Microsoft is giving developers more abilities to make their own customized Copilot generative AI assistants via the Copilot Studio tools. Today, as part of its Build 2024 conference, Microsoft stated that Copilot Studio will add new functions that will let developers create custom Copilots that can act like automated agents for their business:
These new capabilities will allow users to delegate authority to Copilot to automate long-running business processes, reason over actions and user inputs, leverage memory and knowledge for context, learn based on user feedback and exception requests and ask for help when it encounters situations that it doesn’t know how to handle.
The agents feature for Copilot Studio is available as an Early Access program, but there"s no word on when it will become generally available.
Developers will also be able to use Copilot Studio to publish any Copilot extensions they have made to Copilot for Microsoft 365, along with direct publishing access to Microsoft Teams. It stated:
Copilot extensions built with Copilot Studio will allow developers to customize copilots with instructions, knowledge from data sources and actions from plugins, Microsoft Power Automate flows and more. They will be simple to build and will enable extensibility and customization for specific domains or personas, such as expense reporting or employee onboarding, enabling a more relevant and personalized copilot experience.
Microsoft added that Copilot extensions will be published via the company"s Partner Center so that users will be able to get them not only through the store in Copilot but also from other Microsoft 365 app stores that are available for Teams and Outlook apps, among others.
Another feature in the works for Microsoft"s Copilot Studio is Copilot connections:
Copilot connectors in Copilot Studio, in preview, will bring together Microsoft Graph and Power Platform connectors, AI skills in Microsoft Fabric (in private preview) and Microsoft Dataverse to make the process of grounding copilots in first- and third-party line-of-business data a wizard-based experience configured through Copilot Studio. This will enable developers to quickly incorporate their organizational knowledge into copilots, enable new actions and add real-time intelligent Q&A over productivity, operational and analytical data.
Copilot Studios will also include pre-built templates so developers won"t have to begin making a new customized Copilot service completely from scratch. This feature, currently available in a preview version, will have templates for features like a Copilot IT helpdesk, order tracking, travel help and more.