What Is Copilot Studio?

Overview

Government agencies need AI solutions that go beyond out-of-the-box productivity tools. While Microsoft 365 Copilot handles email drafting, meeting summaries, and document creation, agencies have unique processes — citizen inquiries, policy lookups, HR onboarding, IT help desks — that require custom AI solutions. Microsoft Copilot Studio is the platform that lets you build those solutions without writing extensive code.

This video introduces Copilot Studio, explains what you can build with it, and covers how it fits into the Microsoft ecosystem your agency already uses.

What You’ll Learn

• What it is: Copilot Studio’s purpose and how it differs from Microsoft 365 Copilot
• What you can build: Custom agents, copilot extensions, and standalone AI solutions
• Key capabilities: Generative answers, connectors, knowledge sources, and multi-channel deployment
• Government relevance: How Copilot Studio works within government cloud environments

Script

Hook: Beyond out-of-the-box Copilot

Your agency has Microsoft 365 Copilot. It helps with email, documents, and meetings. But what about the processes unique to your agency — the intake forms, the citizen inquiries, the internal knowledge bases that Copilot doesn’t know about out of the box?

That’s where Copilot Studio comes in. In the next seven minutes, you’ll understand exactly what Copilot Studio is, what you can build with it, and why it matters for your government environment.

What is Copilot Studio?

Microsoft Copilot Studio is a low-code platform for building AI-powered agents. It’s part of the Power Platform family, alongside Power Apps and Power Automate. If you’ve heard of Power Virtual Agents, Copilot Studio is its evolution — significantly more capable, with generative AI built in from the ground up.

Here’s the key distinction. Microsoft 365 Copilot is the AI assistant Microsoft built for you. It works across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams. Copilot Studio is the tool that lets you build your own AI assistants — tailored to your agency’s specific needs.

There are two primary use cases. First, you can extend Microsoft 365 Copilot with custom capabilities. This means adding plugins and actions that bring your agency’s data and processes into the Copilot experience your users already know. Second, you can create standalone AI agents that handle specific tasks independently — an IT help desk bot, a policy lookup tool, or a citizen-facing FAQ agent.

The platform is designed so that people who understand their business processes can build AI solutions without waiting for a development team. That’s the low-code promise, and Copilot Studio delivers on it.

What can you build?

Let’s get specific about what you can create with Copilot Studio.

Custom copilots for internal processes are the most common starting point. Think about an HR onboarding assistant that answers new employee questions about benefits, policies, and procedures. Or an IT help desk agent that troubleshoots common issues and creates tickets when it can’t resolve something. Or a policy lookup tool that lets staff search across regulations and guidance documents using natural language.

You can also build extensions to Microsoft 365 Copilot. These are custom plugins that bring agency-specific data into the Copilot experience. For example, a plugin that lets Copilot query your case management system or pull data from a Dataverse table. Actions let Copilot interact with external systems — submitting forms, updating records, or triggering workflows.

Citizen-facing agents are another category. FAQ bots for public websites that answer common questions about services, eligibility, or processes. Service request intake agents that guide citizens through submitting requests and route them to the right department.

Internal knowledge agents round out the picture. These search across agency documentation — SharePoint libraries, uploaded files, websites, or Dataverse tables — and surface answers in conversational format.

The pattern is always the same: take a process that involves answering questions or looking up information, and let an AI agent handle the repetitive parts.

Key capabilities

Copilot Studio’s capabilities make all of this possible.

Generative AI answers are the headline feature. Unlike older chatbots that matched keywords to predefined responses, Copilot Studio agents can reason over your content. Point an agent at a SharePoint site full of policy documents, and it can answer nuanced questions by synthesizing information across multiple documents.

Topics and conversation flows let you design guided conversations with branching logic. When a user asks about leave policies, the agent can ask clarifying questions — are you asking about annual leave, sick leave, or family leave? — and route the conversation accordingly.

Connectors and actions give your agents reach. Copilot Studio connects to hundreds of data sources and services through Power Platform connectors. Need your agent to look up a record in Dynamics 365, check a status in ServiceNow, or call a custom API? Connectors make it possible.

Knowledge sources are how you teach your agents what they know. Point them at SharePoint sites, uploaded files, public websites, or Dataverse tables. The agent indexes that content and uses it to answer questions.

Authentication ensures secure access. Agents can authenticate users through Azure AD, which means they respect your government identity and access management policies.

Analytics let you monitor how your agents are performing — how many conversations they handle, where users get stuck, and how satisfaction trends over time.

Finally, multi-channel deployment means you can put your agents in Teams, on a website, in a mobile app, or in custom channels. Build once, deploy wherever your users are.

Copilot Studio combines the ease of low-code with the power of large language models. You don’t need to be a developer to build an effective agent.

How it fits in the Microsoft ecosystem

Copilot Studio doesn’t exist in isolation. It’s built on Power Platform, which means it shares the same environment model, security framework, and governance controls.

It integrates natively with Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and Azure. Your agents can pull data from Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, and Dataverse without complex integration work. They can trigger Power Automate flows to automate multi-step processes. They can connect to Azure services for advanced scenarios.

Microsoft’s responsible AI framework is built in. Content moderation, topic blocking, and conversation guardrails are part of the platform — not something you have to build yourself.

Administration happens through the same Power Platform admin center your IT team already uses. If your agency already manages Power Apps or Power Automate, Copilot Studio fits right in. It shares the same governance controls, DLP policies, and environment management.

Government considerations

Copilot Studio is available in GCC with broad feature support. GCC High and DoD availability varies by feature — always check the current Microsoft documentation for the latest status.

The critical point for government agencies: your data stays within your government cloud boundary. Agents built in Copilot Studio in GCC operate within the GCC environment. The same principle applies to GCC High and DoD. Copilot Studio is designed to work within your compliance boundary, meeting FedRAMP and government security requirements.

We’ll cover government cloud specifics in a dedicated video later in this series.

Close: Start thinking about your use cases

Here’s what to take away. Copilot Studio is Microsoft’s low-code platform for building custom AI agents. It lets you extend Microsoft 365 Copilot or build standalone solutions. It connects to your existing systems and data. And it works within your government cloud environment.

Access Copilot Studio at copilotstudio.microsoft.com. You’ll need a Copilot Studio license or trial. Start thinking about a simple use case — an FAQ agent or internal knowledge bot — and in the next videos, we’ll cover when to use Copilot Studio, licensing, and how to set up your environment.

Sources & References

• What is Microsoft Copilot Studio? — Official overview of Copilot Studio fundamentals and capabilities
• Microsoft Copilot Studio documentation — Documentation hub for all Copilot Studio features
• Microsoft Copilot Studio product page — Product overview with feature details and pricing
• Copilot Studio licensing for government — Government cloud licensing and availability