MCP Connection Support for Declarative Agent in Teams Toolkit

[suzuki-shm]

Hello,

I am interested in learning how to connect to the MCP Server using MCP within the Declarative Agent using Teams Toolkit. Given that Copilot Studio has already introduced support for MCP, I believe it might be feasible to implement similar functionality in Teams Toolkit as well.

Any guidance, documentation, or insights on how to achieve this connection would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your assistance.

[therealjohn]

@suzuki-shm

Thanks for the discussion! What are you looking for in Teams Toolkit to help with MCP?

In the meantime, any of this would be dependent on Declarative Agents supporting MCP which it does not right now.

[suzuki-shm]

@therealjohn

Thank you for participating in the discussion.

The reason I thought it would be great to use MCP is that setting up REST APIs in a declarative agent can be cumbersome. Initially, I tried creating a declarative agent without an API, and it was concise, clean, and easy to use. However, when I attempted to build a declarative agent that utilizes an API, the complexity increased somewhat due to the need to define API specifications and provision the necessary infrastructure.

Given this, I thought it would be beneficial if Teams Toolkit could streamline the process of adding APIs to declarative agents.

If a declarative agent could function as an MCP client, the key challenge would be where to host the MCP server. Running an MCP server in the same environment as a declarative agent seems difficult.
On the other hand, hosting it remotely does not seem like an ideal solution either. Most existing MCP servers are implemented to continuously wait for incoming requests. As a result, instead of cost-effective pay-per-use options like Azure Functions, we would need services with time-based billing, such as Container Apps or App Service, which may not be cost-effective.

According to the press release about MCP support in Copilot Studio, it mentions the existence of an MCP server marketplace. If Microsoft is hosting MCP servers, being able to use them like Graph API would be very convenient (Sorry, my Copilot Studio environment has not yet been updated to 2025 Wave 2, so I don’t have details yet).

[andrewconnell]

At Build 2025, it was announced MCP support for DA's is coming soon as a private preview.

[ninjarish]

Any update on this? Does DA support MCP server and is there a preview that one can sign up for?