Copilot Studio – Authentication Issue for External Channel Deployment

Question

Copilot Studio – Authentication Issue for External Channel Deployment

Upadhyay, Shraddha 5

We have built an agent in Copilot Studio, and we now need to publish and deploy it to an external channel (e.g., WhatsApp). However, the authentication options "No authentication" and "Authenticate manually" are disabled.

Could you please advise on how we can enable authentication for external channels or what alternative approach we should follow?

Screenshot 2026-02-24 155759

Nivedipa-MSFT 4,246 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-02-24T10:40:09.1433333+00:00

Hello Upadhyay, Shraddha - Thanks for bringing this issue to our attention.
"No authentication" and "Authenticate manually" are disabled because of a tenant-level DLP policy, managed environment, or admin security setting enforcing mandatory authentication.

Two paths forward:

Ask your tenant admin to relax the authentication enforcement in Power Platform Admin Center → Settings → Copilot Studio (or adjust the DLP policy for your environment)

Bypass it entirely — use Direct Line API + a middleware (Azure Function) to connect WhatsApp → your agent. Direct Line uses a channel secret, not end-user auth, so the disabled settings don't apply. This is the standard pattern for external channels like WhatsApp anyway.

Doc: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot-studio/configure-web-security