AI Agent & Copilot Podcast: Getting Started with Copilot Studio, Building Agents

Key Takeaways

• Overview: Copilot Studio is a tool used to build custom copilots or agents, which are designed to perform specific tasks. The author created a conversational chat agent for their personal blog site to answer questions, preferring hands-on learning over watching instructional videos.
• Building custom agents: Shawn explains that he started using Copilot Studio without any prior knowledge and was guided by the tool to build his own agent. Despite initial excitement and detailed prompts, the first attempt to create a conversational chat agent did not work, but Shawn remains optimistic about learning through hands-on experience.
• Agent components: After publishing the agent, Shawn reviewed its configuration components, which included six tabs: knowledge, topics, actions, activity, insights, and channels. Despite the agent not working initially, he was able to see its structure and details.
• Troubleshooting: Shawn notes that he expected more guidance from Copilot Studio's interface but found it lacking in self-help information. Upon investigating, he discovered that the "knowledge" section of the agent was empty, which explained why the agent didn't work. He plans to explore this further in future episodes.
• Knowledge and topics: He researched the six areas of Copilot Studio, explaining that "knowledge" is the data the agent uses, which can be static like a document or website. "Topics" are what the agent can discuss, such as predefined responses for common questions like resetting a password.
• Actions: Further, he found the "actions" component of Copilot Studio to be intriguing, as it allows the agent to execute tasks on his behalf, which expands the potential use cases. This newfound awareness of the agent's capabilities is exciting, as it can help save time, improve service, and make colleagues' lives easier.
• Activities, analytics, channels: "Activities" logs what the agent has been doing, while "analytics" measures its performance. "Channels" shows where the agent can be found, summarizing the six key areas: knowledge, topics, actions, activities, analytics, and channels.