enabling web search

For a Microsoft Copilot agent, web search must be enabled at both the organization level and the agent level.

1. Confirm the organization allows web search.
   • Organization administrators can disable web search for Copilot and all agents.
   • If admins disable it, agents that have web search enabled won’t return web search results.
2. Enable web search in the agent.
   • If building a declarative agent with Agents Toolkit and Visual Studio Code, add WebSearch to the manifest capabilities.
   • To limit search to specific public sites, add the sites property with up to four URLs.

{
  "capabilities": [
    {
      "name": "WebSearch",
      "sites": [
        {
          "url": "cnn.com"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

3. If using Agent Builder:
   • Open the Configure tab.
   • Under Knowledge, list the website URLs to reference.
4. For Copilot Studio agents:
   • Turn on the Web Search setting.
   • The agent then generates a short keyword query from the user’s question and sends that query to Bing, not the full prompt.
5. If using Microsoft Copilot Chat and the organization already allows web search:
   • Open Settings or … Settings and more.
   • Go to Personalization.
   • Expand Advanced.
   • Turn on the Web search toggle.

Notes:

• Scoped web search supports up to four public websites.
• Scoped results depend on Bing-indexed content, so dynamic or client-side rendered content can be missing or outdated.
• If web search is turned off by the organization, the user toggle is unavailable or ineffective.

References:

• Add knowledge sources to your declarative agent
• Data, privacy, and security for web search
• How web search works in Microsoft Copilot Chat and agents
• Data, privacy, and security for web search in Microsoft Copilot and Microsoft Copilot Chat