I want to show you one of each of these three
different types of agents as part of the Copilot
Agent Spectrum, starting with the left -hand
side, the simplest type of agent, which I built
using Agent Builder, a no -code environment where
you can develop very simple but powerful agents.
So I very affectionately call this agent the
HR miracle worker because it tells me all about
my company benefits. I have it pointed to a SharePoint
site that has all the information about my 401k
vacation medical and it does a great job of telling
me all about that information. Now, this is the
simplest type of agent and basically it retrieves
information that it's grounded on and it reasons
over it and summarizes it. Does a great job.
Now, I actually built this agent step by step
in a previous video. So if you want to know how
to build it, check out that video. But today
we're going to do a demo so I can show you the
spectrum of agents going from one to the next.
Now, what I've never shown before is this center
one called the HR Miracle Worker Pro Edition.
And I used Copilot Studio to develop it. And
what makes it pro is that it has integration
to ServiceNow for read and write. so that i can
use it to book my vacation days so basically
that makes it a task based agent because it can
take actions based on questions that i ask it
like booking vacation days automates workflows
and replaces repetitive tasks and that is generally
available today now on the far right hand side
we have the most advanced type of agents which
is an autonomous agent And again, using Copilot
Studio, I built an agent that I like to call
the InBot. This little autonomous bot automatically
answers all the questions that come into my email.
So I never have to answer these questions anymore.
It's super awesome. And I actually built this
agent in a previous video step -by -step that
you can check out as well. And so this agent
is operating independently. and there are other
types of agents that can orchestrate other agents
these are actually in preview at the moment but
before we jump in to the demo i wanted to do
a level set because some of you might be new
to co -pilot agents and needed a little bit of
a level set to kind of have all this stuff make
sense first there's one question that is on everyone's
mind and that is How are businesses using AI
to transform and drive impact? And I would say
that the key to driving impact is to apply AI
to your business processes. So here we have a
variety of different lines of business like customer
service and sales, finance, marketing, HR, legal,
and IT. And your company might have other lines
of business like engineering, for example. Each
line of business has specific workflows that
they're involved in. The key is, can we automate
these workflows per line of business? So if you
look at the HR one, for example, HR typically
has a workflow of recruiting where they post
a job, the job has a description, and then you
have hundreds of people that apply. Can you automate
this process using agents that basically look
at all the resumes? analyze them, parse them,
compare them to the job description and then
take four or five and send the team's message
with the resumes attached to the hiring manager
and say hey look I found you some potential candidates.
The answer is yes but this is the idea around
basically using agents to automate processes.
Now the thing is that when most people think
about Microsoft and AI They think about Microsoft
365 Copilot, which is your AI assistant for work.
It's wonderful because you can use business chat
to ask it questions about your emails and Teams
messages and help you prep for your upcoming
meetings. And it lives inside your applications
as well, like Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and so
on. But the key is that when you move into this
extensibility layer over here, That's when you
can start to use tools like Copilot Studio to
create agents, which I think is really the future.
And you can also measure and adopt and look at
all these different tools, reports, analytics,
and we have enterprise -grade security to kind
of wrap all around it. But the other question
that most people have is, on one hand, you have
Copilot for productivity, which basically can...
augment human interaction work as your personal
assistant but realistically there are only as
many co -pilots as there are people there's a
one -to -one on the other hand if you think about
ai agents they're essentially expert systems
that work that they can work autonomously. They
don't have to. They work on behalf of a process
or a company. And there can be many, many more
agents as you build these agents, autonomous
or non, that you interact with. So there can
be a ton of them as you build them out. And one
last thing before I show you a demo. A lot of
people always ask me, hey, Sherv, agents are
wonderful, but we're the IT team and we're rolling
out. some of the ideas that you're sharing and
we want to be able to have some more control
over these right in terms of who can actually
create these agents who can publish them reports
cost and i'll say that overall we have very good
tools in place and some of them are listed here
today from an agent builder perspective copilot
studio and sharepoint but of course As each day
goes by, we're adding more and more tools. So
stay tuned, but some of this might be sufficient
for you to basically implement and roll out these
amazing agents. With that, let's jump into the
demo. All right, so let's look at the simplest
agent, the retrieval -based agent. And what you're
looking at here is basically Microsoft Teams.
And I'm in the Work tab, and this is the Microsoft
365 Copilot. and on the right hand side here
we have the hr miracle worker and also the pro
edition so i'm just going to select hr miracle
worker so we look at this simple retrieval based
agent and i have these six different starter
prompts so if i select something like employee
reviews it's basically going to go to this sharepoint
site where i have information about these types
of topics and it's going to generate a response
based on that question that I asked it. So it's
telling me all about my stock options and bonuses
and all kinds of good stuff about employee reviews.
And it also shares this document. So when I select
the document, because I have access to that SharePoint
site, I can ask the agent, but I can also look
at the document itself. So here it is if I wanted
additional information. And now going back to
Teams, here I can ask more questions. I can do
a new chat. and the sharepoint site itself if
you are curious is this and basically if i select
on the top right hand side this wheel icon and
go to the site contents there's a documents folder
here where all these different documents about
my 401k and holiday and sick everything is there
so questions that i asked the agent are basically
going to this site and generating responses from
the information in these documents but how I
built this agent was very easy I basically selected
create an agent and this is agent builder which
is actually part of Microsoft Copilot studio
and you can go ahead and start describing the
agent and I have a video where I built this agent
step -by -step so check that out if you want
to look at all the steps involved we're just
doing a quick review here but if i select my
copilot agent i can actually select agents that
i've built in the past so when i select the hr
miracle worker and i'm in the configure tab i
can make changes to the icon for example the
name of the agent the description the instructions
all these are very important right you're telling
the agent how to behave and then the knowledge
source section over here you can see these are
those same documents that were in the SharePoint
site so when I select browse these are all the
different SharePoint sites that I have access
to my tenant and in the HR SharePoint site these
are the documents that I'm using and so if somebody
updates those documents the agent also gets updated
and there's other things coming soon like actions
also on the starter prompts when i told it tell
me about my employee review process it's because
i put the starter prompt in here but you can
go ahead and delete these and create your own
starter prompts if you wanted to now on the top
right hand side i can simply update this agent
if i've made any changes or i can click on share
and share it out with anyone in my company or
specific people so that's how you share these
types of agents and If everything looks good,
we're going to exit out of here. And very simple
but powerful agent because people don't have
to go to the SharePoint site anymore. They can
just ask questions from the agent. Now, here's
the pro version, right? Just right below it is
the HR Miracle Worker Pro. But before we do,
if you're finding value in this video, please
give it a like as it really does help the channel.
thank you very much for your support so the first
question is what makes it pro and i briefly mentioned
that it's because i have an integration to service
now so what i did was i went to service now and
i created this hr database for vacation data
and in here i gave it a bunch of different fields
so i said look i want you to have information
on vacation that people request somebody might
say i want 10 hours of vacation and what's their
balance right the vacation balance and what's
left and i also want their last name first name
and their email address so if we actually look
at the table i've populated it with some information
so there i am and we also have michael jordan
we have bob smith we have leonel messi and taylor
swift wow that's a amazing group of people and
so you can see taylor has a bunch of vacation
hours 300 and lionel has 120 and bob has 80 and
and so on right so this is the table now let's
go back to microsoft teams and see how this hr
miracle worker pro actually behaves right so
let's ask you the question like what are my 401k
benefits and i'm going to ask you that question
it should do the same thing as the regular version
because it's connected to a sharepoint site with
the same document so let's see what it says all
right so here it is the contoso's 401k offers
a variety of investments all that kind of good
stuff and then here's the document that i can
go ahead and select and open up and so here's
the document that it gave me access to if i wanted
to have more information there it is so it does
the same kind of thing right it retrieves information
but remember this is a task based agent because
we have integration not just for reading and
writing but it's accomplishing a task so what
is that task right part of part of that task
is us asking it about vacation information right
to that service now database that i showed you
let's ask you something like how many vacation
days does michael have what it's doing now is
it's using the service now connector that i put
together in copilot studio reaching out to that
database and looking at that information so it
says michael has a vacation balance of 50 days
and has requested 30 days of vacation so let's
quickly go back here and cross reference here's
michael He has a vacation balance of 50 and his
request of 30. Perfect. So that's accurate. We
know this is working. Now, in this case, I actually
have superpowers. I can look at everyone's vacation.
So in your scenario, you're going to want to
lock this down unless you want to have superpowers.
We'll ask it, how many vacation hours does everyone
have? So again, it's going to the table and it's
saying Bob has 80, Michael has 50, Shervin has
40. And remember, if you remember, Taylor had
300. So this is accurate. And again, this is
the chart. So this is all the information, 300,
120, 80. It's all coming here as well, right?
300, 120, and 80 for Bob. Okay, so that's fine,
but that's just read, right? What if we want
to write? So let's start off by saying, I want
to take some PTO, see what it says here. How
many vacation hours would you like to book? Let's
say 15. And then who is this vacation for? we'll
say for it's for taylor right because taylor
hasn't taken any and she has 300. all right it
came back and it said thank you for providing
we are updating your vacation hours and service
now all right so that's done and it says that
taylor's vacation hours have been successfully
updated she now has a vacation balance of 285
and has requested 15 because before it was zero
and 300 right now let's go double check our database
here i'm going to go ahead and refresh this notice
by the way before i refresh taylor has 300 and
zero so this should become 285 and 15. i'm going
to refresh this And then here it is 285 and 15
for Taylor Swift. All right. So we know this
agent is doing exactly what we've programmed
it to do. It's reading, it's writing, and it's
providing us information about basically our
401k benefits, vacation, medical, all HR related
type of stuff. So it's a retrieval agent that
we've amped up to become a task -based agent
with this integration to service now. Now, before
I show you how we actually built this, I'm not
going to give you all the details necessarily
because we don't have a ton of time, but I'll
show you high level how I was able to build it.
But I wanted to also show you, look, on the left
-hand side, you can also access this agent from
different places. So I can select. It has an
app, HR Miracle Worker here, and I can interact
with it here. So it doesn't have to be inside
Copilot. It can also be an app. And also if I
was in Copilot, and if I was in Copilot for Microsoft
365 on the top right -hand side, where I can
ask it about prepping for meetings and whatnot,
I can also app mention the agent. So I can app
mention like this and select any agent. So I
can select the original one or the pro one and
ask it questions. from here this was the demo
of the pro version i hope you like it but what
does it actually look like i want to select copilot
studio here and you can see these different agents
that i built and this is the inbot the autonomous
agent which is super cool and then this is the
hr miracle worker pro let's select that now what
you're going to see here is that there are a
lot of similarities because basically what i'm
saying here in the description is very much the
same as the description of the original one in
the agent builder but in the instructions i've
amped it up a little bit so it's basically saying
if they're retrieving information about their
vacation balance use this service now list records
action and then the general stuff just use the
knowledge sources okay so let's scroll down a
little bit this was the instruction section and
then you'll see that the knowledge section is
the same as before now here's one difference
this is the service now list records action and
this is what basically i was able to set up so
that the agent is using it to be able to connect
to this database that i've set up this is the
name of the database that i gave it and it's
able to connect to it Now let's go back. If you
wanted to connect other actions, you simply click
on this plus action and all the different actions,
you know, from Excel and whatever you want. If
I, if I wanted to search for something in Outlook,
we have a lot of different actions that you basically
can set up here. Or we even have things for that
are not Microsoft, like Google, for example,
we have a lot of different actions and connectors
that you can use. All right. Now I just basically
set up the service, not one. But you are probably
wondering, well, sure, what about the booking
of the vacation? Because this is a read. What
about the write? And so for that, what I did
was I actually went to topics and I created this
topic called booking vacation and I created a
flow. And basically I said, look, this is a trigger.
So anytime somebody asks about PTO and vacation,
wake up. And when you wake up, the first thing
you do is you ask a question like, how many vacation
hours would you like to book? And you guys all
saw that in the demo. The next question you ask,
and by the way, you take a note of that in this
variable. The next thing that you do is you say,
who is this vacation for? And you take a note
of that in this variable. And then this is where
the rubber meets the road, right? Then this action
is actually a custom. ServiceNow flow connector.
So what we're going to do is I'm going to open
this up and this is the flow that I actually
developed. You can kind of see some high level
information about it. And when I select edit,
you'll see the flow itself. So this is the flow.
First, you come in from Copilot and then the
first thing you do is you get all the different
records. So you get the information about everyone's
vacation balances. And then the next thing you
do is you update the records based on the information
that is given to you. Like I want to book five
hours of vacation. Now, I got to say that this
stuff, like the formulas that I put together
for vacation hours requested or vacation hour
balance, this actually took me some time. But
Copilot was able to help me by creating an expression
in both of these cases. but i did i'm not a power
platforms person but it took me a little bit
of time to figure it out but maybe for the power
platforms people out there this is easy so just
heads up on that there is a little bit of coding
involved in this and that's the difference of
like the no code or zero coding to like low code
and then pro code right so a little bit of elbow
grease is involved as you're developing this
and then finally you respond to copilot so that's
what the flow is but when we go back to the topics
basically from that point on the last thing was
like thank you for providing the details and
that was a message that was sent out so this
is the process of booking vacation days and then
getting the vacation days was basically that
action of listing the records using the instructions
that i gave it up here all right so i hope that
makes sense and i will also say that ultimately
you end up not just publishing it but deciding
what channels you want this to exist in right
so you have to select channels and you end up
putting it inside teams like i did or if you
want to put it in a custom website so it's up
to you but this process has to happen as well
moving to the last type of agent which is that
autonomous agent this is my inbot that i created
and you can see the full video on how i created
it but i just want to kind of let you all know
the progression of going from retrieval to task
to autonomous. And honestly, I'll say that most
of this in terms of the instructions and the
description isn't that different than what I
did for the HR Miracle Worker Pro. The only thing
that makes this different is I told it what to
do in the instructions and this is all based
on emails coming in and emails that it sends
to me. um this is the trigger and this is the
action and i didn't do anything on the topic
side but it's basically when you have a trigger
like this and you can see it's in preview at
the moment that's what makes it autonomous because
it's basically out there looking for this activity
and then it wakes up and takes action now in
terms of a quick demo basically this is the outlook
of the person that is using this autonomous agent
right so their inbox is empty and then they also
on the bottom left hand side they have this inbox
folder this is where the emails come in from
the inbox but regular emails obviously come into
the inbox so if i go ahead and send this person
an email we'll say hello And then here we'll
just say, nice to meet you. Can you tell me more
about Teams Premium? What are the main features
of Teams Phone? And then on the Copilot side,
we'll ask it, how can I build an agent using
Copilot Studio? All right, let's send that off.
And we're just going to wait here for this email
to arrive in my inbox. And there it is. So nice
to meet you. Can you tell me more about Teams
Premium, Teams Phone, and... how can i build
an agent using cobalt studio okay so we got to
wait a little bit for something to appear in
inbot and so there it is it just came in in bot
i'm going to select it i'm going to open this
up and let's see what our autonomous agent put
together for us teams premium is an add -on license
you can refer to documentation here main features
of teen phone call auto attendant call queues
real -time metrics documentation is here and
building an agent using copilot studio gives
us some instructions and more information here
so all the different links and basically in my
instructions i also asked it to give me some
questions so i can ask additional clarifying
questions from the customer and by the way notice
that this comes to me and not to the customer
directly because i designed it that way so that
i can review it before the customer gets it So
that's the autonomous agent. And I guess we'll
wrap by trying to identify and comparing these
different types of tools and building these retrieval
and task and autonomous agents. And when we look
at them over here, just kind of high level, and
one of them isn't even here, it's inside Teams
and the way we built it inside Copilot. i would
say that agent builder is the simplest way right
to build these agents the hr miracle worker you
just click on create an agent and go from there
it's all encompassing all inside and very easy
to do but it's missing the connection pieces
so if you wanted to connect to a data source
outside of microsoft which i guess would be the
actions piece that's coming to agent builder
that's when you go to copilot studio and Here
we were able to use the ServiceNow connector
and Power Automate flows inside Topics to basically
do read and write to our ServiceNow database.
And then finally, back to Copilot Studio, the
Autonomous Agent, I guess the thing that makes
that super cool, it's all the different use cases
you come up with, but... It's the trigger that
makes it autonomous. If you have a trigger or
if you have multiple triggers that's looking
for some kind of activity, for us, it's an email
coming in. That's the key here with these autonomous
agents. But they could be very similar to task
-based agents. And so I've said this before.
These agents just basically build on each other.
You can go from one to the next. And that's why
we call it a spectrum. There's many shades within
the spectrum. Having said all that, I hope you
have a good understanding now of these different
types of agents. I do want to mention a couple
of other things. One, a lot of people ask me
about access to Microsoft Copilot Studio. They
want to start building these types of agents
themselves. And I'll drop this link in the description,
but you can very simply go and get yourself a
free trial of Copilot Studio. But here's the
thing. this is for work and for education so
you have to have a work account and what i would
recommend if you don't is you can actually sign
up for a free trial for microsoft 365 business
standard and so here if you actually select plans
and pricing you'll see a variety of different
plans for business all of which seem to have
a free one month trial so my suggestion is look
if you don't have access to work account and
you can't get copilot studio because of that
get this type of a trial and then go ahead and
log in with the credentials that you get from
it into copilot studio and you should be good
and another question a lot of people ask me is
around pricing of these agents and so this is
a very good article that first came out on the
15th of january But since then, it's been updated.
Just yesterday, actually, 3 .25. I'll drop this
in the description. But if you scroll down, it
talks about consumption with agents. If you're
just using Copilot Studio. And it talks about
how agents use messages, which cost about a penny
a message. And the concept of messages is kind
of explained here in terms of... what kind of
messages there are web grounded classic generative
and it explains what these are below and it gives
you some examples of autonomous actions and calculating
agents costs and so on so for those of you who
are interested in kind of building these agents
but are concerned about the cost then i would
definitely check out this article because it
has updated pricing as well and one other thing
that i'll mention is that this is talking about
if you just have copilot studio and you don't
have the microsoft 365 copilot license so some
of you that have that m365 copilot license that's
a very feature -rich license and that actually
gives you a web grounded answers classic answers
generative answers and tenant grounding for messages
and agent actions all except for autonomous agents
actions okay so that's the distinction but if
it's like regular actions like that service now
connector that i showed all of these are included
uh with the m365 copilot license again just minus
the autonomous action so you get a lot of value
with that m365 copilot license but if you don't
have it then you can basically pay as you go
as a copilot studio user without having that
m365 license so check out this article that does
a good job of explaining kind of like the pricing
of these agents as you build them out and also
how to manage them thanks again for watching
i hope you enjoyed it if you did please give
this video a like share comment and let me know
what you'd like to see next and i'll catch you
on the next one