SoftSignal Research
MCP Setup Guide
Microsoft 365 Copilot
Bring SoftSignal's commodity data into Copilot Chat as a declarative agent.
This one needs a developer and an admin. Microsoft 365 Copilot reaches outside services through a declarative agent, which someone builds in Visual Studio Code and provisions into your tenant. It's about fifteen minutes of work once, and then everyone in your organization who has Copilot can use it. If you just want the data in a chat window today, Claude.ai takes two clicks.

Before you start

You do not need to register an OAuth application, and there is no client ID or client secret to copy anywhere. SoftSignal's MCP server supports OAuth 2.0 dynamic client registration, so Copilot registers itself with us at setup time.

Steps

1
Start a new declarative agent

In Visual Studio Code, open the Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit from the Activity Bar and choose Create a New Agent/App → Declarative Agent.

2
Add SoftSignal as the action

Choose Add an Action, then Start with an MCP Server, and enter this server URL:

https://chat.getsoftsignal.com/mcp
3
Choose OAuth (with dynamic registration)

When the toolkit asks for an authentication type, pick OAuth (with dynamic registration). It will not ask you for a client ID or a secret — that's expected. The toolkit writes the registration into the plugin manifest for you.

Then give the agent a name and a folder, and let the toolkit generate the project.

4
Provision it into your tenant

In the toolkit's Accounts pane, sign in to Microsoft 365 and confirm that both Custom App Upload Enabled and Copilot Access Enabled appear under your account. If either is missing, your Microsoft 365 admin has to turn it on before you can continue.

Then open the Lifecycle pane and select Provision.

5
Sign in to SoftSignal

Go to m365.cloud.microsoft/chat and find your agent in the Agents sidebar — during testing it appears with dev appended to the name. Ask it anything and Copilot will prompt you to sign in.

Enter your SoftSignal subscriber email and click the one-click sign-in link we email you. There's no password.

6
Ask it something

Try: "What is managed money positioning in cotton right now?" or "How does this week's Brazil coffee weather stress compare with the same week last year?"

Rolling it out to your organization

Provisioning from the toolkit installs the agent for you alone. To give it to a team, hand the generated app package (the .zip the toolkit builds) to your Microsoft 365 admin, who uploads it under Integrated apps in the Microsoft 365 admin center and assigns it to the people or groups who should see it.

Each person signs in as themselves. Installing the agent org-wide does not share one login. Everyone who uses it authenticates with their own SoftSignal subscriber email, and their requests count against that account.

What the agent can reach

Everything in the SoftSignal MCP catalog: CFTC positioning, USDA WASDE and PSD supply balances, crop progress and condition, US Drought Monitor, EIA storage and prices, ENSO and IOD state, our weather-stress and phenology series, CONAB, and the published report library. The manifest uses Copilot's dynamic tool discovery, so when we add a dataset it becomes available in your tenant without anyone republishing the agent.

Building your own agent instead?

SoftSignal is a standard remote MCP server over streamable HTTP at https://chat.getsoftsignal.com/mcp, with OAuth 2.1 and dynamic client registration. Point any MCP client at it — including Copilot Studio, the Agents SDK, or your own code. See the API reference.

If something goes wrong

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