Your AI, Your Rules: How to Teach Copilot to Stay in Its SharePoint Lane Pt.2

What’s the Big Deal with Grounding?

Before Copilot starts generating those snazzy responses, it needs to do a little homework. This is called grounding—it’s the process where Copilot queries Microsoft 365 repositories like SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams to gather context about a user’s prompt. Let’s say you ask Copilot to draft a briefing on the latest Office 365 features. Copilot goes hunting in your SharePoint sites to see what documents you already have. If it’s allowed (by you, the savvy admin), Copilot might even scour the web for extra info.

Sounds pretty handy—unless you have some sensitive SharePoint sites that Copilot should definitely not be poking around in. That’s where blocking search indexing comes in.

Blocking Search Indexing: The Secret Weapon ?

Here’s the deal: If you don’t want Copilot rummaging through certain SharePoint sites, you may want to block those sites from appearing in search results. It’s really that simple. When you block a site from being indexed, Copilot (and any other search-based tool) won’t be able to access that data, keeping it safely out of sight.

How to Block Search Indexing

Don’t worry, blocking search indexing isn’t as complicated as it sounds. Just follow these simple steps, and you’re all set:

1. Go to the Site Settings of the SharePoint site you want to protect.

2. Find Search and Offline Availability under the search settings.

3. Set Allow this site to appear in search results to No.

   

Or take the almighty PnPOnline route ...

# Curent NoCrawl status
$status = Get-PnPWeb -Includes NoCrawl
# Disable No Site Scripting 
Set-PnPSite -NoScriptSite $false
# Disable Search Crawl
Set-PnPWeb -NoCrawl
# Enable No Site Scripting
Set-PnPSite -NoScriptSite $true

Boom! That’s it. You’ve just told Copilot (and anyone else for that matter ) to stay away from your selected SharePoint site.

But Don’t Overdo It…

As tempting as it might be to block all the things, it’s not all smooth sailing. Before you start slamming the brakes on search, let’s explore the drawbacks that come with it

• Copilot Might Get a Little Dumber

  Sure, you’ve got the best intentions by blocking certain sites from search indexing. But here’s the thing—Copilot relies on data from your Microsoft 365 environment to ground user prompts. By blocking sites from indexing, you’re basically telling Copilot, “Sorry, no data from here!” You’re limiting the information it can use to craft a well-informed response. Imagine asking a question and getting a vague, half-baked answer—yeah, that's what happens when Copilot can’t access all the relevant content.

• Your Content Becomes Invisible (Even to You!)

  Search is the lifeblood of efficiency in SharePoint. Block a site from indexing, and it’s like putting it in a digital vault with no key. No one, not even you, will be able to find it through the search bar. So, if you suddenly need that old policy document that was locked away in the "blocked" site, guess what? You’re out of luck.

• Increased Admin Headaches

  When you block search indexing, you’re creating more work for yourself. If you have a large number of sites and you want to manage which ones are indexed or not, that means more admin oversight. Who gets access to what? What data is accessible via search? You’ll be juggling settings more often than you'd like.

It’s easy to get a little too trigger-happy with blocking search indexing. While it’s great for protecting sensitive data, going overboard can lead to a situation where no one can find anything, and you’ve created a walled-off digital fortress. Sure, it’s safe in there—but it's also isolated and hard to navigate. You may end up locking down so much that you forget how to open the door in the first place.

Stay Tuned for Pt.3 …