A Copilot connector widens what Copilot can see beyond Microsoft 365. Once a connector indexes an external system into Microsoft Graph, that content shows up in Microsoft Search, Copilot Chat, Researcher and Analyst, and as a knowledge source in Agent Builder. The Connectors gallery lists well over a hundred prebuilt options.
An admin with the AI administrator role deploys it from the Microsoft 365 admin center. For some connectors (self-serve sync and federated) the admin enables it once and each user then signs in with their own account, but there is no fully self-serve option. The admin also picks who sees the content: only people who can already open it in the source system, or everyone in the organisation. Permission changes only reach the index on a full crawl, not on the frequent incremental ones.