Build your first agent in Copilot Studio

Today's task

Build an agent that answers customer questions about your company using your public website as its knowledge source. By the end you'll have a working agent in a test pane, plus a feel for how Copilot Studio thinks.

You'll need: a Microsoft 365 work account and access to Copilot Studio. If your organization doesn't have a license yet, you can start a trial from the sign-in page.

Heads-up: Microsoft updates Copilot Studio often and offers more than one authoring experience. If your screens look different from these steps, look for the same settings by name.

Steps

1. Pick the right environment. When you sign in, check the environment picker in the top bar. If your company has a development or sandbox environment, use it. The default environment is shared by everyone in your tenant, so it's not a great place for experiments.

2. Create a new agent. Choose to create an agent and describe it in plain language. Try something like this:

   You help visitors to our website understand our services, pricing approach and how to contact us. Be friendly, concise and professional. If you don't know an answer, say so and suggest calling the office.

3. Add knowledge. Add your public website URL as a knowledge source. The agent will answer from that content and cite where each answer came from.

4. Tighten the instructions. Open the agent's instructions and add boundaries:
   • Only answer questions about our company and services.
   • Never make up prices, dates or guarantees.
   • Keep answers under 120 words.
5. Test it. In the test pane, ask three questions:
   • one your website clearly answers
   • one it partly answers
   • one that's off-topic (for example, "What's the weather?")
6. Check the citations. For each answer, open the source it cites. Is it the right page? If not, your website content may be the real problem.

What to notice

• Instructions shape behavior; knowledge supplies facts. Most "bad answers" come from vague instructions or thin source content, not from the AI.
• The off-topic test matters. A good business agent politely declines things it shouldn't handle.

Governance tip: Don't publish this agent to a website or Teams yet. Keep it in test until you've decided who owns it, who reviews its answers, and what data it's allowed to touch. We'll cover that later in the Lab.

Go further

• Microsoft Copilot Studio documentation
• Next lesson: ground your agent in internal documents, and see why permissions suddenly matter.