A distributor wants Copilot for Sales to include real-time product availability from its external ERP system inside AI-generated quote-preparation summaries. The ERP data is not replicated into Dataverse, and the built-in Copilot for Sales summary only draws on Dataverse records plus connected email and calendar content. A consultant is asked how to get the ERP availability data into the AI-generated summary without duplicating the ERP inventory tables into Dataverse. What should the consultant recommend?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
Out of the box, Copilot for Sales only sees Dataverse plus connected email and calendar data, so it cannot reach live ERP inventory on its own. You need to build a custom Copilot Studio plugin, or skill, that queries the ERP directly and returns the result into the Copilot conversation. That gives you real-time availability in the quote-prep summary without copying ERP tables into Dataverse.
Full Explanation
The recommended approach is to build a custom Copilot Studio plugin, sometimes called a skill, that calls out to an external system such as the ERP and returns live results into the Copilot for Sales conversation. This lets the AI-generated quote-preparation summary include real-time inventory availability from the ERP without ever copying the ERP inventory tables into Dataverse, satisfying the requirement to avoid data duplication. Copilot for Sales is designed to be extended beyond its default grounding in Dataverse, connected email, and connected calendar content through Copilot Studio, so waiting for a future Dynamics 365 Sales release is unnecessary; the capability to reach an external system already exists. Exporting the ERP inventory tables to a CSV file and attaching it to each opportunity record is not a valid solution because Copilot does not treat file attachments on a record as a queryable data source for its generated summaries, so the exported CSV would not reliably appear in the AI-generated text and would quickly become stale. Enabling conversation intelligence is also not a valid solution because conversation intelligence transcribes spoken calls and extracts information such as sentiment and mentioned competitors; it has no mechanism for capturing numeric inventory figures a seller happens to read aloud, and it does nothing to connect the ERP system to Copilot's summaries.