Building an Autonomous Agent in Copilot Studio

[@garypotter4273]

Great proof of concept!!! Agents are really going to change things.

[@TechniX4you]

Thank you so much for that introduction, it helped a lot!

[@MalteKappertz-pn1dd]

That video is just great. You're one of the best teachers-of course, right alongside Shane and Reza! 😊 Could you perhaps make another video showing a trigger that automatically greets all users in the morning?

[@DamoBird365]

@@MalteKappertz-pn1dd what type of use case are you thinking of. I definitely want to showcase an agent in my normal style of video, recurrence trigger is an option for Power Automate and therefore autonomous agents.

[@MalteKappertz-pn1dd]

@@DamoBird365 In my scenario, I would like every user to automatically receive a message from the bot in the morning, asking them directly (either through a question or an Adaptive Card) whether they are working from home or in the office today. Additionally, they should be able to input their working hours, which would then be written into a SharePoint list. Thanks to your amazing tutorials, I can already build a lot of things, but I haven’t managed to create the morning message yet. Maybe it’s not even possible.

[@DamoBird365]

I like the idea. Did you know that you might be able to achieve similar through a scheduled flow and adaptive cards? The reason I suggest this is that your current use case is mainly an automation and repetitive, it's pre determined, so an agent doesn't need to reason over anything. Have you seen this video for daily standups? kzbin.info/www/bejne/sHuwiahunJygf5I I am just as excited about Autonomous Agents as everyone else but keen to understand when it's best to use what. Keep asking me questions though - as I love the open discussion.

[@MalteKappertz-pn1dd]

@@DamoBird365 I find that challenging as well-the question of which solution fits which problem. 😊 There are just so many possible solutions out there! It would be absolutely perfect to achieve this with a Copilot Agent. I'll just wait with the bell activated for your next videos. 😉 and of course, i saw your video

[@davidphilip7859]

Thanks for the solid content (per usual). I learnt a lot. I can't wait to see you demo an autonomous agent soon. Cheers

[@DamoBird365]

@@davidphilip7859 I’ve been playing and have it triggering from my flow now. Very excited to do another video soon.

[@sabbirsakib4893]

Amazing! Thanks for the demo.🙂

[@ChamilMendis]

Thanks for the great video. Is it possible to change the display name to something different when sending emails instead of displaying the person's email name who created the AI Agent ? . I tried but could not find any solution yet.

[@DamoBird365]

I guess this is where we need to start exploring send on behalf of (which you would grant the copilot agent owner access to the mailbox of another user) or you use a flow instead of send email and therefore a service account. Let me know what you come up with.

[@josephlim2064]

At 8.51, I remember that the URL cannot be more than 3-level deep. Is that still valid or outdated?

[@hokemspitter]

Very cool. One problem I seem to be having (perhaps it's the agent needs some tweaking) is that any email sent to me will hit the trigger. Obviously, I wouldn't want every email that I get to trigger the agent(s), so there must be some setting to filter on perhaps the subject having a value or substring?

[@DamoBird365]

I used a subject filter in the demo? I think. Otherwise, use a subject filter 🤭

[@hokemspitter]

@@DamoBird365 Thanks. I just tried the following in the automation settings which works. -----> @contains(triggerBody()?['Subject'], 'Some Unique Substring') . BTW, that little icon is called a beaker.

[@artdlov]

Thanks for a video! Not sure if correct but would there be a risk of triggering infinite loop after sending email?

[@DamoBird365]

As it was back to myself yes, albeit you could set a trigger condition? I suspect we will learn more about how to manage and govern and escalate to a human in the coming days and weeks. I will hopefully share more details in the future.

[@Rhcpbedders]

Hey Damo, have you had any issues with an action failing to be invoked after the first time when using the generative orchestration? I always have to restart the conversation to get it to work again only works the first time then it says it sorry it can’t help

[@Rhcpbedders]

Update - problem seems to happen when you turn off general knowledge which is annoying because I want to only use provided knowledge.

[@DamoBird365]

@Rhcpbedders toggle the orchestration toggle off and on and try again. Or the classic/generative from settings, which is the same setting. An equivalent of off and on. Let me know if that works.

[@Rhcpbedders]

@@DamoBird365 I did that a few times, no joy. It definitely seems to be a problem when general knowledge is unchecked. I tried on a fresh agent as well. Would be interested if you have the same problem.

[@DamoBird365]

Is it all actions or a specific one? I’m obviously curious but I don’t know the answer. The forum would be another place to check. Generative Actions is still preview learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot-studio/advanced-generative-actions so inevitably there will be bugs.

[@Rhcpbedders]

@@DamoBird365 in this case it was Get Items not tested others yet. Forum has so many unanswered questions including someone who appeared to have the same issue. Get better support with random community members on YT! 😆

[@unaischr]

Can able to connect agent content microsoft list available in ms team

[@DamoBird365]

You could use an action for direct retrieval as I demo for the help desk.

[@nigelprice9474]

How much does Co-Pilot studio cost to be able to do this ?

[@DamoBird365]

Hello 👋 @@nigelprice9474 starting 1st Dec there is a PAYG learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/admin/pay-as-you-go-overview 1cents per message, normally $200 per 25k messages. Each message response from the agent is either 1 message non gen ai or 2 messages gen ai. As a SAAS you don’t pay for the LLM GPT. Autonomous is in preview, so it’s possible the pricing for this is to be confirmed, but generative answers and actions for retrieval and task fit into the 2 messages per response. www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot/microsoft-copilot-studio#footnote2

[@TechTalkShowonM365-k3y]

Thanks for the video however if person dont know power automate how agents will help people to configure 😢 also in terms of citizen developer its difficult to understand sorry need to improve on actions part as well and if a person designated a on behalf of user and the designated person doesn't have permission how prompt will understand. Thanks

[@DamoBird365]

There’s now official documentation that covers your worry about permissions/authentication. It’s on the trigger window in Copilot Studio.

[@fcnc3024]

Rock Star content as always. it's really genuine seeing things done live, especially when hiccups happen. Feels like we're a part of the show. I do see actions in my current Copilot Studio. I a trying to think of use cases that would allow me to create autonomous to help or drive efficiency. Could you suggest autonomous agent use cases?

[@DamoBird365]

Cheers. The shift here is from chat to automation based on a trigger. So I would consider something like a customer service agent, dealing with complaints but incoming via various channels. They could be email, via a form, via a record being created, when this happens, the customer service agent looks at the request, looks at its instructions and knowledge in the form of procedure documents etc and you add actions so that is can ‘do stuff’ with its decision. Like award a refund or state their request is not applicable to policy or can I get further information as I can’t find your order. All of these permutations are covered by the orchestration of knowledge and actions, and your instructions as a system prompt. Hope that helps and let me know if you build anything cool.

[@alexsbuck5531]

Your videos are always amazing and incredibly informative! I’d love to learn Power Automate from you. Do you offer any courses? Thank you!

[@DamoBird365]

Thanks Alex, I don’t but maybe I should. If you keep an eye on my community tab, I am considering setting up a group to discuss agents. But equally I am contemplating a Power Automate class. Would you be a beginner, intermediate or advanced?

[@alexsbuck5531]

Thank you for your response, Damo. It’s hard for me to give an exact assessment, but I’d consider myself at an intermediate level, as I’ve already built Power Automate solutions with the help of ChatGPT. I’ll be keeping an eye on your community tab for updates. If you decide to offer classes, please let me know or share the details on your community tab.

[@adaml99a]

Has anyone actually gotten the "Recurring Copilot Trigger" working yet? I'm trying to run a Custom Connector which calls out to the Graph API. I've added the Graph API response to the "sends a prompt to the specified copilot for processing", and all appears to run correctly in Power Automate but in Copilot Studio there is nothing.

[@DamoBird365]

@@adaml99a have you published your agent? That’s a prerequisite. Then, the other consideration is to ensure you’ve setup authentication. Because your agent might trigger but it can’t authenticate as a user, it must be the agent owner.

[@adaml99a]

@ Thanks. Yep, published, but will double check the authentication. 👍

[@paolovr1970]

Amazing

[@garypotter4273]

Great proof of concept!!! Agents are really going to change things.

[@DamoBird365]

@@garypotter4273 certainly exciting times. Have you got any use case ideas?