Microsoft 365 Copilot connectors now write to Jira, Notion and Canva after user approval

Microsoft has made write actions for Copilot connectors generally available, so Microsoft 365 Copilot can now create, update and delete information in connected third-party apps instead of only reading from them. The change was announced on November 9, 2026 on the Microsoft Copilot Blog, and it applies today to Copilot Chat and to Cowork in Microsoft 365 Copilot. Microsoft says the same capability is coming to Copilot in the Office apps, without giving a date.

The mechanics are simple from the user's side. A person asks Copilot in ordinary language to do something in another system, such as opening a Jira work item from an escalation email or updating a Notion database after a meeting. Copilot prepares the action and shows it on a confirmation card, and nothing is sent to the connected service until the user approves it. Once approved, Copilot carries out the change in the third-party app with that user's own permissions.

Microsoft's announcement names six partner connectors as examples: Atlassian Rovo for Jira and Confluence, Notion, Canva, G2, iManage and BioRender. The company describes the wider catalog as hundreds of Microsoft, partner and custom-built connectors, and it says the available actions vary by connector, by configuration and by the permissions of the person using it. Microsoft's documentation adds that the Researcher agent stays read-only, so deep research runs still cannot change data in outside systems.

··········

HOW MICROSOFT 365 COPILOT CONNECTOR WRITE ACTIONS WORK.

The write actions run through what Microsoft calls federated Copilot connectors. These connectors use the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to reach external systems live, and Microsoft's documentation states that they do not index or copy the external data into Microsoft 365. When a user asks a question or requests a change, Copilot looks at the tools that the connector's MCP server exposes and selects the relevant one, whether that tool searches a knowledge base, retrieves a record or writes a change back.

This design has two consequences for organizations. The first is that the source system keeps enforcing its own permissions, because Copilot acts with the user's identity and OAuth 2.0 credentials rather than with an administrator account. Microsoft's documentation says Copilot "can change only what the user is already permitted to change in the source system." The second is that the set of available actions belongs to the connector publisher. Write, update and delete tools ship as part of the connector, they are not switched on separately, and Microsoft notes that publishers can add or change tools over time.

Microsoft's examples of write actions in its documentation are mundane office tasks: turning an escalation email into an issue, updating a CRM record, or adding a comment to a ticket from Copilot Chat. The documentation also states plainly that a confirmed action exports customer data to the connected system, which is the point compliance teams will look at first, since content drafted from mailbox or SharePoint material can now leave the Microsoft 365 boundary with one click of approval.

The product page for Copilot connectors had previously said that write actions for federated connectors would start in early October 2026 and that the connectors were read-only until then. The November 9 announcement is the general availability step for Copilot Chat and Cowork.

··········

THE FIRST PARTNER CONNECTORS WITH WRITE ACTIONS IN COPILOT.

Microsoft used six connectors to illustrate what the feature does in practice. The descriptions below follow Microsoft's announcement; the exact tools each connector exposes depend on its publisher and on the user's account in the outside service.

........

Connector	Write actions described by Microsoft
Atlassian Rovo	Create and update Jira work items and Confluence pages
Notion	Create and update pages and databases
Canva	Create designs and graphics, apply team feedback
G2	Plan and create review campaigns, check their status, with approval before creation
iManage	Draft documents such as a Statement of Work, saved as new drafts without changing the source agreement
BioRender	Search templates, create or adapt scientific figures

........

The iManage example shows how publishers can limit risk inside their own tool design. According to Microsoft, the connector saves generated documents as new drafts and leaves the original agreement untouched, so a lawyer can review the output inside the document management system before anything replaces an existing file.

The broader Connectors Gallery in Microsoft's documentation lists federated connectors across finance (including Xero, Zoho Books and Mercury), CRM (HubSpot and Intercom), project management (Asana, monday.com and Smartsheet), productivity (Airtable, Google Calendar and Notion), legal (Harvey, iManage Work and NetDocuments), site design (Canva and Webflow) and collaboration (Gmail, Miro and Trello). Being listed in the gallery does not by itself mean that a connector offers write tools, since that decision sits with each publisher.

··········

COPILOT APPROVAL SETTINGS FOR CREATE, UPDATE AND DELETE ACTIONS.

Every tool that creates, updates or deletes data starts in a state Microsoft labels Needs approval. Read tools are always allowed and never ask for confirmation. When Copilot wants to run a write tool, it shows a card describing the requested action and its details, and the user picks one of four responses.

........

Option on the confirmation card	What Copilot does next
Allow once	Runs the action now and asks again next time
Allow for conversation	Runs the action and stops asking for that tool for the rest of the conversation
Always allow	Runs the action and stops asking for that tool until the user or the publisher changes it
Cancel	Declines the action; nothing changes in the connected system

........

Both "Allow for conversation" and "Always allow" apply to one tool, not to the whole connector, so allowing Copilot to create Jira work items does not also allow it to delete them. Users can review and reset these choices under Settings, then Sources, by selecting the connector and expanding the write and delete tools. If a publisher adds a new tool or changes an existing one, Microsoft's documentation says that tool goes back to Needs approval by default, which protects users from silently inheriting a broader action under an old permission.

Before Copilot can use any authenticated capability, the user must connect to the third-party service. In Copilot Chat the path is the "..." menu, then Settings, then Sources, where the user selects a data source and chooses Connect.

··········

WHO GETS COPILOT CONNECTOR WRITE ACTIONS AND ON WHICH SURFACES.

Microsoft's announcement does not state licensing, plan eligibility or regional availability. The Microsoft Learn page for federated connectors is more specific, listing five conditions that all have to be true before a user sees a federated connector: the publisher type is allowed or the connector was turned on individually, the connector is enabled, the user falls within the tenant's user access setting, the user is included in the connector's staged rollout, and the user has a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. Microsoft's extensibility licensing page says holders of the Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on pay no extra charges for connectors, agents or plugins. Current plan prices are covered in our guide to Microsoft Copilot pricing tiers and Microsoft 365 plans.

........

Microsoft 365 Copilot surface	Federated connectors	Write actions
Copilot Chat	Supported	Generally available
Cowork	Supported	Generally available
Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook	Supported	Coming soon, no date
Agents	Supported	Depends on connector tools
Researcher agent	Supported	Not supported, read-only

........

Cowork is the surface where the change is likely to be felt most. Cowork already runs longer multi-step tasks, and Microsoft has been adding domain plugins to it, as in the Copilot for Finance plugins for Excel and Cowork. With write access, a Cowork task can end with a created ticket or an updated record in the outside system instead of a draft the user has to paste by hand. Organizations in Europe that are tracking where Copilot processes data can compare this with Microsoft's separate plan for Claude models in Copilot and the EU Data Boundary.

··········

MICROSOFT 365 ADMIN CENTER CONTROLS FOR CONNECTOR WRITE TOOLS.

Administrators manage federated connectors in the Microsoft 365 admin center under Copilot connectors and the Your connections tab, which Microsoft describes as the single place for Copilot connectors, synchronized connectors, federated connectors and supported Cowork plugins. The controls stack on top of each other, and the narrowest one wins.

........

Admin control	Location in the admin center	Effect
Agent and plugin access	Agents, then Settings	Allows or blocks connectors by publisher type: Microsoft, your organization, external publishers
User access	Agents, then Settings	Tenant-wide ceiling: all users, specific users or groups, or no users
Enable or disable	Copilot connectors, Your connections	Pauses a connector without removing its configuration
Staged rollout	Your connections	Limits a connector to chosen users or Entra ID groups
Tools block or unblock	Agents, then Tools	Blocks individual tools or whole connectors

........

Defaults differ by publisher. Microsoft-built connectors are on by default when Microsoft as a publisher type is allowed and the user sits inside user access. Connectors from external publishers need either the external-publisher option or individual enablement. Clearing a publisher type sets the staged rollout of that type's connectors to no users and also blocks connectors of that type released later.

Microsoft is adding a Tools section to each connector's detail page, marked as coming soon and not yet available for every connector. There, an administrator signs in to the third-party service and sees each tool labeled Read, Write or Delete. The documentation warns that the list reflects the permissions of the account used to sign in, and that signing in there may also connect the administrator's own Copilot to that service. For connectors without the new view, Microsoft's workaround is to sign in through Copilot itself and expand the write and delete tools under Settings and Sources.

One network detail matters for companies that run their own MCP servers behind IP filtering. Static egress is on by default for MCP-based federated connectors, and Microsoft publishes the list of Microsoft 365 Copilot egress addresses so that firewalls can allow them.

··········

STEPS FOR IT TEAMS BEFORE TURNING ON COPILOT WRITE ACTIONS.

Microsoft's documentation asks administrators to review a connector's capabilities, privacy terms and third-party agreements against their security, compliance and acceptable-use requirements before enabling or keeping a connector that exposes write, update or delete tools. In practice that review can follow a short sequence built from the controls above.

The first step is to decide the publisher policy under Agent and plugin access, since allowing external publishers opens every future connector of that type unless it is blocked individually. The second is to use staged rollout to give write-capable connectors to a pilot group in Entra ID before the whole tenant. The third is to inspect each connector's tool list, either in the admin center Tools view or through a test account in Copilot, and block delete tools that the business does not need. The fourth is to update help-desk and user guidance, because Microsoft's documentation recommends telling users that actions are performed with their own permissions in the third-party service, so an approved change is made under the user's own account in that system.

Users who already rely on Copilot for mailbox work may also want to revisit how much of their content Copilot can see before it starts sending some of it outward, a question covered in our explainer on Copilot access to Outlook emails and Microsoft 365 permissions.

··········

COPILOT CONNECTOR WRITE ACTIONS: CONFIRMED FACTS AND OPEN QUESTIONS.

Microsoft has confirmed general availability of connector write actions in Copilot Chat and Cowork, a per-tool approval model with four options, defaults that require approval for every create, update and delete tool, and a stack of admin controls ranging from publisher policy to per-tool blocking. Its documentation also confirms that the Researcher agent remains read-only and that federated connectors require a Microsoft 365 Copilot license for the user to see them.

Several points remain open. Microsoft has given no date for write actions in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, and the admin center Tools view is still rolling out connector by connector. The announcement does not publish a list of which connectors in the gallery currently expose write tools, so administrators have to check each one. Regional availability was not stated either. For most organizations the decision will come down to the approval defaults and the per-tool blocks, which give enough control to run a limited pilot with one or two connectors such as Jira or Notion before opening write access more widely.

··········

FOLLOW US FOR MORE.

·····

DATA STUDIOS

·····

datastudios.org