Power Platform Community Forum Thread Details

Hi Microsoft Community,

I would like to ask for guidance on connecting SAP BW / SAP BI with a Copilot Studio agent.

Client system:

SAP BW (Business Warehouse)
SAP BI / BusinessObjects BI Platform version 4.5
The client may have many datasets/tables, for example around 20 tables or related data sources.

Use case:
We want to build a Copilot Studio agent that can answer business questions based on SAP BW / SAP BI data. The agent may need to retrieve customer, sales, project, licence, invoice, or other analytical data and provide a summarized answer to the user.

My questions are:

What is the recommended architecture to connect SAP BW / SAP BI with Copilot Studio?
Can Copilot Studio directly query SAP BW / SAP BI data, or should we expose the data through an API, custom connector, Power Automate flow, Power BI semantic model, or prepared report/view?
If a use case requires many tables or datasets, for example 20 related tables, is Copilot Studio suitable to query them directly?
Is it better to ask the client to prepare a clean BW query, report, universe, API, or summarized dataset first before connecting it to Copilot Studio?
Are there any official limitations or best practices for handling complex SAP BW/SAP BI data, joins, calculations, or large analytical datasets in Copilot Studio?
Any official guidance, recommended architecture, or best practice would be appreciated. Thank you.

Categories:

General topics

For SAP BW / SAP BI scenarios, the recommended approach is generally not to have Copilot Studio query multiple underlying tables directly. Instead, expose the required business data through a curated layer such as:

SAP BW Queries or prepared reports/views
OData/REST APIs
A custom connector
Power Automate flows
A Power BI semantic model

If the solution involves many related tables (e.g., 20+ tables with joins, calculations, and business logic), it is usually best to have the client prepare a clean query, dataset, API, or semantic model first. This improves performance, security, governance, and response quality.

Copilot Studio works best when it consumes well-structured business data rather than performing complex analytical joins across multiple source tables.

Could you share how the SAP data is currently exposed (BW Queries, OData services, APIs, or Power BI)? That would help identify the most suitable architecture.