Connect Copilot to Google, Box, GitHub, and More Apps in Minutes

Your Work Lives in More Places Than Microsoft 365

Your files might be in Google Drive or Box. Your personal calendar might be in Google Calendar. Your code is in GitHub. Copilot is much more useful when it can reach all of them, and the setup takes a few minutes.

Microsoft has built a long list of connectors for this, from Google and Box to GitHub and Salesforce. This post shows how to add them, what you can do once they are connected, and the one admin setting that stops most people. Then we go one step further and look at a dashboard we built that reads and writes to all four apps from a single screen and merges multiple data sources together.

Watch the Full Walkthrough First

The video covers the whole path: connecting an app, using it in Copilot, and then the live dashboard where edits in one place show up in the other. Seeing the dashboard first makes the rest of this post easier to follow.

How to Connect an App to Copilot

Connections live in Copilot Cowork. In Microsoft 365 Copilot, open the Cowork tab and choose Customize. That page lists every app you can connect.

Here is the Google Drive example:

1. Search for the app. Typing "Google" brings up the Google connectors, including Google Drive, Google Calendar, and Google Sheets.

2. Choose Install. This adds the connector to your own profile.

3. Choose Connect and sign in with your Google account.

4. Approve the permissions and continue.

That is the whole process. Box and GitHub work the same way, and the list also includes names like Salesforce, so it is worth searching for the apps you use every day.

What You Can Do Once It Is Connected

In Copilot Cowork, your connections become available to the tasks you give it. Starter prompts such as organizing your inbox, arranging your week, or preparing for a meeting can use them once you add the app to the request. For example, ask Cowork to arrange your week using your Google Calendar as well as Outlook.

You do not need Cowork to benefit. If you only have Microsoft 365 Copilot, the same connections work in chat. Ask "What's my Google calendar for tomorrow?" and Copilot lists the events from Google Calendar. In the video, the answer matched the calendar exactly, from the early morning events to the afternoon plans.

Copilot answers questions well. The next step is to act on the data, and that is where we took it.

Go Further: A Dashboard That Reads and Writes to All of It

Connecting an app to Copilot is useful. We wanted to see how far the same idea could go, so we built Mission Control Interstellar, a dashboard that brings Google Drive, Google Calendar, Box, and GitHub into one screen next to your Microsoft 365 data.

It is two-way, not just a viewer:

• Google Drive: browse folders, preview the photos, and open a text file. Select edit, change the text, and save. The change shows up in Google Drive right away.

• Google Calendar: edit an event, such as moving a 5:00 a.m. event to 4:00 a.m. Refresh Google Calendar and the new time is there.

• Box: preview a PDF and look through the folders without leaving the dashboard.

• GitHub: your repositories, in the same view.

• One calendar: switch on Google Calendar to see it overlap with Outlook. It is handy when you keep a personal and a work calendar.

One difference matters here. The dashboard does not use the connections on the Customize page. It uses its own Power Apps connections, which need a Power Apps Premium license or Copilot Credits. You can see them by opening all connections from the dashboard.

Mission Control Interstellar: Free on GitHub

View on GitHub →

The code and setup notes are in the repo. Use the button above to open it. It is a personal project that is not built or supported by Microsoft, so read the license notes in the repo before you run it.

If You Can't Connect: The Admin Setting That Blocks You

This is the part that holds up the most people. If an app will not connect, or does not appear, the cause is often an organization setting rather than anything you did.

By default, a large number of connectors are blocked. In our tenant it was over 1,400 blocked and only a few dozen allowed. An admin has to allow the ones you want, such as GitHub, Google Calendar, Google Drive, and Box. We found it here:

1. In the Microsoft 365 admin center, go to Apps, then Settings, then Environment groups.

2. Open the default environment group and select the Connectors and MCP servers rule.

3. Edit the policy, choose Add connectors, find the connector, and add it. In the video, we typed "Google," found Google Sheets, added it, and saved.

4. Allow some time. Changes can take a while to reach your environment.

Menu names change often, so if yours looks different, search the admin center for connectors and MCP servers. If you are not the admin, send this section to the person who is. It saves a lot of back and forth.

Where This Is Going

Here is the full picture of where we are and where we are heading.

Today, the dashboard can read from each source and write back to it. Merging sources into one view has started, and the Outlook and Google Calendar overlay is the first example. The last two steps are still a concept: reasoning over the merged data with your own rules, then ending with a clear status and a next action. Think of a budget in an Excel spreadsheet and the work completed in a Google Sheet. The result is not two files side by side. It is an answer such as "this is at risk, schedule a review."

Start With One Connection

Pick the app you open most, install it from Customize, and ask Copilot one real question about it. Which connection would make the biggest difference in your week?

Have a question or an idea for a future video? Leave a comment on the full video walkthrough on the Collaboration Simplified YouTube channel.

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