The Future of AI: Building Next-Generation Chatbot Agents with Microsoft Copilot Studio

Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) is rapidly evolving and transforming how we work, collaborate, and innovate. Microsoft's Copilot - built on advanced large language models (LLMs) - has been making waves worldwide. Now, Microsoft Copilot Studio opens the door for developers and organizations to build, customize, and deploy next-generation AI agents tailored to their unique needs.

GEN AI is the future, and the future is here!!

According to Microsoft - An agent is a powerful AI companion that can handle a range of interactions and tasks, from resolving issues requiring complex conversations to autonomously determining the best action to take based on its instructions and context.

In this blog post, we'll explore:

1. What Copilot Studio is and why it's a game-changer

2. How to create a Copilot agent that helps employees retrieve policies and procedures within M365

3. Using multiple SharePoint sites as knowledge sources

4. Gen Ai Orchestration

What is Microsoft Copilot Studio?

Copilot Studio is a graphical, low-code tool for both creating an agent - including building automation with Power Automate - and extending a Microsoft 365 Copilot with your own enterprise data and scenarios.
One of the standout features of Copilot Studio is its ability to connect to other data sources using either prebuilt or custom plugins. This flexibility enables users to create and orchestrate sophisticated logic, ensuring that their agent experiences are both powerful and intuitive.
The platform's low-code experience puts the power of AI at the user's fingertips, making it accessible even to people without extensive technical backgrounds.
Ref: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot-studio/fundamentals-what-is-copilot-studio

How to create a Copilot agent

1. On your web browser, open the Copilot Studio interface within your organization's Microsoft 365 environment.

1. Click on the"New agent" card,

You could give your Agent a name,
choose a base language
change icon,
a good description,
a good set of instructions

Here are my inputs

Name: SharePoint policies and procedures Agent

Description: You are a Policy & Procedure Retrieval Copilot designed to assist employees and managers in finding and understanding policies and procedures. Your responses should be concise and helpful, delivering clear summaries and relevant document links from the SharePoint libraries housing these materials.
Your purpose is to quickly locate and present current, official policies and procedures so that employees and managers can stay compliant, make informed decisions, and follow best practices. Whenever possible, provide brief summaries of key content and highlight critical updates or requirements.
Keep your answers focused and context-aware, and always maintain any confidentiality or compliance guidelines required by the organization. Above all, your mission is to save time and ensure accuracy in retrieving and presenting policies and procedures across multiple SharePoint sites.

Instructions: 
1. Scope of Work
 • Search for and retrieve the most up-to-date policies and procedures documents from the document libraries in the different SharePoint sites.
 • Provide summaries or brief overviews of the key points from each relevant document.

2. Handling of Responses
 • Present information in a concise and clear manner, highlighting critical requirements (e.g., effective dates, compliance steps).
 • Offer direct links or document references so users can easily verify full details in the source.

3. Accuracy and Relevance
 • Prioritize the most recent or officially approved documents.
 • If there are multiple versions, share the link to the latest version.
 • Do not share sensitive or restricted content unless explicitly permitted.

4. Compliance & Confidentiality
 • Always adhere to ABC company data-handling guidelines.
 • Warn users if any content is considered confidential or restricted.

5. Tone & Style
 • Maintain a professional yet approachable tone.
 • If users need deeper explanations or clarifications, promptly request more context.

6. Error Handling
 • If a requested policy cannot be found or is unavailable, provide a polite, clear message and suggest alternative resources or next steps.
 • Encourage users to consult official documentation when in doubt, or escalate to IT

7. Updating Knowledge
 • Periodically confirm that the agent's knowledge sources are still valid.
 • Notify IT Admins if the agent encounters an outdated or missing document.

Using multiple SharePoint sites as knowledge sources

One of the standout features of Copilot Studio is its ability to connect to external data, including SharePoint. This ensures your agent can answer domain-specific questions and retrieve the latest information.

1. Click on “Add knowledge”

1. Select “SharePoint”

2. Input the SharePoint site(s) URL, where the respective “policies and procedures” are located, then

You could edit the “Name” and “Description” fields

1. Click on “Add”, then click Create

After clicking on “Create”, You should see a progress message that displays “Setting up your agent”

On success, the message “Your agent” is ready will be displayed

Here, you can do further configurations.

Generative Ai Orchestration (preview)

1. Enable the “Orchestration” field, as it is disabled by default

You could add “Actions” to empower the AI to complete specific tasks for improved engagement or add “Triggers”, for Power Automate workflow integrations, like kicking off an approval or notification workflow for example.

For now, I’ll click “Publish”, and then Test

Here are my test results:

Once I click on the link, it redirects me to the document in the SharePoint library.

For this test, I am using a dummy document, that was renamed “Remote Work & Flexible Scheduling Policy”, hence the message.

Copilot Gen Ai is so powerful that, it can index the documents and also search the document’s content, to know if you’re getting the right document or not.

Such a powerful tool!! 😳

Conclusion

Building next-generation AI agents with Microsoft Copilot Studio is both exciting and transformative. By integrating relevant SharePoint sites and applying sound prompt engineering strategies, you can create a custom Copilot agent that elevates collaboration, productivity, and data-driven decision-making across your organization.
Ready to get started? Head over to your Microsoft 365 environment, fire up Copilot Studio, and start creating your very own next-generation AI agent. By tapping into multiple SharePoint sites and refining your prompt engineering, your organization’s new Copilot will deliver the future of AI right at your fingertips. 🔥

Note:

You may notice that the SharePoint documents used in this demo are not manually tagged with metadata. Copilot AI is powerful enough to index and interpret the content on the fly without strict tagging requirements. However, as your SharePoint libraries grow to hundreds, thousands, or even millions of documents, implementing a consistent metadata strategy can significantly improve discoverability and retrieval performance. Effective tagging ensures that both AI-driven and built-in SharePoint searches return the most relevant results more efficiently as your content scales.