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Troubleshoot data policy enforcement for Copilot Studio

On January 6, 2025, we published a Message Center announcement (Message ID MC973179) to Power Platform customers regarding updates to Data loss prevention enforcement in Copilot Studio. The announcement outlines a transition from the current opt-in enforcement process to a phased approach where the default enforcement level will move from "Disabled" to "Enabled" by March 2025, ensuring all bots comply with tenant-defined data policies.

It is critical to take proactive steps to align your data policies with your production workloads to avoid potential disruptions. Misaligned configurations, such as data policies blocking new connectors by default, could result in production outages. For example, essential features like Direct Line or unauthenticated agent deployments on websites may be unexpectedly blocked.

This document provides guidance to help you review and adjust your data policies to ensure seamless operations while maintaining compliance with organizational standards.

Symptoms

Data policy violations can affect your agents in multiple ways, and present error messages when they occur. In the following example, data loss prevention changes are specifically mentioned as the reason why publishing failed:

Screenshot of Copilot Studio showing publishing errors for an agent, with the Download and Channels labels highlighted.

In this example, the error messages say:

  • Draft agent status: You have errors in your draft that will prevent publishing. Due to a recent data policy change, some issues are preventing your agent from working correctly. Download the file to review the error details and contact your admin. You need to configure at least one channel (for example, Teams) due to recent data policy changes. Contact your admin with questions.
  • Published agent status: You have errors in your published agent. Due to a recent data policy change, some issues are preventing your agent from working correctly. Download the file to review the error details and contact your admin. You need to configure at least one channel (for example, Teams) due to recent data policy changes. Contact your admin with questions.

Data policy violations for agent makers in Copilot Studio

If the agent is violating a data policy for the environment, makers will see a warning notification in Copilot Studio that says, "1 error is preventing your agent from being published. 1 error may be preventing your agent from working as intended."

Screenshot of the error message that appears in a bar in the agent's details page.

Data policy violations when trying to publish

If you try to publish an agent that violates a data policy, an error message is displayed, "We failed to publish your agent. Try publishing again later. Validation for the bot failed."

Screenshot of the errors list page that appears if you try to publish an agent that violates data policies.

Select Show raw to get detailed error information in JSON format, including the violation type and a description of the error. In this example, the JSON contains values for the following keys:

  • errorDescription: At least one connector here has been blocked by your admin
  • $kind: DlpViolationError
  • violationType: BlockedConnector

Screenshot of the raw response panel that shows data policy violations in a JSON-formatted block of code.

Data policy violations for end users of the agent

If your published agent is impacted by data policy enforcement and is in violation of your data policies, end users of the agent will see a DataLossPreventionViolation error when trying to interact with it.

The message says "Sorry, something unexpected happened. We're looking into it. Error code: DataLossPreventionViolation." and includes the conversation ID and time of the error.

Screenshot of an agent's response indicating that something unexpected happened, with an error code DataLossPreventionViolation.

End users should contact their admin to resolve the issue. The admin can check the data policy violations and update the policies or the agent configuration as needed.

Reason

Microsoft Copilot Studio data policy enablement has been soft enabled for all customers over the course of January and February 2025. With this change, makers see data policy related errors when publishing or managing agents that violate existing data policies without immediately blocking their actions for agents that are already published.

With these changes, data policy exemption is no longer supported, and agents can't be exempted. The ability to exempt agents with a PowerShell command won't work.

Agents that were exempted from data policy enforcement had their enforcement set to Soft-enabled in January and February of 2025, and set to Enabled in February and March of 2025.

Mitigation

Makers need to work with admins to check the publish status of all agents deployed in production to identify any potential issues caused by data policy violations. Using the insights from the publish errors and downloadable reports in the Channels tab, admins can adjust their data policies to align with their production workloads.

Identify agents in violation of a data policy

From the Channels tab in Copilot Studio, you can immediately see warnings if your agent is in violation of data policies.

You can also select the Details link in the error notification to get more information about a violation. The Channels tab automatically opens and summarizes the data policy violations preventing new publication for an unpublished (or "draft") agent, or that are causing errors for a published agent.

Select Download to retrieve an Excel workbook that contains detailed information about the data policy violations. The workbook includes a summary of the errors, including the specific data policy name, ID, and the blocked connector causing the issue.

Screenshot of an Excel workbook containing information about data policy violations.

There are two worksheets in the Excel file:

  • DLP violations, containing details for the data policy violations for that agent.
  • Blocked channels, containing a list of the channels that are currently blocked by data policies for the agent.

The DLP violations sheet provides the name of the agent (as Copilot name) and its environment, followed by a table with the following columns:

Column Description
Content The publication status of the agent
Topic name Name of the topic that triggered the violation, if applicable
Subcomponent Category of the activity
Subcomponent type Category for the data policy surface area
DLP policy name The name of the policy (defined by the admin when the policy was created)
Policy id GUID for the policy
DLP error type The outcome of the policy (for example, Connector blocked)
Connector (data group) Name of the connector that triggered the violation

The Blocked channels sheet includes the name of the agent (as Copilot name), along with the environment name. It's followed by a table with the following columns:

Column Description
Channel name The name of the channel where the agent was blocked by a data policy violation
DLP policy name The name of the policy (defined by the admin when the policy was created)
Policy id GUID for the policy

Important

If all channels for the agent are blocked by data policies, you can't publish your agent.

Identify users with sufficient permissions to update data policies

After identifying data policies that may need to be updated, you'll need an admin to update Data policies in the Power Platform admin center.

See Configure data policies for agents for more details and examples of using data policies in Copilot Studio.

When an agent is in violation of a data policy, makers need to determine what policies are impacting them. Data policies can be defined at the tenant level (to impact all environments in a tenant) or for one or more specific environments.

Tenant-wide data policies require tenant-level administrator. Environment-specific data policies can be configurable by users with a less permissive role in the environment.