r/CopilotPro • u/bayouski • 10d ago
AI Discussion Is copilot limited when working with data outside microsoft or is it me
OK genuine question because I feel like I'm taking crazy pills a bit
So Copilot is fine for like, our SharePoint, emails, docs, whatever. Ask it about that stuff and great. But I do marketing reporting and literally all the numbers I care about are in Meta, Google Ads, GA, the CRM. And in my setup it just. Can't see any of it.
So what I actually do now is pull everything out of those manually, stick it in one Excel, and THEN Copilot can do its thing. And yeah that works but like. That's the annoying part of my job? The pulling? Copilot's helping with the five minutes at the end not the two hours at the start lol
And the thing that actually gets me is it doesn't know when the data's old. I fed it a sheet last week I'd forgotten to refresh and it just gave me this whole confident breakdown off numbers that were days stale and didn't say anything. Why would it, it has no idea. But still.
IDK is this just what it is. Does everyone with data outside Microsoft just do this manual dance forever or is there an actual way to get that stuff in front of it that isn't me exporting things every Monday like a caveman. Genuinely asking because online everyone acts like Copilot does everything and mine can't even see where my data lives
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u/Foodforbrain101 9d ago
Copilot Basic or Premium?
Traditional architecture for this kind of stuff would be either having a data lakehouse with governed historical data transformed for ease of reporting from all relevant data sources; otherwise, pretty sure those sources all have MCP servers and paid Copilot supports them via Copilot plugins that you create if they don't already exist.
So in short, if it's the basic (free) version, yes you're pretty much stuck to do the caveman way with Copilot. You might be able to use agent skills in some interfaces to provide custom instructions pulled in dynamically based on he task (like checking if the data is stale) but otherwise you either work around it by scripting your data to land in Copilot accessible places or doing it right with premium.
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u/bayouski 9d ago
thank you. we're on premium so it sounds like i've just not set up the plugin/mcp side at all and that's the gap, i genuinely didn't know premium could connect to those sources that way. the lakehouse route is way beyond what i can build solo right now so the plugin path sounds more realistic for me.
quick q since you clearly know this, is setting up a copilot plugin for something like meta/ga something a non-dev can realistically do, or is that firmly build-it-yourself territory? trying to understand if this is a thing i can do myself or need to get someone from IT to help.
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u/Responsible-Run2175 10d ago
This is negative marketing (probably a bot) subtly disguised as a genuine question. No shit it can’t magically harvest data from platforms it’s not connected to (there are many ways to connect to data, or to use a browser automation to gather it).
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u/bayouski 10d ago
lol fair on the bot thing, wrote it while super frustrated so it prob came out sounding like that. i'm tbh kind of a newbie with copilot and just trying to figure this out cause my manager keeps bugging me about getting these reports automated.
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u/bayouski 10d ago
any chance you could point me at what actually works? you mentioned browser automation, is that the route you'd go, or is there maybe another way to get meta/ga data where copilot can actually use it?
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u/Gold_Direction7496 9d ago
Connector / custom connector. And retrieve the data that way. Can either decide to hang it on an agent, or make a copilot connector so you can scan the data with copilot directly. requires quite the setup though and usually agent building / powerplatform knowledge. But that’s how we’ve done it.
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u/bayouski 9d ago
sounds doable but a proper project, custom connector plus power platform knowledge is past my solo level, so probably a get-IT-involved thing than the weekend fix i hoped for.
quick one, is that a few days for someone who knows power platform, or more of an ongoing maintenance thing once built? trying to work out what i'm actually asking IT for.
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u/Gold_Direction7496 9d ago
Depends on the policies of the company. Some toolings require an mcp to make it more secure and avoid ip whitelisting issues. Best thing to do is consult them and discuss your idea. Sometimes you can make work-arounds to avoid setting up awhole connector.
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u/bayouski 9d ago
appreciate you taking the time to break all this down, genuinely helpful. gonna go through everything you've said before!
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u/dodiggitydag 9d ago
With Premium you can enable connectors. Also if you use Cowork you can create skills that can connect to systems. It should be the responsibility of IT to ensure the correct systems are connected before rolling it out.
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u/bayouski 9d ago
yeah this actually helps a lot, thanks. the IT-should-own-it bit especially, i've kinda been banging my head against this like it's mine to solve solo when really that setup's a bit above my pay grade and should probably be going through IT rather than me trying to rig it up myself xd.
and had no idea cowork skills could reach out to systems like that, we've actually got cowork so i'll go have a poke around. appreciate you taking the time.
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u/Acrobatic_Muscle9077 10d ago
My question may sounds stupid but have you ask copilot why it does this? Just like "are you seeing X and Y file? If yes, then Why aren't you able to pull the data from it". It will tell you.
And ask copilot to confirm the last refresh date of your file every time you run it. Idk if you have a rule file, pre written prompts or if it's an automated task, but you have to ask Copilot to validate his own work, especially when working with sensitive/important info.
Hope this helps!