Building your own copilot with Copilot Studio | #MVPConnect

Building your own copilot with Copilot Studio | #MVPConnect

Good evening everyone, and thank you all for joining us today! My name is Rashita, and I'm the event planner for Microsoft Reactor India. The session will run over the next 60 minutes, including Q&A. But before we begin, please take a moment to read our code of conduct. We are all here to learn together, so please be respectful of other people's views, understanding of differences, and being kind and considerate in the way you engage. The chat section will be open throughout, and we do encourage you all to participate. So please feel free to drop all your questions in the chat section.

I would now like to welcome Krunal, our speaker for today's session. Krunal has been serving the IT industry for 15 years now. He has delivered training sessions for various IT MNCs in India as well as abroad. Apart from the training sessions, he's also part of software product development, where he is involved as a lead architect consultant. But for now, I will hand over to Krunal to begin the session. Let me bring him into the stream. There you go, the floor is all yours, Kunal.

Thank you so much, Rashita, for providing me this wonderful opportunity. Hello, everyone! I welcome you all to my session on building your own copilot with Copilot Studio. As Rashita has mentioned, I'm a Microsoft MVP for Azure and AI, and also the MCT India Regional Lead. This is my seventh year as an MVP and almost 10th year as an MCT India Regional Lead. In my daily life, I provide IT training and consultancy for various MNCs across the globe.

Understanding Copilot Studio

We are going to understand what is Copilot Studio, why we need it, and how to create a custom copilot. We are going to have a demo as well.

When we talk about co-pilot, we have many in mind like co-pilot for GitHub, co-pilot for Azure, and co-pilot for M365. Today, we are going to talk about how to create a custom copilot, and for that, we will use Copilot Studio.

Microsoft Copilot empowers your teams to create powerful copilots through a guided no-code graphical interface. This enables you to use the benefits of Copilot without having to rely on data scientists or developers. It helps address many of today's challenges in building copilots. In one line, Copilot is like a custom bot.

Benefits of Copilot Studio

1. Eliminate the gap between subject matter experts and development teams: This reduces latency between teams recognizing an issue and updating the coilers to address the issue.

2. Complex conversational AI and generative AI: It removes the complexity of exposing teams to different conversational AI and the need to write complex code.

3. Enhance Copilot functionality: You can use Microsoft Power Automate flows, pass conversations to live agents, and use generative AI.

Use Cases of Copilot Studio

B2E: Business-to-Employees

• IT Service Management: Check the progress of the current IT ticket.
• Human Resource: Start the onboarding sequence for a new team member or show the remaining training budget for the quarter.
• Frontline Workers: Provide details about a product, like finding a manual for a specific device.

B2B: Business-to-Business

• Project Management: Summarize completed tasks for a project or list pending deliverables for the next sprint.
• Supply Chain Management: Check the fulfillment status of a purchase order or track the shipment of a recent bulk order.

B2C: Business-to-Consumer

• Customer Support: Guide through the product return process or help with account recovery.
• Consultancy Services: Recommend career options based on user input or hardware configurations for specific needs.

Demo: Creating a Custom Copilot

1. Sign into Copilot Studio: Use the URL scstudio.microsoft.com and sign in with your organizational account.
2. Creating Copilot: Click on create co-pilot and provide the necessary details and instructions.
3. Adding Knowledge Base: Add your enterprise data or connect to external services.
4. Understanding and Creating Topics:
   • Phrase Nodes: Trigger topics based on specific phrases.
   • Guided Conversations: Use adaptive cards, conditions, and actions to drive conversations.
   • Variable Management: Persist user data across multiple topics or sessions.
5. Customizing the Copilot: Enhance the bot using Microsoft services and integrate AI-based responses.

Conclusion

With Copilot Studio, creating custom copilots is made very quick and simple. It equips your teams with the required tools to develop, manage, and deploy dynamic AI-powered conversational agents suited for various industry needs.

Thank you, everyone, for joining us today! Please visit the Microsoft Reactor website for more sessions and use the learn module links for additional resources.

Keywords

• Copilot
• Copilot Studio
• Conversational AI
• Enterprise Data
• Knowledge Base
• Custom Bot
• Microsoft Power Automate
• Generative AI
• Variable Management
• IT Service Management
• B2E, B2B, B2C

FAQ

1. What is Copilot Studio?

It's a tool by Microsoft that allows creating customized AI-powered conversational agents (copilots) using a guided no-code graphical interface.

2. Why use Copilot Studio?

Copilot Studio helps eliminate the dependency on data scientists or developers for creating powerful copilots, reducing latency, and enhancing functionality.

3. What are the use cases for Copilot Studio?

Copilot Studio can be used in IT Service Management, Human Resources, Project Management, Supply Chain Management, Customer Support, and more, catering to B2E, B2B, and B2C models.

4. How do I get started with Copilot Studio?

Visit scstudio.microsoft.com and sign in with your organizational account. Use the provided templates or create new copilots by detailing the copilot's purpose, instructions, and adding a knowledge base.

5. How do I integrate external data sources with my Copilot?

In Copilot Studio, you can add a knowledge base from various sources like public websites, local files, SharePoint, OneDrive, databases, and more to provide relevant responses.

6. How does topic management work in Copilot Studio?

Topics in Copilot Studio help in structuring conversations based on phrases and nodes. You can manage guided conversations by setting up adaptive cards, conditions, actions, and variable management.

7. Can I use Power Automate flows in Copilot Studio?

Yes, Copilot Studio allows the integration of Power Automate flows to enhance the functionality of your custom copilot.

8. How does variable management help in creating copilots?

Variable management allows you to persist user data across multiple topics or sessions, ensuring a seamless conversational experience tailored to user inputs.

9. What is the role of generative AI in Copilot Studio?

Generative AI helps in understanding user intents and generating relevant responses, making the copilot more effective and interactive without needing complex coding.

10. How can I publish and monitor my custom copilot?

Once created, you can publish your copilot to various channels like Microsoft Teams, custom websites, mobile apps, and more. You can monitor its performance using analytics provided in Copilot Studio.