Microsoft Purview Copilot Not Retrieving Assets from Unified Catalog Despite Catalog Search Working

BAG, Priyasankar 0 Reputation points
2026-10-08T06:13:30.14+00:00

Hi Everyone,

Issue:

Users can access and use Microsoft Purview Copilot; however, Copilot is not retrieving information from the Unified Catalog and instead returns generic responses.

Current Access:

Microsoft Purview Unified Catalog is enabled and populated with cataloged assets (Manual search mode)

Users have access to:

Purview Copilot

Unified Catalog

Catalog search

Required catalog permissions

Current Behavior:

Users can successfully search and locate assets through -

Unified Catalog → Discovery → Data Assets

For example, searching for a specific table or dataset directly in the catalog returns the expected results.

However, when users ask Copilot questions such as:

"Find asset CUSTOMER_MASTER"

"Show datasets in the Finance domain"

"Who owns Customer Master Data?"

Copilot returns generic informational responses rather than retrieving actual catalog assets, metadata, ownership information, lineage, glossary terms, or classifications from the Unified Catalog.

Expected Behavior:

We expect Copilot to leverage the Purview Unified Catalog and return relevant catalog metadata, including:

Data assets and datasets

Asset owners and stewards

Business glossary terms

Data lineage

Classifications and metadata

Domain-specific assets

For example, when querying:

Find asset CUSTOMER_MASTER

Copilot should return the corresponding cataloged asset and its metadata instead of a generic response.

Question:

Is there any additional configuration, feature enablement, licensing requirement, role assignment, region dependency, or grounding setup required for Microsoft Purview Copilot to search and retrieve information directly from the Unified Catalog?

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Microsoft Security | Microsoft Purview
Answer accepted by question author and recommended by moderator
Maksood Ahmed 110 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator
2026-10-09T08:58:19.0533333+00:00

Hi @BAG, Priyasankar ,

Thanks for the follow-up.

For the self-service data discovery experience you described, the recommended Microsoft Purview approach is to use Data Products in Unified Catalog.

You can group related tables, files, and reports into business-focused Data Products, for example Voyage Performance, Fuel Consumption, or Budget Data, and add clear descriptions, owners, glossary terms, and related data assets.

Unified Catalog supports natural-language search for Data Products, currently in preview. The search uses information such as the Data Product name, description, business use, governance domain, glossary terms, and the names/descriptions of the associated data assets.

So for your scenario:

  • “Which table contains budget data?” or “Where can I find voyage performance data?” → Natural-language Data Product search can help users discover the relevant Data Product.
  • “Give me the details of the Vessel_Master table.” → Use Unified Catalog → Discovery → Data assets to locate the specific table and view its available catalog metadata.
  • “Who owns the fuel consumption dataset?” → The Data Product details can include ownership information.

The important point is that the current natural-language capability is a search and discovery experience for Data Products. Microsoft does not currently document it as a general conversational assistant that can answer arbitrary questions across every catalog asset and all metadata such as ownership, lineage, and data quality in a single chat response.

FYR:

Regards,

Maksood Ahmed

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