Table of Contents

SharePoint Online as a Knowledge Source

Learn how to use SharePoint Online and OneDrive content with FoundationaLLM agents.

Overview

FoundationaLLM offers two ways to work with SharePoint Online and OneDrive content:

Approach Description Best for
OneDrive upload in the User Portal Users attach files from their OneDrive (work or school) account to a conversation. Ad-hoc questions about a user's own files.
SharePoint data source and pipeline Administrators create a SharePoint List data source and a data pipeline that indexes document libraries. Shared, organization-wide knowledge.

Approach 1: OneDrive Upload in the User Portal

Users can attach files from OneDrive in the User Portal without any Management Portal setup per agent. In the file upload dialog they select Connect to OneDrive (first time) and then Select file from OneDrive. Attached files belong to the current conversation only and are not indexed into a knowledge base.

The OneDrive connection is configured at the platform level (including the Microsoft Graph permissions of the User Portal app registration), not per agent.

For user instructions, see Uploading Files to a Conversation.

Approach 2: SharePoint Data Source and Pipeline

Prerequisites

  • A SharePoint Online site with the document libraries you want to index.
  • A Microsoft Entra app registration that has application access to that site, with admin consent granted.
  • A certificate for that app registration stored in Azure Key Vault. FoundationaLLM authenticates to SharePoint with this certificate (not with a client secret).
  • Network access from the FoundationaLLM services to Microsoft 365.
  • The Data Sources Contributor role at the instance scope.

Note: The exact permissions the app registration needs depend on your organization's policies. Work with your Microsoft 365 administrator to grant read access to the target site.

Step 1: Create the Data Source

  1. In the sidebar, select Data > Data Sources, then select Create Data Source.

  2. Enter a Data source name (for example, hr-sharepoint) and an optional Data description.

  3. Under What is the type of the data source?, select SharePoint List.

  4. Fill in the connection details:

    Field Description
    App ID (Client ID) The client ID of the app registration.
    Tenant ID Your Microsoft Entra tenant ID.
    Certificate Name The name of the certificate in Azure Key Vault.
    Key Vault URL The URL of the Key Vault that holds the certificate.
    Site URL The full site URL, for example https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/HR.
    Document Library(s) The document libraries to expose. Press Enter or , after each name, for example Shared Documents.

  5. Select Create Data Source.

Step 2: Create a Data Pipeline

  1. In the sidebar, select Data > Data Pipelines, then select Create Pipeline.
  2. On the Stages tab, select the Data Source node on the canvas.
  3. Select your SharePoint data source in the Data source dropdown, then select the SharePoint Online Data Source (FoundationaLLM) plugin in Data source plugin.
  4. Set the plugin's DocumentLibraries parameter to the libraries this pipeline should process.
  5. Add processing stages (for example, text extraction, partitioning, embedding, and indexing) and a trigger, then save.

See Creating Data Pipelines for details.

Supported File Types

The standard text extraction stage handles PDF, DOCX, PPTX, and XLSX files, plus plain text, code, and data files such as TXT, MD, HTML, JSON, and CSV. Other file types are reported as unsupported. See Azure Data Lake for the full list.

Comparison

Feature OneDrive upload SharePoint data source
Setup Platform-level connection; users connect their own account. Administrator creates a data source and pipeline.
Persistence Current conversation only. Indexed knowledge that agents can query.
Scope The user's own OneDrive files. Configured SharePoint site and libraries.
Data pipeline Not required. Required.

You can use both: agents can query indexed SharePoint content while users also attach their own files.

Troubleshooting

  • Authentication failures: Confirm the client ID and tenant ID, that the certificate name and Key Vault URL are correct, that the certificate hasn't expired, and that FoundationaLLM can read the certificate from Key Vault.
  • Access denied: Confirm the site URL and that the app registration has been granted access to the site.
  • No documents processed: Confirm the document library names in both the data source and the pipeline's DocumentLibraries parameter.
  • OneDrive connection problems: Users must sign in with a work or school account, and conditional access policies must allow the connection.