You may see articles with headings like Graph-grounded chat with Microsoft Copilot in Outlook and ask yourself what Graph-grounded chat means.
Let’s start with the ‘Graph’ part. The graph provides access to data in these Microsoft services in your organisation: Bookings, Calendar, Delve, Excel, Microsoft 365 compliance eDiscovery, Microsoft Search, OneDrive, OneNote, Outlook/Exchange, People (Outlook contacts), Planner, SharePoint, Teams, To Do, and Viva Insights. Basically, it knows what you do, with what, and with whom across Microsoft 365. If that’s too dumbed-down for you, read more here: Microsoft Graph overview – Microsoft Graph | Microsoft Learn.
Now let’s look at ‘grounded’. Generally, to be grounded means to be firmly based on something. If I point Copilot at a document, its response should be based on or grounded in the information in that document.
Finally, ‘Chat’. “The “chat” in Copilot refers to a conversational chat interface that allows users to interact with the AI to search for specific information, generate text such as emails and summaries, and create images based on text prompts”. Copilot wrote that for me.
You can also ground Copilot prompts in SharePoint Sites.
So, Graph-grounded chat is:
- A Copilot chat…
- that has its responses Grounded in or based solely on…
- the Microsoft Graph (that thing that knows what I do at work and what information I have access to)
This means that when I am working, I can chat with Copilot, and it will only look at, refer to and discuss information within my organisation.
I hope that all makes sense.
