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This article will walk you through how to create a declarative agent for Copilot that uses an MCP plugin to connect MSFT 365 Copilot with Qlik’s MCP Server. Please note that several prerequisites must be met to execute the steps in this guide successfully.
Prerequisites
- Requirements for Copilot extensibility options
- Visual Studio Code
- Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit version 6.3.x or later
- Qlik Tenant Admin Access
- Your user must have the MCP permission and access to the underlying resources
Create the Agent
- Open Visual Studio Code and select the Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit icon in the left-hand Activity Bar.
- Select Create a New Agent/App in the Agents Toolkit task pane.
- Select Declarative Agent.
- Select Add an Action, then select Start with an MCP Server.
- Enter your tenant’s MCP server URL: https://<your tenant URL>/api/ai/mcp
- Choose a location for the agent project.
- Enter a name for the agent.
Once you complete these steps, Agents Toolkit generates the required files for the agent and opens a new Visual Studio Code window with the agent project loaded.
Register an OAuth App with Your Tenant
- In your browser, navigate to your tenant.
- Navigate to the Administrative Activity Center > OAuth.
- Create a new client with the following configuration.
- Client Type: Web
- Name: whatever name you would like
- Scopes: user_default and mcp:execute
- Redirect URLs:
- http://127.0.0.1:33418
- http://127.0.0.1:33418/
- https://vscode.dev/redirect
- https://teams.microsoft.com/api/platform/v1.0/oAuthRedirect
http://127.0.0.1:33418, http://127.0.0.1:33418/, and https://vscode.dev/redirect are redirect URLs for VS Code used for development and testing. https://teams.microsoft.com/api/platform/v1.0/oAuthRedirect will be the redirect URL when the plugin is provisioned and deployed.
- Create the client configuration and make sure to save the Client ID and Client Secret in a secure location, as we will need to use that information throughout setup.
Add Tools from the MCP Server
- Within VS Code, open the .vscode/mcp.json file. Select the Start button in the file editor.
- You will receive a message saying Dynamic Client Registration not supported. Click Copy URIs & Proceed.
- Add your Client ID and Client Secret that you copied from the Qlik OAuth step.
- You will be prompted to authenticate, click Allow.
- You will be prompted to open an external website, click Open.
- You should be redirected to Qlik’s OAuth approval page, click Approve to authorize your agent to access your Qlik MCP Server.
- Within VS Code and in the mcp.json file, select the ATK: Fetch action from MCP button in the file editor, then select ai-plugin.json.
- Select which tools you would like the agent, and ultimately a user, to have access to. If desired, you can choose all tools.
- Select OAuth (with static registration) as the authentication type.
Provision the Agent and Test in Copilot
- In Visual Studio Code, select the Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit icon in the left-hand Activity Bar.
- In the Accounts pane, select Sign in to Microsoft 365. (If you’re already signed in, continue to the next step.)
- Confirm that both Custom App Upload Enabled and Copilot Access Enabled display under your Microsoft 365 account. If they don’t, check with your organization admin.
- In the Lifecycle pane, select Provision.
- When asked to Enter client id for OAuth registration…, enter your client ID.
- When asked to Enter client secret for OAuth registration…, enter your client secret.
- When asked for scopes enter user_default,mcp:execute and press Enter to continue.
- Read the message in the dialog and select Confirm to continue.
- Wait for the toolkit to report that provisioning finished. NOTE: provisioning might fail initially but often works after retrying.
- Your agent should now be available to test within Copilot. Please note that the agent will only be available to you as the owner. To share the agent with others, please see the next section.
Deploying and Publishing
Once you are ready to publish (share your agent with others), follow these steps (please see the reference link below for more detailed information from Microsoft).
- In Visual Studio Code, select the Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit icon in the left-hand Activity Bar.
- In the Lifecycle section, click on Publish to Organization, which will trigger a publication request that your Microsoft 365 or Teams Administrator must approve
- Within the Teams Administrative Center, your Microsoft 365 or Teams Administrator will need to approve the pending request generated by clicking the publish to organization button in the agents toolkit. Please reference Microsoft's guidance below for more information on this process.
Please reference Microsoft’s official guidance for more information on Publishing agents for Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Considerations
- Declarative agents are limited to 4,096 tokens of shared context, so keep each agent focused on a single purpose. For example, create one agent scoped to read-only analytical queries and another scoped to development tasks like building scripts, sheets, and charts.
- Follow Microsoft’s guidance on writing effective agent instructions, but keep in mind the instructions count against the response token limit.
- For cases where greater control over orchestration, underlying models, and token utilization is needed, please see Microsoft’s guidance on custom engine agents.
- Since you configure which MCP tools are made available within your agent, you will need to update and re-publish your agent anytime you want to add a new tool to the agent.
Demo Video
