Today we're talking about multi -agent orchestration
also known as connected agents or child agents
within Microsoft Copilot Studio. This is where
your agents can come together and work as a team
collectively for a common purpose. Now I've been
looking forward to this feature for quite some
time and it actually got announced at Microsoft
Build May 19th of this year. And today, June
12th of 2025, there's actually information in
the Microsoft Copilot Studio admin guide about
what this feature is. This is an amazing feature.
And in this video, first, we're going to review
some slides so that we can all better understand
the details of what it is and how it works and
when to use it. And then I think I have a super
cool use case that everyone can use. and we're
going to build it from the ground up step by
step in Copilot Studio so that you can follow
along and also use it in your environment. Today
this feature is actually in public preview but
it will be generally available soon. Now I wanted
to thank everyone for joining Collaboration Simplified.
My name is Shervin Shafi and I work at Microsoft
as a Copilot Principal Technical Specialist.
Let's look at some slides and later on build
this together. Creating teams of agents with
multi -agent orchestration. Now, before I go
into the explanation of what multi -agent orchestration
is, I just wanted to share with you that IDC
actually projects 1 billion new logical applications
being created by the year 2028, of which AI agents
are a subset. there's plenty of opportunity for
people who are coming up to speed with respect
to creating agents and copilot studio and i just
wanted to share that if anyone's kind of on the
fence here i think that this is a good time for
you to also start to understand agents i really
do think this is the future now when it comes
to building agents personally i'll be focusing
more on the left hand side which is copilot studio
But I just want you to know that the Copilot
Studio product is known more on the low code
side. And because I'm actually not a programmer,
I love Copilot Studio. It's allowed me to create
lots of amazing agents. But if you're more on
the pro code side, then you can also create agents
using Microsoft products like Visual Studio or
GitHub. So there's a lot of different tools.
But the thing is that regardless of the tool
that you use at Microsoft to create agents, these
are all actually powered by Azure AI Foundry.
Copilot Studio, Visual Studio, GitHub, Azure
AI Foundry, and the Microsoft Fabric are all
different tools that you can create agents with.
The thing though is that, again, more on the
low -code side, something like Copilot Studio
is... perfect for a larger audience and by the
way we even have agent builder that's within
copilot for m365 so that's another tool that
i've used in the past to build agents so these
are the different tools that we have now regardless
of the tool that you use whether it's studio
on the left hand side or the more pro code tools
on the right hand side the thing is that in the
center we have different components of agents
like channels and now we have multi -agent orchestration
memory and threads actions knowledge orchestrator
and foundational models so these tools go about
approaching these functions in different ways
but in the end every agent can consist of these
different components so you'll see in this video
the agents that i have are basically using topics
and connectors and actions and we're going to
be doing multi -agent orchestration and that's
all using copilot studio on the left hand side
now here's the actual substance of this video
right so what is multi -agent orchestration in
copilot studio now let me just kind of break
this down for you over here Basically, it allows
for effective end -to -end transformation. It
enables agents to talk to each other in Copilot
Studio, exchanging data, collaborating on tasks,
and distributing work. This is the key, right?
If you have a bunch of agents that are kind of
on their own, that's just the way it's traditionally
been. Now you can get these agents to work together,
either like in a parent -child relationship.
or we have these lightweight agents that I'll
show you in a second as well. The next section
here is that we have cross -platform orchestration.
You can connect your agents with other agents
in your tenant whether they were built in Copilot
Studio, in Azure AI Foundry, or the M365 Copilot
SDK or Fabric, which is awesome, right? Your
agents that end up working together as a team
can actually be built in different tools. And
you'll see this in just a little bit. Now, the
other thing is that there is the concept of agent
specialization. This is basically an agent that
can call on connected agents where specialized
knowledge or actions are required to complete
tasks within minutes, maybe even seconds. So
the idea here is think about it. Think about
agents as people and the skill set that people
have. Some people are better at a particular
job function than others. So you have the concept
of SMEs, right? Subject Matter Experts. And so
you can basically build your agents to be subject
matter experts in something and then use those
agents within another agent for different components
and just call upon them over and over again.
instead of recreating the wheel every single
time. So there's a lot of efficiency that can
be built using multi -agent orchestration. Let's
look at this in a little bit more detail. Now,
inside Copilot Studio, you have all these different
functions that an agent can have. You have the
orchestrator, you have knowledge sources, you
have different tools that can consist of connectors
and flows and prompts. And then you have under
knowledge, you have public websites and SharePoint
sites. So this is typically an agent. But the
thing is that now you can actually create lightweight
agents inside your agent. And when we build this
together, you'll see what I mean by this. So
you have the concept of these lightweight agents
that you can create, but you can also have connected
agents where you have an agent that's on its
own or it has lightweight agents in it as well.
And it also talks to connected agents that are
not just built by Copilot Studio, but maybe built
by the M365 agents SDK or Azure AI Foundry or
Fabric. So this is pretty awesome. And this is
where you can have that parent -child relationship
that you can develop over time. Now, I'll leave
you with this, which basically is information
for you to determine whether you should be using
lightweight agents or connected agents. And it
really depends. So, for example, if you're using
lightweight agents, it might be because you have
a single developer or you're a small team versus
multiple teams or developers that manage different
agents independently. on the connected agent
side or on the lightweight agents maybe you don't
need to have separate configurations whereas
connected agents agents can have their own dedicated
settings including authentication configuration
so just take a look at this in terms of determining
when to use what but i'll just save you the time
and let you know that i'm going to be using connected
agents which is on the right hand side on the
build that we're going to be doing together so
with that let's jump into the actual build step
by step inside copilot studio and i guarantee
you're going to love it this is really awesome
okay my favorite part which is the build i hope
you enjoy this now let me set this up for you
right now you're looking at my copilot studio
environment and if i select agents on the left
hand side you'll see that i have a bunch of agents
that i built over time now These three over here,
the Teams Technical Helper, HR Benefits Helper,
and Vacation Heaven, are three that I've actually
added to my user over here. So right now, I just
switched over to Microsoft Teams. And then you
can see on the left -hand side, I'm in this Copilot
tab. And within the Copilot tab, Copilot generally
looks like this. But on the right -hand side,
you can see the agents that have been added to
my profile. So those three I've added to my profile
and I can go ahead and select any one of them
and basically they do different things. The Teams
technical helper is connected to our Teams admin
guide and it basically answers questions about
Teams Premium, Microsoft Teams Room, Teams Phone.
A very simple agent. I can show you how I built
it as well. the hr benefits helper basically
connects to documents that i have in a sharepoint
repository and answers questions about my hr
questions like what are my medical benefits my
vacation policy 401k and so on and then i have
vacation heaven also over here and when i select
that i can actually ask it about my vacation
balance or books on vacation and this actually
has integration to service now but you might
be wondering now okay sure that's great you have
these different agents but what about multi -agent
orchestration so here's a big idea generally
people are thinking look if i add all these agents
i'm going to have agent sprawl and at some point
in time i don't know what agent to use when because
sometimes even the functions might overlap and
why then put the onus on the end users to decide
what agent to use when let's create a master
agent a master agent where all these other agents
are basically children of this parent agent and
it decides for you what agent to use when that's
the big idea and i'm going to go ahead and select
create and i'm going to click on new agent and
i'm just going to select create over here because
you know, we want to do some more advanced things.
So let's just look at the full organization of
what we can do when we're building an agent.
It's going to take one second to populate over
here. Now, what I want to mention real quick,
I don't know if you have all caught this as I
was sharing my screen, but what's new is right
here, this agents. This didn't exist before.
This is where you can add other agents or build
in your lightweight agents we're going to select
edit and we're just going to give it a name let's
call it like master agent okay i'm going to click
save and i like to always click save because
sometimes it actually tries to auto save and
you end up missing some information i'm going
to click edit again i'm going to change the icon
and i have a pretty cool picture here that i
want to use which is here this is our master
agent i'm going to click on save so this is going
to be the picture of the agent and it already
kind of changed it let's put master agent and
for the description we'll say this agent knows
about three other agents And the description
is more for other people to know what it is.
It doesn't impact the way the agent works. It's
the instructions that are important. So what
we're going to do before we... Actually, I'm
going to click save again. Before we put in the
instructions, I'm going to show you how to connect
these agents. And it's very easy to do. So I'm
going to select agents over here. But you can
also scroll down over here and select add agent.
Now, this is where all the magic happens, right?
And you can see it's in preview at the moment.
You can either create an agent, which is that
lightweight agent that we've talked about. So
it just lives inside this. But what I like to
do is connect to an existing agent. And so you
can see there's Copilot Studio, Microsoft Fabric,
Azure AI Foundry is coming soon. It's grayed
out. And the 365 Agents SDK is grayed out, coming
soon as well. So I'm going to go ahead and select
Copilot Studio. and i'm going to go ahead and
select those three so first i want to select
this team's technical helper and everything here
looks good it's just kind of grabbing the information
from what the description is that it does it's
going to pass the conversation history and it's
easy as selecting this add agent at the bottom
right hand side that's all it does it just connects
this agent to that agent and now you can see
under agents this is one of them okay very good
Let's go ahead and add the other one. We're going
to select Copilot Studio. I'm going to go ahead
and select Vacation Heaven. And it grabs everything.
And I'm going to go ahead and select Add Agent
on the bottom over here. So that's the next one.
So now there's two here in the list. I'm going
to go ahead and select Add Agent. Again, Copilot
Studio. And I'm going to select this HR Benefits
Helper. Grabs everything. Everything looks good.
It's all just default Add Agent. And connecting
the master agent to these three agents is just
as simple as that. Now we have all these three.
Now with respect to anything else in terms of
suggested prompts or topics, we can go ahead
and edit these, but I don't really need to do
anything. It's going to be a very simple agent.
And here in terms of the instructions, which
we definitely need to give it, I'm going to select
edit. And I'm going to say something like, you
are aware of three other agents and based on
the input you receive you decide which agent
to engage and let's just leave it at that and
see what it does now the thing is with your prompting
and instructions is if you need to be more clear
if it doesn't function the way you expected That's
fine. You can always come in here. And I don't
know if you knew about this. This is new. But
you can come in here and say something like,
use this agent. And then you can put slash. And
then this menu comes up. Let's do that again.
Slash. And then you can basically go to agent
over here. And then you can select this, like
say, vacation heaven. And you can say, use this
agent when you get these types of questions.
I don't think we need to do that we're giving
it the most simple instructions and let's see
how how intelligent AI is by just basing what
we expected to do by this okay now I'm going
to go ahead and click save and with that the
most simple master agent using multi -agent orchestration
let's go ahead and use test your agent that is
on the right hand side here so i'm going to go
ahead and just refresh this just in case and
then let's ask it a question like the one for
the teams helper right so let's say something
like um what type of license does team's phone
require let's see what happens here okay so it's
in progress let's see what happens It went to
the team's technical helper. So pick the right
agent. And basically it came back with this response.
Team's phone standard license, calling plans,
all this kind of stuff. And it's using the right
agent for the question that we asked. Okay. So
that's good. Now let's ask it a benefits question.
What. are my 401k benefits benefits let's see
what it does here look it went to the hr benefits
helper and now it's checking the knowledge sources
for the hr benefits helper there was five of
them in the sharepoint site and then it went
to the right one the 401k benefits and then here
it is 401k benefits, contribution limit, this
and that, all that good stuff is there. Okay.
And now let's ask it about, let's look at somebody
else's vacation benefit. Sorry, vacation hours
left. So it looks like Bob has 70 hours left.
So let's go ahead and ask, how much vacation
does Bob have? See what it does. It went to the
vacation heaven. it connected to the service
now we have to connect because i just built this
agent so the first time you have to connect it
so let me do that and i got to connect a couple
of different points of this agent and it should
just be using the credentials so this one connected
and i'm showing you all this because if this
happens for you then you know the steps to be
able to connect to your agent you know this is
kind of standard click submit that looks good
let's go back to our agent and go ahead and basically
ask the same question again how much vacation
does bob have and before we do let's just refresh
our memory i think the answer is 70 right bob
has 70 so we're going to go ahead and ask that
click send processing. Boom. Bob has 70 hours
of vacation left. So I think it's pretty cool,
right? If you look at this, based on the questions
that we asked, it knew which child agent to engage
with the most simple instruction that we ever
gave it, which is just that you're aware of three
other agents. And based on the input you receive,
you decide which agent to engage. And it did
just that. We didn't need to go any further.
Now, let's go a step further and publish this
so that it also shows up inside Teams. And I'll
just kind of round this out for you. So what
I want to do is I'm going to select on this plus
two over here because there's a couple of items
that are not missing, that are missing. And I'm
going to select channels. Get rid of this. I'm
going to select Teams on M365. And I'm going
to go ahead on the bottom right, I'm going to
select add channel. And I'm going to go ahead
and publish it because I actually forgot to publish
it. You always have to publish your agent. So
let's publish this. All right. So it was published.
And then if we look over here under, I can go
ahead and edit the details. And let me go ahead
and select that. So this was built using Microsoft
Copilot Studio. And I can go ahead and change
the icon because I like that. This master, this
king here. And I'll put that as the icon and
change the color as white. Looks better. And
then over here, you can select more. And I always
like to make the developer Shafi Studios. And
then go ahead and save. You can make the developer
yourself or your company. And then I'm going
to click on availability options. And I'm going
to copy the link. and then if i go back to teams
and go to any chat i can just go ahead and drop
this link in there and so this is the master
agent and when i select it you can basically
see that it says master agent shafi studios and
select add and this adds it to my Copilot profile
inside Teams. And I can go ahead and open it.
Okay, so we are in the master agent and you can
also see that basically we have those other three
agents from before as well as the master agent.
And let me tell you this, I'm so confident that
the master agent basically replaces all the other
ones that I'm just gonna uninstall the other
three agents. And I'll show you in just a second.
We already saw it as a test inside Copilot Studio.
but why have so many agents that's that was the
whole point of this right the whole point of
it was to avoid agent sprawl so ultimately you
will end up with an agent like this in your environment
one agent to replace all the other agents so
here we are in the master agent and we can ask
it some questions that kind of similar like what
we did before we can say tell me about my ESPP
benefits And this should go to one of those three
agents and pull that information for us. So let's
give it a second and see what it comes back with.
All right, there it is, all about the ESPP benefits.
And now we can ask it something like, what is
the QZAP? And this should actually engage the
Teams admin guide, that agent. Let's see what
it comes back with. okay so it says basically
the queues app in microsoft teams is a solution
for managing customer engagement sufficiently
it offers features like call queue management
and real -time metrics historical reporting perfect
that's exactly what it is and now let's say something
like i'd like to book vacation so this should
engage that vacation agent that has a service
now connection let's see what it comes back to
it how many hours do we want to book let's book
20 hours and let's do this for sami okay your
vacation has been booked and so here is the servicenow
database and right now sami has 75 hours booked
we did 20 so this should bump up to 95 and then
this should come down to 105 so 95 and 105. let's
refresh this and see what happens boom 95 and
105 boom so basically it's able to replace all
three of our agents with one getting rid of agent
sprawl this is a simple use case for multi -agent
orchestration but i hope you enjoyed this video
if you learned something and you did enjoy it
make sure you give it a thumbs up and consider
sharing it with other people if you have any
questions drop them in the comments let me know
what you thought of about the video and this
feature and i will catch you on the next one