Building Your First Agent

Overview

Every agency has a set of questions that get asked dozens of times a day. What are the office hours? How do I reset my password? Where do I find the travel request form? Staff spend time answering these questions repeatedly, and the people asking them spend time waiting for responses.

Copilot Studio lets you build conversational agents that handle these routine inquiries automatically, without writing a single line of code. These agents work within your government cloud environment, keeping data inside your compliance boundary while providing instant answers to your workforce.

This video walks you through building your first working agent in Copilot Studio from start to finish.

What You’ll Learn

• Copilot Studio basics: What the platform is and how to access it in government clouds
• Agent creation: How to create a new agent and configure its settings
• Purpose and personality: How to define what your agent does and how it communicates
• Topics and responses: How to add conversational topics with trigger phrases and responses
• Testing: How to validate your agent’s behavior before sharing it with users

Script

Hook: Your first intelligent agent

What if your team had a virtual assistant that could answer routine questions around the clock? Not a chatbot that frustrates users with rigid menus, but an intelligent agent that understands natural language and provides accurate, helpful responses.

Microsoft Copilot Studio makes this possible. It is a low-code platform that lets you build conversational agents without writing code, and it works in government cloud environments including GCC, GCC High, and DoD.

In the next fifteen minutes, you will build your first working agent from scratch. You will create it, define its purpose, add topics that handle real conversations, and test it. By the end, you will have an agent ready for further development and eventual deployment to your team.

What is Copilot Studio?

Copilot Studio is Microsoft’s platform for building conversational AI agents. If you have heard of Power Virtual Agents, this is its evolution. Power Virtual Agents has been rebranded and enhanced as part of the broader Microsoft Copilot ecosystem.

So what can these agents do? At the most basic level, an agent answers questions. A user types or speaks a question, and the agent responds with an answer. But agents can do much more than simple Q&A. They can gather information from users through structured conversations. They can look up data from SharePoint, Dataverse, or external systems. They can hand off to a live person when the conversation requires human judgment. And they can generate answers from your organizational knowledge using AI.

The key advantage for government teams is this: you do not need to be a developer to build one. Copilot Studio is designed for makers, meaning business analysts, program managers, IT generalists, and anyone who understands a process well enough to describe it. If you can outline how a conversation should flow, you can build an agent.

For government organizations, Copilot Studio is available in GCC, GCC High, and DoD tenants. Your data stays within your government cloud boundary, and the platform operates under the same compliance framework as the rest of your Microsoft 365 environment.

Accessing Copilot Studio in government clouds

To get started, navigate to the Copilot Studio portal. For government cloud environments, use the portal URL specific to your tenant. Your admin may have already configured access, so check with your IT team if you are unsure of the correct URL.

Once you are in the portal, confirm that you are working in the correct environment. The environment selector appears at the top of the screen. Select the environment that corresponds to your agency or team. If you do not see an environment, your admin may need to provision a Dataverse environment for you, as Copilot Studio requires Dataverse to store agent configurations and conversation data.

You will need a Copilot Studio license or an active trial to create agents. Your organization may already have licenses available. Check with your IT admin or licensing coordinator.

An important note for government users: all agent data, conversation logs, and configurations remain within your government cloud boundary. This is by design. Copilot Studio in GCC, GCC High, and DoD operates under the same data residency and compliance controls as the rest of your Microsoft 365 services.

Creating a new agent

From the Copilot Studio home page, click “Create” and then select “New agent.” This opens the agent creation wizard.

Start with a name. Choose something clear and descriptive. For example, “IT Help Desk” or “Benefits FAQ Assistant” or “Facilities Support Agent.” Avoid generic names like “My Bot” because a good name helps users understand what the agent does before they even start a conversation.

Next, add a description. This is more than a label. The description tells Copilot Studio what your agent’s purpose is and influences how AI-powered features behave. Write something like “This agent helps employees find answers to common IT support questions including password resets, software requests, and hardware issues.”

Select English as the primary language, which is the default for US government organizations. Choose the environment and solution where this agent will live. For most teams, your admin will have a designated environment for agent development.

Once the agent is created, you land in the agent workspace. Take a moment to orient yourself. On the left side, you see the navigation panel with sections for Topics, Knowledge, Actions, and more. In the center, you have the authoring canvas where you build conversation flows. On the right side, you can open the test chat panel to try out your agent at any time.

Let us use a practical example. Say you are building an IT Help Desk agent for your agency. Common questions include “How do I reset my password?” and “How do I request new software?” and “My laptop is not connecting to the network.” This agent will handle all of these.

Defining purpose and personality

Before you start adding topics, take time to define your agent’s purpose and personality. This step is easy to skip, but it makes a significant difference in the quality of your agent’s interactions.

Purpose means defining what your agent does and, equally important, what it does not do. A focused agent that handles IT support questions well is far more useful than a vague agent that tries to answer everything poorly. Write clear instructions that tell the agent its scope. For example: “You help employees with common IT support questions. You do not handle HR inquiries, payroll questions, or classified information requests. If someone asks about those topics, direct them to the appropriate resource.”

Personality defines how your agent communicates. In Copilot Studio, you can set instructions that shape the agent’s tone and style. For government agencies, the right personality is usually professional and helpful without being overly casual. You want your agent to sound authoritative enough that users trust its answers but approachable enough that they actually use it.

Consider these government-specific personality guidelines. Use clear, direct language. Avoid slang, jokes, or overly casual phrasing. Include appropriate disclaimers, such as directing users to official channels for urgent or sensitive matters. Be transparent about what the agent can and cannot do.

Here is an example. For a benefits FAQ agent, you might set instructions like: “You are a helpful assistant that answers questions about employee benefits for federal agency staff. Use a professional, supportive tone. When you are not sure of an answer, say so and direct the user to the HR benefits team. Never provide specific dollar amounts for individual benefits without confirming the user’s employment category.”

The instructions you write here influence how generative AI features respond, so investing time in them pays off as your agent becomes more sophisticated.

Adding basic topics and responses

Topics are the building blocks of your agent. Each topic handles a specific type of conversation. When a user sends a message, Copilot Studio determines which topic matches and then executes that topic’s conversation flow.

Your agent comes with several system topics already built in. These include a Greeting topic that fires when a user first opens the conversation, an Escalate topic for handing off to a human, and a Fallback topic that handles messages the agent does not understand. You can customize all of these, but leave them as they are for now.

Let us create your first custom topic. Click on “Topics” in the left navigation and then click “Add a topic” and select “From blank.” Name it something descriptive like “Office Hours.”

Now add trigger phrases. These are the different ways a user might ask about this topic. Type in five to ten variations. For example: “What are the office hours?” and “When is the office open?” and “What time does the office close?” and “Office hours” and “When can I come in?” and “Are you open on Fridays?” The more natural variations you add, the better Copilot Studio gets at recognizing when a user is asking about this topic.

Next, build the response. Add a message node and type your answer: “Our office is open Monday through Friday, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM Eastern Time. We are closed on federal holidays. For after-hours emergencies, call the support line at extension 5555.” Save the topic.

Now let us create a second topic for password resets. Add a new topic called “Password Reset” with trigger phrases like “I forgot my password” and “How do I reset my password?” and “Password reset” and “I’m locked out of my account” and “Can’t log in.” For this topic, add a message node that provides the reset instructions, step by step.

For a government agency, typical topics might cover badge access procedures, parking information, leave request processes, or travel authorization steps. Each one follows the same pattern: clear name, varied trigger phrases, and a helpful response.

As a best practice, think about how real users at your agency actually phrase their questions. Sit with a help desk team for an hour and listen to the questions that come in. Those real-world phrases become your trigger phrases.

Testing your agent

You have topics built. Now it is time to test. Open the test chat panel by clicking the test icon in the bottom left corner of the workspace. A chat window appears where you can type messages as if you were a user.

Type “What are your office hours?” and press Enter. Your agent should trigger the Office Hours topic and display the response you wrote. Watch the topic tracker on the left side of the test panel. It highlights which topic was triggered and which node in the conversation flow is currently active. This visibility is invaluable for debugging.

Now test with variations. Type “When are you open?” and confirm it still triggers the correct topic. Try “office hrs” with an abbreviation. Try “hours” by itself. If any of these do not trigger the right topic, go back and add those phrases as additional triggers.

Test your password reset topic the same way. Type “I forgot my password” and confirm the correct response appears. Then try “locked out” and “can’t login” and other variations.

Next, test edge cases. Type something your agent is not designed to handle, like “What is the weather today?” Your agent should hit the Fallback topic and let the user know it cannot help with that question. If the fallback response is not helpful, customize it. A good fallback message for a government IT agent might be: “I’m not sure how to help with that. I can assist with IT support questions like password resets, software requests, and hardware issues. For other questions, please contact the general help desk at extension 1234.”

Pay attention to the green highlights in the test chat. They show which trigger phrases matched your input. If a message triggers the wrong topic, you may need to adjust your trigger phrases to be more specific.

Iterating and refining

Building an agent is not a one-time activity. It is a cycle of building, testing, finding gaps, and improving. After your first round of testing, you will almost certainly find areas to improve.

Common improvements after the first pass include adding more trigger phrase variations based on inputs that did not match, rewriting responses that are unclear or incomplete, adding new topics for questions you did not anticipate, and improving the fallback topic to be more helpful.

Save your work frequently. Copilot Studio maintains a version history, so you can always revert if a change does not work out. As you build more topics, keep them organized with clear naming conventions. A pattern like “IT - Password Reset” and “IT - Software Request” and “IT - Hardware Issue” makes it easy to find and manage topics as your agent grows.

Looking ahead, here is what you can explore next. Add knowledge sources so your agent can answer questions from SharePoint documents or web pages. Learn about entities and slot filling to collect structured information from users. Explore connectors to integrate with external systems like ServiceNow or your agency’s ticketing platform.

Before you publish your agent to a wider audience, coordinate with your IT team. Government organizations typically have policies about agent deployment, including review processes, accessibility requirements, and compliance checks. Your IT admin can guide you through the publishing workflow for your specific environment.

Close: Your agent journey starts here

Let us recap what you accomplished. You created a new agent in Copilot Studio within your government cloud environment. You defined its purpose and set a professional personality appropriate for government interactions. You added custom topics with trigger phrases and conversation flows. And you tested the agent to confirm it works correctly.

Your agent is ready for further development. Here are your next steps. Add more topics to cover additional scenarios your users will encounter. Explore knowledge sources to ground your agent’s answers in organizational content like SharePoint sites and internal documents. Learn about entities and slot filling so your agent can collect structured information during conversations. And when you are ready, work with your IT team to publish the agent to a Teams channel or website where your team can use it.

Every sophisticated agent started exactly where you are now, with a first topic and a first test. The foundation you built today scales to handle dozens of topics, integrate with backend systems, and serve thousands of users. Start simple, test often, and build from there.

Sources & References

• Get started with Microsoft Copilot Studio — Official getting started guide covering initial setup and agent creation
• Create and edit topics in Copilot Studio — Step-by-step tutorial for authoring your first agent with topics and testing
• Microsoft Copilot Studio documentation — Comprehensive documentation hub for all Copilot Studio capabilities
• Copilot Studio licensing requirements — Licensing options and government cloud availability