By Jerry Suiker, Power Platform Consultant, Dynamics4Business, July 17, 2024
Copilot, we can't ignore it anymore. Anyone using Microsoft products is likely to see the name come up more and more often. Copilot is the AI solution Microsoft offers in conjunction with all of its products. In this blog, we dive deeper into one of the capabilities of Microsoft Copilot Studio, the Copilot environment for developers.
What is Copilot Studio?
Copilot, we can't ignore it anymore. Anyone using Microsoft products is likely to see the name come up more and more often. Copilot is the AI solution Microsoft offers in conjunction with all of its products. In this blog, we dive deeper into one of the capabilities of Microsoft Copilot Studio, the Copilot environment for developers.
The well-known Power Virtual Agents will also become part of Copilot. Smart use of AI allows this bot to learn from itself, and starting up the bot is now many times faster than in the past. You don't have to provide all the information fully crystallized; Copilot can start working with it right away.
Easy to manage
Because Copilot is part of the Microsoft Power Platform, the solution is completely cloud-based. This means that, with a working Internet connection, the Copilot bot can be accessed by developers and administrators anywhere. Management has the simple interface that matches the Power Platform. The low-code components are easy to follow even for someone with a less technical background. This ensures that your organization can work on improving Copilot solutions itself.
Generative AI
By using Generative AI, Copilot can learn from itself. This means that when a Copilot has had a conversation with someone, feedback can be given. For example, because the person asks the same question several times but does not get the expected answer. Or because Copilot answers differently than one would expect. Simple monitoring ensures that you can clearly see afterwards where the average user stops or where the process is cut off more often. With this information, adjustments can then be made to the configuration of Copilot to ensure that questions can be answered better in the future.
Copilots within the Microsoft Stack
Copilots are mainly powerful in collaboration with components from Microsoft. This allows you to use Copilot by default in various places within the Microsoft Platform. Of course, one of the options is to turn on Copilot by default on your own website. But you can also add it to, for example, a Teams environment or within a SharePoint page.
Being able to perform different actions
In addition to being able to answer various questions from users or transfer directly to live staff, Copilot's ability to perform various actions is a powerful addition. For example, Copilot can add information to an Excel file as the user leaves contact information. If you have a CRM system, you can have Copilot insert the data there. The actions Copilot can perform use the 1000+ connectors Microsoft already offers at this time; it can be compared to performing a Flow in Power Automate. Custom connectors can also be used for this, allowing basically any action to be added. Using a similar interface such as Power Automate, these actions can then be added to specific steps within Copilot.
Providing information to Copilot
For Copilot to work properly, you first need to feed it information. Since AI can also learn from itself, it is quite easy to set up a simple Copilot. Thus, it is possible to make Copilot completely proprietary. Well-known data sources you can use to feed Copilots are:
- Websites: Copilot can search a website itself to find out answers. For example, link Copilot to your own organization's website.
- SharePoint: If your organization uses SharePoint a lot internally, Copilot can use it as the basis for many organizational questions.
- Documents: It is also possible to upload documents to Copilot, which then works with the document's information itself.
- Dataverse: A very familiar resource for us as Power Platform users. Copilot integrates seamlessly with Dataverse. Dataverse is used in conjunction with developing Power Apps.
Conclusion
We can conclude that there are endless possibilities with Microsoft Copilot Studio and will see many more in the future than we see today. With the advent of AI solutions, we will learn more and more about how to use these Copilots. Copilot Studio ensures that we are entering a new era of (chat) bots. The learning capability of Copilots will increase exponentially, so users will experience less and less that they are interacting with a computer. Answers will be given faster and more accurately than a person could. By deploying smart actions, many daily tasks can be taken over by Copilots, allowing time to be spent more efficiently by employees.
Interested in the capabilities of Microsoft Copilot Studio or the Power Platform?
We have many standard connectors and can therefore connect any primary system. We also develop custom apps that make it possible to always have all relevant documentation at hand for employees on the shop floor, on the road or during an inspection.
Have you become interested in a Microsoft Power Platform solution or would like to learn more about the capabilities of Microsoft Copilot Studio? Contact us directly at the contact form or call us at +31 (0)85 303 86 60 and we will be happy to help you.