Microsoft Copilot Studio Labs

⏱️ 20 minutes 📊 Level 200 🏷️ Local
📄 Download PDF

Let AI do the work and automate processes more easily than ever with autonomous agents that handle user support inquiries automatically.

🧭 Lab Details

Level Persona Duration Purpose
200 Maker/Developer 20 minutes After completing this lab, participants will be able to create autonomous agents that automatically respond to user emails, provide guidance from knowledge bases, and integrate with ServiceNow for ticket management. You'll learn how to configure triggers, add knowledge sources, and integrate external tools for comprehensive automated support.

📚 Table of Contents

🤔 Why This Matters

IT Support Teams and Makers - Tired of manually responding to repetitive support emails and constantly checking ticket statuses?

Think of a traditional help desk:

  • Without autonomous agents: Support staff manually reads every email, searches knowledge bases, checks ticket systems, and crafts individual responses - consuming hours of valuable time
  • With autonomous agents: AI automatically processes incoming emails, searches your knowledge base, retrieves ticket information, and sends comprehensive responses in seconds

Common challenges solved by this lab:

  • "Our support team spends too much time on routine email inquiries"
  • "Users have to wait hours for simple password reset instructions"
  • "We can't scale our support to handle increasing ticket volumes"
  • "Checking ticket statuses across systems is time-consuming and error-prone"

In just 20 minutes, you'll transform how your organization handles support requests, freeing your team to focus on complex issues that truly need human expertise.

🌐 Introduction

Customer support automation has become essential for organizations looking to scale their operations while maintaining high service quality. Manual email responses and ticket lookups create bottlenecks that frustrate both support staff and end users.

Real-world example: A mid-sized company receives 200+ support emails daily asking about password resets, ticket statuses, and common troubleshooting steps. Without automation, their 3-person support team spends 60% of their time on these routine inquiries, leaving complex issues unaddressed and creating long response times.

After implementing autonomous agents, the same company now handles 80% of routine inquiries automatically, with instant responses that include personalized ticket updates and relevant knowledge base articles. The support team can focus on strategic initiatives and complex problem-solving, while user satisfaction increases due to immediate, accurate responses.

🎓 Core Concepts Overview

Concept Why it matters
Autonomous Agents Enable 24/7 automated responses to user inquiries, reducing manual workload and improving response times while maintaining consistency in support quality
Triggers Events, as simple as "Email received", that trigger autonomous agents to then automatically detect and process the content and context initially provided
Knowledge Connect agents to your existing documentation and knowledge sources, ensuring responses are accurate, up-to-date, and aligned with your organization's information
ServiceNow Integration Provide real-time ticket status updates and incident details directly within email responses, eliminating the need for manual system lookups
Multi-language Support Automatically detect and respond in the user's preferred language, improving global support accessibility and user experience

📄 Documentation and Additional Training Links

✅ Prerequisites

  • Access to Microsoft Copilot Studio with appropriate licensing
  • ServiceNow instance with API access and valid credentials
  • Office 365 environment with Outlook integration enabled
  • Administrative permissions to create and configure autonomous agents
  • A test email account to simulate user interactions

🎯 Summary of Targets

In this lab, you'll build a complete autonomous support agent that transforms how your organization handles routine support inquiries. By the end of the lab, you will:

  • Create and configure an autonomous agent with email triggers for automatic activation
  • Integrate knowledge sources to provide accurate, contextual responses to user questions
  • Connect ServiceNow for real-time ticket status updates and incident details
  • Configure email response tools that reply professionally with proper formatting and citations
  • Test the complete workflow with realistic support scenarios and multi-question emails

🧩 Use Cases Covered

Step Use Case Value added Effort
1 Create and Configure an Autonomous Agent Establishes the foundation for automated email processing with intelligent trigger configuration 10 min
2 Add Knowledge and Tools Connects external knowledge sources and ServiceNow integration for comprehensive automated responses 10 min

🛠️ Instructions by Use Case

🧱 Use Case #1: Create and Configure an Autonomous Agent

Set up the foundational autonomous agent with email triggers that automatically activates when support emails arrive.

Use case Value added Estimated effort
Create and Configure an Autonomous Agent Establishes the foundation for automated email processing with intelligent trigger configuration 10 minutes

Summary of tasks

In this section, you'll learn how to create an autonomous agent, configure email triggers, and set up the basic framework for automated support responses.

Scenario: Your support team receives dozens of emails daily with questions about password resets, ticket statuses, and general inquiries. You need an intelligent system that can automatically detect these emails and begin processing them without human intervention.

Objective

Create an autonomous agent that automatically triggers when new support emails arrive and prepare it for knowledge integration and response capabilities.

Step-by-step instructions

Creating the Agent and Solution Setup

  1. Navigate to the Copilot Studio home page at https://copilotstudio.microsoft.com/

  2. Go to the Solutions menu (located in the left-hand menu under the ellipsis ...)

  3. Select the solution you had created previously for your labs

  4. Select New and choose Agent

  5. Select Skip to configure to bypass the initial setup wizard

  6. Name your agent Autonomous Support Agent

  7. Select Create.

[!TIP] Choose a descriptive name that clearly identifies the agent's purpose for easier management in larger environments.

Configuring Email Triggers

  1. In the Overview tab, scroll down to the triggers section and click Add a new Trigger

  2. Search and select When a new email arrives (V3) (Office 365 Outlook)

  3. Select Next, then Continue

  4. Rename the trigger to When a support email arrives

  5. Select Next,

  6. In the Subject Filter (Optional) field, enter Support to filter emails that contain the word "Support" in the subject line.

  7. Finally Create trigger

[!TIP] This trigger configuration determines which emails activate your agent. You can refine filters later to target specific email addresses or subject patterns.

  1. The trigger is now configured. After you publish your agent, it will automatically activate your agent when new emails arrive

🏅 Congratulations! You've completed Use Case #1!

Test your understanding

Key takeaways:

  • Autonomous Agent Foundation – You've created the core agent structure that will handle all automated support interactions
  • Email Trigger Configuration – The trigger ensures your agent automatically responds to incoming emails without manual intervention
  • Solution Integration – Your agent is properly integrated within your Copilot Studio solution for organized management

Lessons learned & troubleshooting tips:

  • Ensure your trigger settings align with your organization's email flow to avoid processing unintended messages
  • Test trigger activation with a simple email before adding complex logic
  • Keep agent names descriptive and consistent with your naming conventions

Challenge: Apply this to your own use case

  • Consider what other triggers might be useful for your support scenarios (Teams messages, forms submissions, etc.)
  • Think about how you might filter emails to ensure only support-related messages activate the agent
  • Plan the types of email patterns your organization receives that could benefit from automation

🔄 Use Case #2: Add Knowledge and Tools

Transform your basic agent into a comprehensive support system by adding knowledge sources and ServiceNow integration for complete automated responses.

Use case Value added Estimated effort
Add Knowledge and Tools Integration Connects external knowledge sources and ServiceNow integration for comprehensive automated responses 10 minutes

Summary of tasks

In this section, you'll learn how to integrate knowledge sources, configure ServiceNow tools for ticket lookups, and set up email response capabilities for complete automated support workflows.

Scenario: Your agent can now detect incoming emails, but it needs access to your knowledge base and ticketing system to provide meaningful responses. Users frequently ask about password resets and ticket statuses, requiring integration with both documentation and ServiceNow.

Step-by-step instructions

Adding Knowledge Sources

  1. Navigate to the Knowledge tab in your agent and select + Add knowledge

  2. Choose Public website as your knowledge source type

  3. Add this URL: https://support.servicenow.com/

[!TIP] You can add multiple knowledge sources including SharePoint sites, documents, and other websites relevant to your support topics.

Configuring ServiceNow Integration

  1. Go to Tools and click Add tool

  2. Search for ServiceNow List records and select List records

  3. Ensure your connection is selected from the dropdown, or select Create New Connection and enter the details from the Lab Resources.

  4. Select Add and configure

[!TIP] You may need to set the connection again for the buttons to be available.

  1. Rename the tool to Get ServiceNow ticket details

  2. Update the description to: Gets the details of an incident using its incident number

[!TIP] The description helps the AI know when to use this tool and what it does.

  1. Under Additional details, change Credentials to use to Maker-provided credentials

  2. For Record Type, set a Custom value and choose Incident

  3. Select + Add input and choose Query

[!TIP] If you see an error such as Duplicate Item Detected, select Custom Value from the dropdown and then select Dynamically fill with AI again.

  1. Select Customize and use this for Description:

    The output of this variable is the concatenation of numberCONTAINS and the incident number. E.g., 'numberCONTAINSINC0007001'. Only the incident number should be prompted and obtained from the user (e.g., INC0007001)

[!TIP] These instructions will be used by AI to understand how determine how to pass that information to the ServiceNow connector. In this case, how to use the very specific OData formatting of ServiceNow queries.

  1. Select + Add input and choose Limit

  2. Select Custom Value and set 1

  3. Select Save

Setting Up Email Response Capabilities

  1. Return to the Tools tab, and select + Add a tool

  2. Search for Send an email (V2) from Office 365 Outlook and select it

  3. Select Add and configure

  4. Update its name to Reply to email

  5. Update the description to: Use this operation to reply to the email received

  6. Under Additional details, set Credentials to use to Maker-provided credentials

  7. For the To input, keep Dynamically fill with AI, click on Customize to set its Description to:

    Use the "from" email of the triggering received email.

  8. For the Subject input, keep Dynamically fill with AI, click on Customize to set its Description to:

    Use the original subject of the triggering received email.

  9. For the Body input, keep Dynamically fill with AI, click on Customize to set its Description to:

    Write the email body using minimal HTML that renders well in Outlook. Use <p> for paragraphs, <br> for line breaks, <ul>/<ol> for bullet points, and <table> for simple tables if needed. All URLs must be formatted as HTML links using <a href="...">, not left as plain text. Do not use Markdown syntax like [1] or reference-style links. Do not include full HTML documents or tags like <html> or <head>. The HTML must be valid as a JSON string: escape double quotes (") and avoid unescaped special characters.

  10. Click Save to finalize the tool configuration

Configuring Agent Instructions and AI Settings

  1. Navigate to Overview and then click the Edit for Instructions

  2. Paste the following comprehensive instructions:

    1. Understand and isolate each question from the received email body.
For each individual question, do a separate **knowledge search** using the configured knowledge sources.
2. If a ticket ID is mentioned, for example INC0000059, check if an update is available using the <Get ServiceNow ticket details> tool.
3. Once you have gathered knowledge and ticket information, use the <Reply to email> tool to reply to the original email received. Your reply should use the same language as the initial user email (e.g., if the questions are in French, reply in French, etc.)

[!IMPORTANT] For each of the placeholder <…> in the description, use / to insert the tools you just configured in your instructions.

[!TIP] Note: the UX may differ and you don't have that option, leave the description as-is.

alt text

  1. Click on Save to save the instructions and Publish your agent to activate it

Testing Your Complete Agent

  1. Send a test email to your training user email by using the Workshop Agent. Simply ask Send a support email. You will then shortly receive the email in Microsoft Outlook.

[!IMPORTANT]

  • Access the workshop agent in the same location as when you created your training user account.
  • You will need the workshop code and your training user's email address if you previously closed the agent.
  • You can repeat this process as desired.

The email should contain something like this:

  Hi!
  
  I hope you're doing well!
  
  I had a couple of questions - what are the steps again to reset your Now Support user password?
  Also, was wondering if you had an update on my cases INC0000059 and INC0000055
  
  Much appreciated.
  Thanks!
  1. Make sure you receive the email in your inbox, in outlook.office.com

[!TIP] You don't need to repeat the original trigger event to make more tests. In the Test pane, you can select ..., choose Test trigger and then select the desired trigger and from there, decide to execute a past trigger again.

alt text

  1. Check the execution of your autonomous agent by going to the Activity tab. Select the Refresh icon until you see the execution.

  2. Check the emails in your Sent folder in Outlook to see the actual reply the user autonomously sent.

[!TIP]

  • Agents can be both conversational and autonomous. Meaning that they can be triggered by an email (such as an email received) or by an end-user simply using a chat or voice interface.
  • If the agent is purely autonomous, you can safely delete the default custom topics that are useless to it:
    • Goodbye
    • Greeting
    • Start Over
    • Thank you
  • You can also disable the system topics that it won't need:
    • Conversation start
    • Conversational boosting
    • End of conversation
    • Escalate
    • Fallback
    • Multiple topics matched

alt text

🏅 Congratulations! You've completed Use Case #2!

Test your understanding

Key takeaways:

  • Knowledge Integration – Your agent can now access external documentation to provide accurate, up-to-date information
  • ServiceNow Connectivity – Ticket status lookups are automated, providing users with real-time incident updates
  • Intelligent Email Responses – The agent composes professional responses with proper formatting, citations, and multi-language support

Challenge: Apply this to your own use case

  • Consider what additional knowledge sources would benefit your specific organization
  • Think about other ServiceNow operations (create tickets, update status) that could enhance the automation
  • Plan how you might extend this pattern to other communication channels like Teams or chat interfaces

Challenge Yourself: Add Teams communication:

Setting Up Teams Capabilities

  1. Return to the Tools tab, and select + Add a tool

  2. Search for Create a chat from Microsoft Teams and select it

  3. Select Add and configure

  4. Update its name to Create a Teams chat

  5. Update the description to: Create a Teams chat with the user who has sent the email.

  6. Under Additional details, set Credentials to use to Maker-provided credentials

  7. For the Members to add inputs, keep Dynamically fill with AI, click on Customize to set its Description to:

     Only use the "from" email address of the received email. There should be only one user to add. E.g., henry.jammes@copilotstudiotraining.onmicrosoft.com

  8. Click Save to finalize the tool configuration

  9. Return to the Tools tab, and select + Add a tool

  10. Search for Post message in a chat or channel from Microsoft Teams and select it

  11. Select Add and configure

  12. Update its name to Send a Teams message

  13. Update the description to: Send a Teams message in the chat conversation that was created with the user.

  14. Under Additional details, set Credentials to use to Maker-provided credentials

  15. For the Inputs:
    • For Post as, select Custom value and set it to User
    • For Post in, select Custom value and set it to Group chat
    • For Group chat, leave Dynamically fill with AI, click on Customize to set its Description to: 
        Conversation ID of the Teams chat that was created.
  The format should be similar to this: 19:3d4da799-6a66-4f70-9057-ada103025953_5f22554b-fd15-4676-8c82-dc6122af2a80@unq.gbl.spaces
    • For Message, leave Dynamically fill with AI, click on Customize to set its Description to: 
        Polite message greeting the user and telling them you have replied to their email. Provide a one phrase summary of the response you provided to their query. Finish by offering to schedule a call if they'd like to talk through it.

  16. Click Save to finalize the tool configuration

  17. Update your instructions in the Overview tab to look like the following:

    1. Understand and isolate each question from the received email body.
For each individual question, do a separate **knowledge search** using the configured knowledge sources.
2. If a ticket ID is mentioned, for example INC0000059, check if an update is available using the <Get ServiceNow ticket details> tool.
3. Once you have gathered knowledge and ticket information, use the <Reply to email> tool to reply to the original email received. Your reply should use the same language as the initial user email (e.g., if the questions are in French, reply in French, etc.)
4. Use the <Create a Teams chat> tool to create a Teams conversation with the user
5. Use the <Send a Teams message> tool to send a message to the user

  18. Test your new and improved agent by sending a test trigger using the Test Pane.

  19. Ensure that you've sent a Teams chat at teams.microsoft.com

  20. Congratulations! You've gone above and beyond by adding Teams Chat capabilities to your autonomous agent!

🏆 Summary of learnings

True learning comes from doing, questioning, and reflecting—so let's put your skills to the test.

To maximize the impact of autonomous support agents:

  • Start Simple, Scale Smart – Begin with common, repetitive inquiries before tackling complex support scenarios to build confidence and refine your approach
  • Knowledge Quality Drives Response Quality – Invest time in curating and maintaining your knowledge sources, as they directly impact the accuracy and helpfulness of automated responses
    • Integration Amplifies Value – Connecting multiple systems (email, knowledge bases, ticketing) creates a seamless experience that rivals human support capabilities
  • Multi-language Awareness – Configure your agent to detect and respond appropriately in users' preferred languages to maximize global accessibility
  • Monitor and Iterate – Regularly review agent interactions to identify improvement opportunities and expand capabilities based on real user needs

Conclusions and recommendations

Autonomous Support Agent golden rules:

  • Always test your agent with realistic scenarios before full deployment to identify potential issues early
  • Keep your knowledge sources current and well-organized to ensure accurate and relevant responses
  • Configure appropriate authentication and security measures for all integrated systems and tools
  • Design clear fallback procedures for scenarios where automated responses aren't sufficient
  • Monitor agent performance metrics and user feedback to continuously improve response quality
  • Start with a limited scope and gradually expand capabilities as you gain confidence and experience

By following these principles, you'll create reliable autonomous agents that enhance user satisfaction, reduce support team workload, and scale your organization's support capabilities efficiently and effectively.

📄 Download Options

📄 Download PDF Version Professional PDF with table of contents and internal navigation. Generated automatically from lab content.