Are you tired of not being able to use SharePoint Lists as knowledge in Copilot Studio?
You’re not alone. Copilot Studio supports Dataverse, SharePoint sites and document libraries, and even public websites. But SharePoint Lists? Not natively. Which is frustrating, especially when a lot of structured business knowledge lives in lists.
Copilot Studio doesn’t let you directly treat a SharePoint List as a knowledge source. So even if you have significant structured data like FAQs, inventories, or IT helpdesk requests, you can’t just plug it into your Copilot’s knowledge base like you can with a SharePoint document library or webpage.
This is where Power Automate through Copilot Actions comes to the rescue.
Prerequisites:
- Copilot license
- Power Automate free license
- An existing Copilot Agent (or check my article on how to build one here)
- An existing SharePoint list with data.
Steps on how to achieve this!
On Copilot Studio, open your existing Copilot agent,
- Click Actions
- Click “Add an action”
3. Search for “SharePoint” power automate actions
4. Click on “Get Items”
5. Click Next
- Add the Name, Description, Authentication
Add Site address and List name:
7. Select the site address and then select the SharePoint List name
8. Edit the Site address and then select the site address.
You could afford to add the list later on
9. Click Done
9. Click Add action
For some reason best known to Microsoft, the action name shows as “SharePoint — Get items”, while the Display name shows the name you gave it. Click on it under the Actions tab.
10. Under Inputs tab, Locate the “List Name” section and select “Set as a value” under the field How will the agent fill this input?
11. Click confirm
12. Click on the list name
Add filter query:
Filter query will allow you to dynamically filter the Api call to the list based-off of the user’s query, to avoid returning irrelevant data.
13. Click Add
14. Click Filter Query
15. Leave the configuration as is:
16. Under the Outputs tab, leave the output mode as Specific
For my case, I selected Specific, so it can target specific items on the list
17. Click Save
Note:
The action uses the internal name of the SharePoint list, so if you renamed the columns at some point, ensure to add this information as an instruction on Copilot.
Next, Test the Agent
Conclusion
This approach isn’t quite native knowledge integration. But it’s fast, flexible, and uses tools you already have. Until Microsoft enables SharePoint List support directly in Copilot Studio, this workaround gives you a solid path forward.
About the Author
Emmanuel Adegor
Principal M365 Software Engineer – (SharePoint | SPFX | Teams | Workflow Automation) || Copilot AI Agents || Dynamics 365 CRM Customization
Reference:
Adegor, E (2025).
Using a SharePoint Online list as a Knowledge source via ACTIONS in Copilot AI Studio. Available at: Using a SharePoint Online list as a Knowledge source via ACTIONS in Copilot AI Studio | by Emmanuel Adegor | Apr, 2025 | Medium [Accessed: 14th April 2025].
