Creating Custom Agents with Microsoft 365 Co-Pilot: A Step-by-Step Guide

I'm going to take you through the agent Builder  experience which is part of your Microsoft 365   co-pilot license and it allows any user no skill  required to start building their own agents let's   just level set on a couple of the concepts here so  that you know what we're doing and why we're doing  

it this is co-pilot Microsoft 365 co-pilot I'm in  the work experience here and this is my starting   point for all of my AI experiences but what if  I want to tweak it a bit customize it a bit have   it work for just a specific business process flow  or to automate a specific thing that I do at work  

that's where Agents come in and what I'm showing  you now is sort of the first early release of this   there's plenty more coming please subscribe to the  channel if you're interested in this kind of thing   I'm all over it and there's going to be plenty  more content coming and I really believe this is  

a most important part of what we need to learn  and understand going into the future of AI at   work enough of the let's take a look I'm starting  here in my biz chat business chat experience which   you can access through the microsoft365.com app  which I'm doing here or from inside teams you'll  

see you've got a couple of options over the  side here one is get co-pilot agents and one   is create an agent these two things will lead you  to the same place but one of them is for pre-built   things and one of them is build it yourself if  I click through onto the get co-pilot agents  

option you will land in this page here where you  have a bunch of of pre-built agents ready to go   you'll see straight away that there's a mixture  here of things that are connected to Microsoft   third party and just general kind of systems if  there's something in here in particular you'd  

like me to explore further I'll see if I can get  a license obviously you need licenses for all of   these things that you're connecting to but if some  of these are your line of Business Systems then   I would encourage you to explore them for now  I'm just going to pick something here there's  

one called ideas which is something that is just  a fairly generic type of agent that I can work   with to help me with brainstorming it doesn't  connect to any other sort of licensed service   so we can just choose to add that you'll go  through a similar experience if you choose one  

of the licensed ones and now that takes me back to  my main B chat experience and you'll see it's over   the side here now at the top there is already  One agent that is always pre pre pinned if you   like the visual Creator which is the one you can  use to generate images I put career coach in there  

earlier there's idea coach if I choose to pin  this it pops up into that other area and I can   choose to unpin it and bring it down there if  I decide there's one there that I don't want   anymore I can simply uninstall it so this is very  easy come easy go type of stuff about the things  

that I find useful to have uh working with me  in my co-pilot so here's my idea coach you'll   see that we've got a bunch of suggested prompts  that I can start with so let me just click this   and off we go now this one is just designed  to give you a very quick start on those types  

of conversations where you can get real value  out of this though is creating your own agent   and you determine what it is and what it does so  let's take a look at that example here I'm going   to click on create an agent and this is going  to bring up an experience here where we start  

in natural language to describe something if you  are familiar with co-pilot Studio you'll see some   things here not the least of which is the copilot  Studio at The Branding at the top here but you'll   see some things here that are very familiar this  is powered by co-pilot Studio it's a lightweight  

version of that so co-pilot studio is the place  where you can build out agents to go externally   you've got full sophisticated control over adding  all sorts of knowledge and topics we'll come back   to that a little bit later for now though this  agent Builder is a light version of that this  

piece that I'm showing you right now is included  in your Microsoft 365 co-pilot license and it's   designed for everyday business users to create  everyday business agents now don't freak out   that this is going to get out of control we  will come back to the security and governance  

at the end but I really want to show you what  we can do with it first so the first thing is   what would you like to make what I'm going to do  first is show you the idea of just the basics of   what it can connect to so let's say we want to  say create an agent to answer questions about h  

policy now this is just the typical starting  point that everyone wants incidentally Microsoft   is actually releasing an employee uh agent so  you won't need to build this particular one   but just sort of to show you a starting point and  then to show you something different that you can  

do it so it tells you that it's suggested a name  which seems perfectly reasonable now immediately   as soon as I've done that it's given it a name  so here's my name at the top here and it's also   given me some of these suggested prompts the  next thing let's refine the instructions what  

should be emphasized or avoided so we'll just say  please maintain a professional tone professional   domainer there you go you got to love Auto  got to love autofill I've spelled that wrong   but I think it will understand it anyway uh  yes it has okay uh so it should be should be

friendly what we'll get to in a moment once  we've answered the questions I do not have   any further refinement is that it's going to say  okay that's finished don't just stop there though   because all that's done so far is just give  you these suggested prompts so the agent at  

this point is almost just like the sort of just a  shell of suggested prompts which is a little bit   like what that ideas one or the career coach  one is doing which is fine helps you sort of   start the conversation but we can do better than  that I want you to click on this little configure  

Tab and again you'll see some co-pilot Studio  things here so this has brought in a description   we can change the icon we'll come back to that  one in a minute it's got instructions about what   it's doing you can see it's picked up those  things from the conversation we just had but  

let's come down here and now we have knowledge so  you can choose to say I want to add a SharePoint   URL or just come in here and browse so if I've  got a nicely curated SharePoint library of Human   Resources documents which is really what you need  here I'm just going to for this example Le choose  

the whole Library I'm going to come back and show  you something more specific in a moment we can put   that one in there and then I can also choose  do I want this to be grounded on web content   or not I'm just going to choose not and then  we'll let it go while I keep talking here your  

Microsoft 365 co-pilot work experience by default  unless your admin has switched this capability   off which they can do is grounded in all of your  documents and also grounded in the web so what   I'm saying now is I'm basically creating an agent  here which is scoped right down I'm saying I want  

an agent that is just looking at that particular  folder in SharePoint and nothing else not going to   look at my emails or my uh my teams chats it's not  going to be grounded in the web because I switched   that off so this is one example of something you  might do with it just to create a really refined  

scope agent please look at this you can imagine if  you had a folder of documents about a particular   project that a team was working on you could  create an agent that just chats about what's   going on with that project so rather than that  experience sometimes in the Microsoft 365 co-pilot  

where you ask questions and you have to make it  find the right thing this gives you that really   grounded landed starting point of a very specific  thing so we're going to just leave that one aside   because I want to show you something that is more  specific and more tailored and I think a little  

bit more valuable let's go through this experience  again and create an agent and this time what I'm   going to do is something that is around an offsite  that we've got coming up we've got an end of year   trip that's a conference and a bit of a reward  for our staff and we are going to go to Slovenia  

just my favorite place to talk about right now  so it gives us a name now let's say I don't like   the name I want to call it Slovenia uh fabulous  trip guide and then it will change the name did   you notice up there it changed the name now it  is giving us these suggested prompts again but  

what I'm going to do at this point is give it  a little bit more information so I am actually   going to connect this to two specific documents  I'm going to connect it to a policy document which   is all about travel and expense policy and then  I'm going to connect it to another document in a  

different SharePoint folder that is about things  to do so rather than just going here's one folder   like we saw in the previous example this one is  going to be very specific I want you to use these   different things so I'm going to come in here to  start with and put some more instructions in which  

gives it a bit more information about this is fun  please use emojis you'll see I'm also giving it   instructions here that if someone asks about  expenses and policies please get it from that   document I haven't told it which documents yet so  that's so good so far so good again we're going  

to come into this configure Tab and you can see  what's happened I could edit these instructions   by the way if anything wasn't quite um fun so I  don't really want it to emphasis emphasize that   it's a fun conference I'm going to say remember  this is a fun conference right I don't want it to  

kind of shove that front and center all the time  so now what I'm going to do is browse and instead   of choosing a whole folder like I did before I'm  going to come in and say for this particular agent   which is just a sort of a moment in time thing  about what we're doing I am going to bring in my  

most recent version of my travel and expenses  policy and you can see now it's instead of   kind of finding that whole folder is just put  that one thing in there and then I can come   back in and browse and add something else so I've  got a conference site here and I've got a PDF with  

information about things to do actions coming soon  this is something that you will be able to include   in here to say that you wanted to actually do  something for you I'll come back when that's   available but for now you have to go to the full  co-pilot Studio experience right now at the time  

of recording you can't actually link up and build  it there and bring it back so just watch this   space there'll be something more coming soon for  now the capability is about bringing the knowledge   and the instructions and the tone and behavior  into the experience I can choose to say do I  

want it to have an image generator in there do  we want it to allow people to generate images as   well sure why not let's do that and don't forget I  might want to say do I want it to have web content   so in this case I'm going to say yes CU we're  encouraging people to explore things to do we've  

got a document there but I I also want it to be  great grounded in the web so that people can find   other answers the other thing here is that these  starup prompts are all editable so let's say we   have um what Transportation options are available  and I don't want that one in there because it's  

actually not going to be relevant uh We've also  not got the schedule prepared yet and we are going   to um maybe change the move that one as well and  then you could add additional ones in there so   brought this right down so that it's just got  these three in there but you can edit and change  

that as you like and you can also bring an icon in  here this needs to be PNG format and less than one   Meg so we'll just go in here and click change icon  incidentally if you do want to create icons this   is something you can actually do is to use the  visual Creator agent within your Microsoft 365  

co-pilot and that will'll use designer behind the  scenes to come up with an icon for you I think I   think this one captures it quite well let's grab  that one and download that to something quite cute   there and save that one and now let's go ahead  and click create before I do that you can actually  

test it in here as well so I could say what is  the uh travel allowance per day and let's just   see that it's going to actually check the right  thing there it should refer to the travel Document   so you can work on this and then refine those  instructions and refine those prompts if you like

I did give it instructions saying to make sure  that if the answer wasn't there that it would   refer to the manager what is the allowance for a  dinner and so there you go this time it's actually   giving us the answer now the references will be  a little bit clearer when we actually create this  

thing so let's go ahead and do that this takes  a minute or so and then what we're going to do   is we're going to find that that experience is  inside the Microsoft 365 co-pilot in the same   way as we saw earlier when we were choosing from  the pre-built agents that you can select from at  

this stage this is just my little personal agent  but I'll show you in a moment that we can choose   to share it with other people in the organization  as well all right there we go so this link only   works for you I can change the share settings  here so if I come in and have a look at that  

then I can choose to say this link works for  anyone in the organization specifically via a   security group so let's say this is the whole  organization doing this and let's save that so   now I could copy that link and make it available  to other people as well let's close that and close  

it down now here it is on the side let's pin  that to the top and click through and there   is my agent with its little icon and all of the  details so let's click on this prompt and see now   I've actually put in here a document that has  a PDF document that has lots of things to do  

that's the one of the things that we did but  I've also allowed it to be grounded in the web   so you'll see what it's doing here is responding  both ways from the internal walks internal work   sources that's hard to say 10 times fast we've  got that in there and you can see there's the  

reference to that document but it's also bringing  information from the public website so you're   getting a bit of a mix of both can I book premium  economy and that's something that should be in the   travel and expenses policy so you'll see straight  away it even knows I'm looking for the travel and  

expenses policy because that's what I put in the  instructions that it knows that that's what I'm   supposed to find and so there we go it's giving  us that information it's pointing to that policy   uh it's giving me all of the details I need to go  in there now I've only given it I've given it the  

web I've given it that PDF document and I've  given it this travel and expens ensus policy   this is not connected to the rest of my data it's  not connected to the rest of the Microsoft graph   the same way the main copilot is if I come in  and say what is our grievance policy which is  

in the HR documents but certainly not in the  travel and expenses policy and actually not   part of the scope of this agent it's actually  going to give a generic answer and say please   check with the HR department and not be able to  give the answer whereas let's copy this just to  

show you the difference and go back to my main  co-pilot experience and ask what's our grievance   policy it should be able to find that because this  co-pilot my Microsoft 365 co-pilot is grounded in   all the business data let's say now that we've got  some more information about the conference we've  

sorted out the accommodation arrangements and I  need to go back and edit this or for any other   changes that you wanted to make just to improve  the performance the way that you can get back to   this is go back into the create an agent and then  from the top here where it says my co-pilot agent  

do a drop-down and view all agents if it's not the  last one that you accessed and you can see I've   got a bunch of them in there there's My Slovenia  fabulous trip guide and I can click on edit come   in here back to knowledge and let's browse and  now in the conference documents I also want to add  

that extra document because I defined the scope of  this one as just those two documents I put in at   the start and let's update that because I because  I find this as the just those two documents are   put in the start adding something else into that  SharePoint folder didn't automatically go in there  

whereas that first one I created that pointed to  a whole SharePoint folder it would still pick up   updates to the SharePoint folder so choose the  level of control that you want over those things   confirmation message go to agent and now it  will also be able to answer questions about  

accommodation so what we've done here is create  an agent that is very narrow in scope connected to   specific knowledge and soon we will be able to  use this to create actions Microsoft is thinking   of this as something where every business user  should be able to do this there are policies  

admin policies where you can switch off this  functionality please don't start with that please   let people have a go with this this is the future  of how we're going to work this is all secured and   controlled within your tenant it's not running  away with things it's not leaking data anywhere  

else in the system the other option you've got for  building agents these ones are at the moment quite   basic but once actions come in here there'll be a  little bit more sophistication and capability for   things that you can do but the other thing that's  been announced is this is the main co-pilot studio  

now this one if you want to do it this way you  do need a separate license for co-pilot Studio   but here you've got a lot more functionality  you can start to build out specific topics the   access to actions is completely there there's  a lot more knowledge sources you can work with  

than just the the SharePoint and toggling on that  website knowledge source and you can build one of   these agents with all of that richness involved  and then bring it back inside that Microsoft 365   co-pilot in that same user experience way that  we just saw if you'd like to learn more about  

how to build in co-pilot Studio check out my  tutorial here let me know what else you'd like   to learn about I'm all over this stuff and can't  wait to share more with you thanks for watching