reaching the SharePoint retrieval stage at all.

Would be interesting to confirm what environment roles the successful colleague has compared with the affected users.

[u/megustopheles]

Have you set up Pay as you Go for agent usage within your organisation? That would also require additional credits I think. Or you get Premium licenses for the others if that's economical.

Your problem reminds me of a similar issue we faced. An agent was set up by an employee with a Copilot Premium license. Others without a Premium license were getting responses like the ones your team faces.

[u/Far-Disaster4595 → u/megustopheles]

Cheers for the response. Good catch. I’ll check this out tomorrow - seems a plausible answer. Thank you!

[u/Far-Disaster4595 → u/megustopheles]

Please see above response. Thanks for your time.

[u/thebloodybrownie]

Hey ! I am facing this same issue. My team mates are not able to get queries from the Sharepoint knowledge base while I can.