What Are Copilot Agents And How Can They Be Used?
As Microsoft’s global AI Tour reaches its European leg, the company has unveiled a new suite of features designed to help users build autonomous agents through Copilot Studio.
According to Microsoft, these agents will be able to “understand the nature of your work” and act on your behalf by “providing support across business roles, teams, and functions.” In contrast to traditional AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot, these agents are designed to work autonomously without user input and can be tailored to address specific challenges a business is facing.
“Agents draw on the context of your work data in Microsoft 365 Graph, systems of record, Dataverse and Fabric, and can support everything from your IT help desk to employee onboarding and act as a personal concierge for sales and service.” – Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President at Microsoft
You don’t need any code experience to create an AI agent for your company. But in addition to Microsoft’s new DIY Copilot Studio feature, the company is also rolling out ten new autonomous agents in Dynamics 365 designed to tackle specific processes. Examples include a Sales Qualification Agent that frees up time for the seller and a Customer Intent Agent that “continuously discovers new intents from past and current customer conversations”.
These ready-for-use agents will be available for public review later this year, and their rollout will continue into early 2025.
How Are Companies Currently Using Copilot Studio?
Microsoft Copilot Studio pilot, in which select companies have been granted access to the platform, has already hinted at the versatile applications of the custom agents.
The UK company Pets at Home has been using Copilot agents to streamline its profit protection process. Specifically, team members have used their Copilot agent to “assess cases for potential profit loss” more effectively, allowing them to spend less time on data gathering and more time on skilled analysis as a result.
“We’ve seen early success of our pilot agent that was built for our own organization, in collaboration with Microsoft. And we see tremendous potential for agents to help our clients rewire the way their businesses operate.“ – Rodney Zemmel, senior partner at McKinsey & Company
McKinsey & Company also got an early preview of Copilot Studio. According to a blog post by Microsoft, the company created an agent to automate complex processes in the client onboarding process, from staffing to identifying expert capabilities. The results of the pilot proved to be very encouraging, with early results showing that the use of the agents could reduce lead time by 90% and administrative work by 30%.