Copilot Agent ALM and Knowledge Source Management Across Environments

hi RakeshPanwar​ Great question, this is a very common challenge when you start treating Copilot agents as real applications with proper ALM.

Short answer: today there isn’t a fully supported way to parameterize knowledge source references directly in the “Knowledge” section using environment variables. Knowledge sources (SharePoint sites, files, Dataverse tables, URLs, etc.) are currently bound at design time to the environment where the agent is created.

A few clarifications based on current behavior and guidance:

What does work today

Environment variables inside Conversational Boosting / topics

This is the only supported pattern right now if you need environment-specific values (URLs, endpoints, IDs). It works well when your agent logic explicitly references those values during runtime.

Environment-specific agents

The recommended approach today is still:

Dev agent → Test agent → Prod agent

Each environment has its own knowledge sources configured natively

Use managed solutions / pipelines to move the agent structure, then rebind knowledge in the target environment

What does not work (yet)

Making Knowledge section sources themselves dynamic via environment variables

Automatically “retargeting” SharePoint / Dataverse knowledge sources during solution import

A single agent definition that dynamically switches knowledge sources at runtime based on environment

Practical ALM guidance (what most teams are doing)

Treat knowledge sources as environment-specific configuration, similar to connection references

Keep:

Prompts, orchestration, topics → solution-managed

Knowledge bindings → reconfigured per environment

Document (or script where possible) post-deployment steps to reconnect the correct knowledge sources in Test/Prod

Forward-looking note

Microsoft has been steadily improving Copilot/Agent ALM, but knowledge source portability is still an area with gaps. Based on current direction, many expect:

Better separation of agent logic vs environment bindings

Knowledge source rebinding as part of deployment pipelines (similar to connection references), but as of now, it’s not officially supported.