Today I'm going to show you how to build a simple
and free copilot agent. Almost every business
and enterprise account comes with something called
copilot chat. No additional licensing necessary
and copilot chat actually allows you to build
simple copilot agents. But these can be very
powerful if you know some tips. So in this video
we're going to build a simple agent and you can
follow along and build it for yourself. My name
is Shervin Shafi and I'm a Co -Pilot Principal
Engineer at Microsoft. Welcome to Collaboration
Simplified. Now the first thing we're going to
do is we're going to log in to Copilot. So I've
opened up a web browser here and I'm going to
type in m365copilot .com and this will actually
log me into Copilot. Now there's a bunch of different
ways of logging in. You can actually access Copilot
from inside Teams which is what this user is
doing. They've logged in through Microsoft Teams
and they have Copilot on the left rail here.
You can also access Copilot using the M365 Copilot
app, which is on my taskbar below here. And by
the way, if you don't have Copilot, you can go
to this web link. I'll drop this in the description.
And you can download the Copilot app. Here, because
I'm on a Windows machine, it gives me the option
to download it for Windows. But if you were logged
in from a Macintosh, you'd be able to download
this for a Mac as well. So there's a lot of different
ways of accessing M365 Copilot. But regardless,
when you've actually logged in, you can see that
there's a section here for chat, but you can
also create an agent, which is what we're going
to do in this video. So very simply, I'm just
going to select create agent. And then on the
right hand side, this brings up another window
for me that says Copilot Studio. This is a new
agent over here. and i can describe or i can
configure my agent and then there's a bunch of
things here in terms of like different templates
and we'll review all this in one second and just
kind of going from the top down when i select
this new agent that's in blue here i can select
view all agents now because i don't have any
other agents nothing is listed here but as you
build your agents you can always go back here
And you can see all your agents. Now I'm going
to select create new agent, which again takes
me back to that screen. And under describe here,
you can see that there are a few templates listed
here. There's one for career coach, and you can
see these are all made by Microsoft. There's
another one for customer insights, idea coach,
and then you can actually view all templates.
So when we select that, it gives us a longer
list of templates. I actually found this one
kind of interesting, this quiz tutor. And so
when I select that, it actually brings up this
section here. You can see things got filled up
on the right -hand side because it's a template.
It already has a lot of information in there.
And then there's also a link here for documentation.
So when you select that, it opens up another
web browser page for you where there's more information
about this quiz tutor template that you can check
out. and while we're here if you look on the
left hand side actually all these different templates
that were listed the career coach the idea coach
interview assistant they're all listed here so
if you want more information on any one of these
you can always look them up here so going back
to this quiz tutor go ahead and configure it
you'll see that It already populated everything
in here. It has a name. It has this logo for
you. It has a description. And by the way, this
is kind of interesting. If you click on this,
you can drag it up and down to make these boxes
larger. So the description is here. The instructions
are here. So these are all key components of
an agent, right? And if we back up one second,
the main reason why you'd want to make an agent
is. If you in your job, and all of us have activities
like this, are doing something over and over
again that involves analysis, reasoning, logic,
summarization, these are things that AI shines
in, right? It can just basically offload all
that busy work, if you will, and you can create
an automation process. So that's why you'd want
to make an agent. And these templates are examples
of agents that you can just simply use and you
don't have to do any customization but in this
case we're doing we're going to customize this
quiz tutor just a little bit so that we can take
advantage of copilot chat you see one kind of
thing that copilot chat's missing that the licensed
users have is that you can't actually go down
to this knowledge section here and it's kind
of limited you can basically only put in public
URLs, public websites, but you can't attach any
files. You can't attach any SharePoint sites,
anything like that. So it's kind of limited in
that way. But here's the tip. The tip is that
in your instructions, you can actually say, ask
me for the file. And so when the agent's running,
it'll ask you for the file and then you attach
it. So there's kind of workarounds and I'll show
you what I mean in just one second. So if we
look at this quiz one, it's basically designed
to test your knowledge on something, right? And
here, if you look at the instructions, it says,
you are an agent called the quiz tutor who creates
interactive, fun, and engaging quizzes. And it
gives instructions on how to create engaging
quizzes, develop fun bite -sized quizzes, ensure
the quizzes are interactive. And you can get
rid of these. You can edit them. You can do whatever
you want, right? But in the interest of time,
we're going to leave this as is. This gives you
an idea of how to write these agents. You can
just reuse these templates for your own custom
agent that you built. Now, over here, if we go
all the way down to this section where it says
start quiz, you can see all these suggested prompts
actually show up. when the agent is built so
end users end up seeing this and this first one
that says create a fun quiz on these files we're
going to say create a fun quiz based on this
website okay so then we can feed it the website
i'll come back and i'll cover some of these other
details but if everything kind of looks good
and it should because this template's pretty
thorough You can then go ahead on the top right
hand side and select create. So we're going to
go ahead and select create. And this creates
the agent, but also it puts it on the left rail
for you. So you'll see that in just one second
here. So the agent was successfully created.
And I don't know if you noticed, but it just
popped up on the left hand side. And we can go
to agent. We can share it with other people.
There's a lot of stuff you can do. We'll come
back to this. So let's just go to the agent.
which basically selects it for me from the left
rail here and all of that stuff that you saw
those kind of questions they show up here right
so here if we select this one that we edited
slightly create a fun quiz based on this website
we select it and then we hit this blue arrow
this sends a prompt to the agent and let's see
what it says it says Could you please share the
URL of the website that you want the quizzes
based on? So if we give it a website, like if
we go to this Copilot Building Agents with Copilot
Studio, and this is actually for the Copilot
Studio that we're using, the Light Experience,
formerly known as Copilot Studio Agent Builder.
If we go ahead and grab this link, copy it. and
go back to our session here and just paste it
in here let's see what it does let's see if it
can generate a quiz for us right so it says question
one true or false copilot studio lite allows
developers to build co -pilots using only power
platform tools i think the answer here is false
so i'm going to put in b and hit enter. Let's
see if I was right. Basically came back and it
says, correct. B, false is the right answer.
It's designed to allow developers to build copilots.
So that was one. And then it gives you another
question. Now you get the point, right? So that
was a very, very simple agent that we built basically
using a template. And I would suggest that you
go and look at all the different templates. Maybe
there are some other ones that you want to create.
So all you got to do, if you want to do that,
you basically go back to create an agent on the
left. rail here and then as you're building it
you click on templates you look at all these
different ones like maybe you want to create
a writing coach or a meeting coach and it explains
what these are and then you go through that process
now let's create a custom one now let's start
from the beginning right let's say i was just
like in copilot chat And on the left hand side,
I decide to create an agent. So I select create
agent. And you get this describe and configure.
And this time around, I'm going to just actually
select configure. And when I select configure,
instead of using any of these templates, because
it still gives you that option here, you can
actually drag down and use these templates. I'm
not going to use any of them. I'm going to create
my own agent. job postings and resumes so if
i work at a company and i'm scanning a bunch
of resumes for a particular position i want to
determine which candidates are the most qualified
so this can normally be a very tedious task where
you have to look at all these resumes and compare
them to the job posting but i want to build an
agent that does this for me let's give it a name
first and i'm going to call this the position
pal it'll find the right candidate for the position
And over here on the details side, you can select
this pencil icon to basically give it an image,
change the icon. And here I'm going to upload
an icon. And I found this kind of cool picture
of this guy here. Looks kind of like Einstein.
And I'm going to use this guy's face as my position
pal agent. And I'm going to describe the agent.
This agent reviews resumes. and compares it to
a job posting ranking the candidates so that's
the description now from an instructions perspective
compare resumes of candidates to the job posting
and assess how they compare to the job create
a table and rate each candidate for various categories
as for the candidates resumes if you don't have
them this is key right because we can't actually
pre -attach documents using copilot chat but
you can tell the agent to ask you for the resumes
also ask for the job posting if you don't have
it So fairly simple instructions. You can look
at the templates to get more ideas like use a
professional tone, be courteous, be funny. You
can tell it all these kinds of things, right?
But we'll leave all that out for now. Now, from
a knowledge source perspective, you can put in
different public links or all websites, but here
we're not going to do anything because each job
posting, we're going to have the agent ask us
for the link and we're going to give it to it.
Now, these are interesting, code interpreter
and image interpreter. These are things that
you can actually toggle on or leave off. And
so if you want to find out more information about
code interpreter or image interpreter, you can
just kind of select this. But there's actually
a website here that I'll drop the link in the
description. And it talks about what the code
interpreter does. And when you enable it, it
can create graphs for you, graphs like this based
on a prompt. It can create charts for you. It
can do a lot of cool stuff that normally you
wouldn't be able to do. And then the image generator
basically is able to create different images
for you based on prompts that you put in. So
if you wanted your agent to be able to create
those types of charts or create images, then
you basically come here and you toggle it on.
Now, in this case, I'm going to put in the code
interpreter. There's nothing to lose by enabling
it. But if you find that there's issues when
you enable them, then come back and edit the
agent and disable it. I'll show you how to edit
the agent afterwards as well. Now, in terms of
like suggested prompts that you could use for
this agent, let's look at some of these things
that we can put in. So first one, we're going
to call resumes and the message is going to be,
please share with me the job and resumes for
a comparison. So this should prompt you for both
of those. another one we can do maybe later on
is call it bar chart and we'll say show a bar
chart of skills rated out of 10 for each candidate
another one that we can put in is candidate summary
and we can say something like summarize key strengths
and gaps for each candidate. Now, you can always
come back and delete these or change them or
even move the order around. But for now, we'll
leave them. And as I was typing them, you probably
saw that this was getting populated on the right
-hand side. Now, here you can actually test it
out. You can go ahead and select one of these
or type something in and test out your agent
before you select create. But for some reason,
I always like to just create it and come back
and edit it. So that's just personal preference.
So with that, what I'm going to do is I'm going
to select create and give it a second to get
created. And so it says your agent was created
and you can go to the agent. You can dismiss.
And here I also wanted to show you, it says this
link works only for you. Change the sharing settings.
So if you select that. This is where you can
basically either copy this and share it with
other people or instead of this link works only
for you, that link, you can say, no, I want this
to be allowed to anyone in the organization or
specific users in the organization. So with that,
I'm going to dismiss it. And if you look on the
left -hand side here under my agents, now I have
position pal and I have that quiz tutor. So let's
select position pal and let's just kind of walk
through it. So first you can see, you know, the
picture and the logo and the name and it's created
by me and those different prompts that I put
in. Now let's just go ahead and put in this resumes
one. It says, please share with me the job. resumes
for a comparison I'm gonna go ahead and hit enter
and it says sure could you please share these
documents with me so the job posting I found
the job posting here on the Microsoft site that's
a very recent one for a software engineer this
is a typical job posting that Microsoft has so
I'm gonna go ahead and copy it go back to this
and then said this is the job posting And it
says, thanks for sharing the job posting. Feel
free to send over the resumes when you are ready.
And here I'm going to go ahead and click this
plus add. And I'm going to go ahead and add my
work content. You can also add files and images
from your hard drive, cloud files. But this one
is simple, add work content. So experiment to
see which one works for you. And here, recent
documents show up. So I have three resumes that
I just added to my OneDrive recently. One is
for Sofia Ramirez. Another one, if I select add
work content, is for Daniel Brooks. And another
one, if I add work content, is for Alex Carter.
Now these are all fictitious people that are
applying for this job posting. but let's go ahead
and see what it does when we upload these resumes
now that we've given it the job posting all right
so it's come back with this information and this
chart right where basically it's looking at all
the resumes it's looking on the criteria on the
left hand side the experience level programming
languages all kinds of stuff for sophia alex
and daniel and you can see there's a big difference
between sophia working for 20 years and alex
for three years and They're experienced in programming
languages and technology and all this stuff,
right? So it's actually a very detailed, long
table. And then overall fit, this is kind of
like the money shot, right? This is telling you,
okay, so this person is excellent, this person
is strong, and this person is developing two
stars. And it gives you a summary. Now, one of
the really cool things here is if you notice
on the bottom, you have these different icons.
This is to copy. This is a thumbs up, thumbs
down. This is for you to have it read it to you.
And then this is my favorite one. This is actually
pages. So if you select edit in pages, it opens
up a window on the right hand side. and it basically
puts the output of this agent into this thing
called pages that now you can actually keep it
you can edit it very easily and then once you've
edited it you can go ahead on the top right side
here you can export it to word you can share
with other people so there's all kinds of cool
stuff that you can do with pages so we're going
to go ahead and x this out for now and come back
to this agent and see what else we can do. Now,
if you remember, we put a bunch of prompts in,
right? But instead of selecting this icon here,
which starts a new chat, what you want to do
is you want to go on the bottom here and select
this icon here. When you select that, it looks
at those prompts that we already created, like
the bar chart one, the candidate summary. And
let's go ahead and say, look, create a bar chart
for me. um and see what it does there all right
so it came back and it created this really cool
looking picture for me and it basically has the
different people sophia alex and daniel in different
colors and it has the technologies on the bottom
and then it has a ranking out of 10. for these
skills and this is something that you can copy
you can download and you can insert into your
document a really good next thing to do again
is to keep adding these to your pages because
you can export them all into a word document
if you wanted to later on but instead of actually
hitting this icon you want to hit this arrow
next to it and what that does is you can add
it to a recent page which is what we just created
for the first prompt which is this one And when
we select that, it basically adds it to the bottom
half of that page. So here it is. This is the
chart that got added. And then in the beginning,
we have the table form as well. Now, this is
all they're captured for us. We can just X out
of it for now. And again, you can do other things.
You can select view prompts on the bottom and
you can do a candidate summary. You can see what
it does and then add it to pages and so on. But
you get the point. Now, this agent is doing a
fantastic job of Basically taking a lot of work
that you'd normally have to do and providing
it to you in a really nice summary. And you can
always write your custom prompts as well. But
you can also attach documents with Copilot Chat.
No additional license necessary. And you can
attach websites so you can do all kinds of cool
stuff. Now, one other thing I'll show you is
if you notice on the left -hand side where our
agents are, if you wanted to go edit it because
it wasn't performing the way you thought, you
can always come back to it. you can pin it you
can select these three dots for more and then
you can share it you can edit it you can uninstall
it so you can get rid of it so if i select edit
now this is where i can go ahead and maybe change
the instructions add different things to the
instructions move these prompts around all kinds
of cool stuff right so that's how you can edit
it and ultimately you can also click on up on
top in this blue area position pal and go to
view all agents and if you didn't want it anymore
you can just go ahead and delete it now one last
thing i'll show you real quick is if i go to
this other user that has m365 copilot inside
teams and i go ahead and i go and create an agent
on the left hand side this user they have the
m365 copilot license And I'll show you how you
know that in just one second. But when you go
to configure, even though it looks the same,
the one main feature that they have that the
Copilot chat users don't is that you can actually
add a lot of different knowledge sources. So
when you select this, you can attach files and
sites and chats and all kinds of cool stuff to
the agent. So it has it in its memory and it's
using it as a knowledge source. But I think the
workaround of just you telling it to ask you
for the site is just fine, right? Because you
don't have that license, but you can still have
a really powerful agent. And the way you know
that you have the license or you don't is if
you select M365 chat and you see here, this person
has work in web. Because they have work, you're
only using web as copilot chat. So this whole
thing is missing. But this is a dead giveaway
that this person has the license. Whereas when
we look at ours inside chat, we don't have that
working web and we don't have that license. But
who cares, right? We still have a lot of powerful
agents that we can make. I hope you found this
useful. Let me know about your experience. Create
your own custom agent. Tell me some of the cool
stuff that you've done. and honestly i just want
people to be empowered to be able to create these
agents and i think now that everyone has copilot
chat and you don't need an additional license
you can do a lot of really cool stuff now i will
say that i've done some very advanced agents
using the full version of copilot studio so if
you're interested in learning more about those
types of agents that actually require the license
Check out my playlist that goes through all those
different types of agents, like autonomous agents,
multi -agent orchestration, MCP, all kinds of
more advanced stuff. So keep it easy. Keep it
simple. I hope you enjoyed it. And I'll catch
you on the next one.