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Lab MCS0 - Setup

Table of Contents

In this lab, you'll setup and configure your Microsoft 365 tenant to start creating agents with Microsoft Copilot Studio. Copilot Studio is part of the Microsoft Power Platform offering and requires dedicated licensing, accordingly to the Microsoft Power Platform Licensing Guide.

Set up your development environment for Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Copilot Studio

This lab currently assumes you already have a developer tenant to setup. You can reference off to the page here that explains the current way you can get a tenant. It also assumes that you have a user account that is a Power Platform administrator, in order to being able to create a new Power Platform environment.

In this lab you will learn:

  • How to create a dedicated environment for your labs
  • How to setup and configure Microsoft Copilot Studio

Disclaimer

These samples and labs are intended for instructive and demonstration purposes and are not intended for use in production. Do not put them into production without upgrading them to production quality.

Exercise 1 : Creating a Power Platform environment

With the Power Platform, you can create different environments and easily switch between them accordingly to your needs. An environment stores apps, flows, data, agents, etc. and each environment is completely isolated from any other environment. You can learn more about Power Platform environments reading this overview document.

Power Platform administrative rights

In order to proceed with the steps illustrated in this Exercise, you need a user account that is a Power Platform administrator in your target tenant. If you don't have such an account, ask to a Power Plaform administrator to create the environment for you and to give you access to that new environment.

Step 1: Creating a new Power Platform environment

To play with these labs you are going to create a new dedicated environment, so that at the end of this training path you can simply delete it and get rid of all the related resources and settings. Here follow the instructions to create an environment, step by step:

  • Open a browser and, using the work account of your target Microsoft 365 tenant, go to https://admin.powerplatform.com.

  • Go to the 1️⃣ Manage section, select the 2️⃣ Environments panel and select 3️⃣ + New to open the 4️⃣ New environment pane

The user interface of the Microsoft Power Platform Admin center to create a new environment.

  • Specify a unique name for the environment. For example, you could use "Copilot Dev Camp".

  • Leave the default value (off) for the Make this a Managed Environment setting.

  • Choose a Region accordingly to your needs.

  • Leave the default value (off) for the Get new features early setting.

  • Choose Developer for the Type setting.

Understanding the environment types

If you like, you can also choose Trial for the Type setting, so that you will have a fully functional environment that will last for 30 days and then will get automatically deleted. Here you can find additional information about Trial environments. Moreover, here you can find a detailed explanation of all the available environment types.

  • Leave all the other settings as they are.

  • Select Next.

  • Choose a Language and a Currency, or leave the default ones.

The user interface of the Microsoft Power Platform Admin center to configure language, currency and final settings for a new environment.

  • Leave all the other settings as they are and select Save to create the actual environment.

The new environment will take a while to be ready, as you can notice from the list of environments in the Power Platform Admin center.

The list of environment with the new one in "Preparing" status and a green box informing you that the new environment is preparing.

Once the new environment will be ready, the list of environments will show the information accordingly.

The list of environment with the new one in "Ready" status and a green box informing you that the new environment was successfully created.


Exercise 2 : Microsoft Copilot Studio

In order to use Microsoft Copilot Studio you need to have a valid license and you need to activate it in the target tenant where you want to use it.

Microsoft Copilot Studio licensing

There are multiple options to have a licensed access to Microsoft Copilot Studio. We suggest you to refer to the Power Platform Licensing Guide.

Step 1: Activating Microsoft Copilot Studio

To activate Copilot Studio follow these steps:

  • Open a browser and, using the work account of your target Microsoft 365 tenant, go to https://copilotstudio.microsoft.com.

  • If this is the very first time you run Copilot Studio and if you don't have a license, you will see the following screen and you will be able to start a trial period.

The web page to start a trial period for Copilot Studio. You need to provide your country, to choose whether you want to receive messages from Microsoft about offerts, and to select to start the free trial period.

Copilot Studio free trial period

You can get additional information about the free trial license for Copilot Studio by reading this document.

  • Select the 1️⃣ Environment section in the upper right corner of the screen and choose the environment 2️⃣ that you created in Exercise 1.

The user interface of Copilot Studio when selecting a target environment. There are all the available environments in the upper right corner of the screen and you can choose the one to target.

  • Copilot Studio will reload and you will then be ready to start using it in the new environment.


CONGRATULATIONS!

Now you are all set to create your first agent with Copilot Studio.

Start here with Lab MCS1, to create your first agent with Copilot Studio.