Power Platform Community Forum Thread Details

Hi everyone,

I am sharing an agent built with copilot studio to Teams channel memebers to use, the agent use pdf files via sharepoint as only knowledge, issue is even member is added into the team channels, and have the view access to the shared pdf, but some members still get no result found response talking to agent. After manually share view access directly to the person, he/she can talk and get correct response from the pdf. Why is this happening ?

This happend to all new added members, but not the previous added users( no need to mannualy share view access, they can talk with agent normally)

If members are large, i cannot share view access to the pdf one by one, it is time-wasting, thank you for anyone can help answers.

Categories:

Building Copilot Studio chatbots in Microsoft Teams

Hi @EZ-13040651-0,

The strange behavior where previously added team members can access the agent’s SharePoint PDF knowledge without manual sharing, but newly added members require manual sharing, is typically caused by how SharePoint permission inheritance and caching work:

Permission Inheritance and Propagation Delay:
Existing members possibly received their SP permissions when the Team and Site were initially set up, and those permissions have fully propagated and been indexed by the agent’s knowledge source. Members added later (new) may not have their permissions fully propagated or recognized immediately by SharePoint or the indexing/search system.
SharePoint Group Membership vs. Direct Permissions:
Older members might have direct or group-based permissions that the agent’s knowledge connector recognizes seamlessly. New members added only to the Teams channel might not automatically inherit the corresponding SP permissions if the SP site’s permissions are customized or broken inheritance is in place.
Indexing and Security Trimming Cache:
The agent’s knowledge source respects SharePoint security trimming, so it only returns results for content the user can access. If the indexing or permission cache hasn’t updated for new members, they won’t see results until permissions are explicitly granted or the index refreshes.
Manual Sharing Forces Explicit Permissions:
When you manually share the PDF or library with new members, you grant explicit permissions that immediately take effect and are recognized by the agent, bypassing propagation delays or inheritance issues.

Where attention is needed:

Let's make sure new members are added to the correct SP groups that have access to the PDFs, not just Teams channel membership.
Check if SharePoint site permissions use unique/custom permissions rather than inheriting from the parent site.
Allow time for SP permission propagation and indexing to update for new members.
Review SharePoint and Microsoft 365 audit logs to verify permission changes and propagation status.

When you have a large number of members, manually sharing view access to each PDF one by one is indeed impractical and time-consuming. The best approach is to manage permissions at the group or SharePoint site level rather than individually.

Here are some recommended strategies to efficiently grant access to many users:

Use SharePoint Groups or Microsoft 365 Groups: Assign permissions to a SharePoint group or an Office 365/Microsoft 365 group that contains all the relevant users. Then, manage membership of that group rather than individual file permissions. This way, when new members are added to the group, they automatically inherit access.
Ensure Teams Channel Membership Syncs with SharePoint Permissions: If your PDFs are stored in the SharePoint site backing the Teams channel, verify that the Teams channel members have corresponding SharePoint permissions. Usually, members of a private Teams channel get access to the associated SharePoint folder, but if permissions are customized or broken inheritance is in place, you may need to adjust this.

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