Copilot Agents

Build tailored AI assistants within Microsoft 365 Copilot with no coding or developer tools required. Copilot Agents teaches your team to create, configure and share purpose-built agents that answer questions, support workflows and surface relevant information from your organisational data.

What Agents Are and When to Build One

What agents are, how they differ from a normal Copilot conversation and when building one makes sense for your team or department. Not everything needs an agent. We help your team understand where agents add genuine value versus where a good prompt does the job.

Navigating the Agent Builder Interface

A walkthrough of the building experience, including the two ways to create an agent and how the test pane lets you check responses as you go. Your team will feel comfortable in the interface before they start building.

Creating an Agent with Natural Language

Building an agent by describing what you want in plain language and letting the builder generate the name, description and instructions for you. This is the fastest way to get started and your team will have a working agent within minutes.

Configuring an Agent Manually

Taking direct control over how your agent is set up, including its name, description, instructions, knowledge and starter prompts. For teams who want precision over how their agent behaves.

Writing Effective Agent Instructions

How to write clear instructions that shape how your agent behaves, what tone it uses, how it responds to questions it cannot answer and how to refine instructions through testing. This is the skill that separates a useful agent from a frustrating one.

Connecting Your Agent to the Right Information

Adding the content your agent needs to give accurate, relevant answers, including SharePoint content, websites, Teams conversations and uploaded documents. Your agent is only as good as the information behind it.

Agent Capabilities

When and how to enable features like data analysis and image generation, and understanding when they add value versus when to keep things simple. Not every agent needs every feature.

Testing and Improving Your Agent

Using the built-in test pane to check how your agent responds, spotting where it falls short and adjusting instructions or knowledge sources to improve results. Your team will learn the test-and-refine cycle that produces reliable agents.

Sharing Your Agent

Publishing your agent and choosing who can access it, whether that is specific people, a team or the whole organisation. Your team will understand the sharing options and governance considerations.

Practical Use Cases

Building real agents for common scenarios such as team onboarding, policy Q&A, project knowledge bases and departmental FAQ assistants, tailored to your organisation's actual needs. Your team leaves with agents they can deploy, not theoretical exercises.

Before the Session

We identify real use cases within your organisation that would benefit from agents. Your team builds something they will actually deploy, not a throwaway exercise. We work with you to prepare the knowledge sources (SharePoint sites, documents, websites) that agents will connect to.

Session Format

Hands-on building from the start. Your team creates working agents during the session, tests them with real questions and refines them until they work reliably. This is a building workshop, not a lecture.

Typical Structure (Half Day)

What agents are and when to use them (20 mins)
Agent builder walkthrough and first agent build (40 mins)
Break
Writing effective instructions and connecting knowledge (45 mins)
Testing, refining and sharing (35 mins)

Prerequisites

Attendees need a premium Microsoft 365 Copilot licence. We recommend completing Copilot in Practice first so your team has a solid foundation of prompting skills. Agent instructions are essentially structured prompts, so that experience helps.

Delivery Options

Virtual sessions: Work well with screen sharing, everyone builds in their own environment
In-person workshops: Better for collaborative building and troubleshooting

After the Session

Your team has working agents they can share with colleagues immediately. We provide documentation on maintaining and improving agents over time, plus follow-up support for questions that come up once agents are in use.

Ongoing Support

Agents need updates as your content changes and new use cases emerge. We can provide ongoing guidance through our AI Partnership arrangements, or your team can manage independently with the skills learned in this course.

This Course Is For

Staff using the premium (licensed) version of Copilot who want to build AI assistants
Teams who have completed Copilot in Practice and want the next step
Department leads who want to create agents for their teams
Anyone who sees repetitive questions or knowledge gaps that an agent could solve

Common Use Cases

New starter onboarding: an agent that answers common questions about processes and systems
Policy Q&A: an agent that knows your HR policies, IT guidelines or compliance requirements
Project knowledge base: an agent that surfaces relevant documents, decisions and updates for a specific project
Departmental FAQ: an agent that handles the questions your team gets asked repeatedly
Client briefing: an agent that pulls together relevant information before meetings

What Your Team Will Walk Away With

Working agents they can share with colleagues immediately
The skills to build new agents independently as needs arise
Understanding of how to write instructions that produce reliable, on-brand responses
Knowledge of how to connect agents to the right organisational data

Why Agents Matter

Agents are where Copilot moves from being an individual productivity tool to something that serves your whole team or department. Instead of everyone asking the same questions and getting inconsistent answers, you build an agent once that gives accurate, consistent responses to anyone who needs them. That scales your knowledge without scaling your headcount.