You can now include a SharePoint Lists within a SharePoint site as a knowledge source for your agents.

SharePoint Lists can provide additional grounding for agents for several scenarios, and generative answers can include relevant results from SharePoint Lists.

Makers can use SharePoint Lists by adding SharePoint as a knowledge source and then selecting relevant lists within recent lists or my lists.

Selecting a specific list will ensure all rows and columns are available for the agent based on the ACL restrictions specified for the SharePoint List.

This feature integrates the benefits of the power platform catalog to Microsoft Copilot Studio, enabling administrators to discover, install, and manage agents across power platform dataverse environments.

Before installing an agent, administrators can review and make corrections to the configurations, connections, and environment variables associated with the agent.

Installation status, details, and results can be tracked without deviating from the underlying work.

Admins and Makers can connect to third-party data sources using prebuilt extensions. Extensions combine connectors, topics, flows, and configuration files to quickly allow agents to access third-party data for domain-specific use cases such as prospect to cash, configure price quote, benefits and compensation, and IT helpdesk.

By introducing the WhatsApp channel in Copilot Studio, your makers can deploy their agents into WhatsApp in a few clicks.

The WhatsApp channel uses Azure Communication Services (ACS) as the bridge between the agents you create in Copilot Studio and your WhatsApp endpoint - the chat or group that the users of your agent will use to interact with the agent.

When you publish an agent to WhatsApp (after obtaining and connecting a WhatsApp for Business account to ACS), Copilot Studio fetches your WhatsApp configuration from ACS and lets you choose the number or endpoint where your agent should appear.

You can now deploy custom agents created in Copilot Studio directly to SharePoint sites. This lets your team interact with the agent in the context of shared documents, plans, or collaboration pages, without switching interfaces.

Once the SharePoint channel is configured, users will see a Copilot icon on the site. Clicking the icon opens the agent experience, allowing users to engage with the agent directly within the SharePoint environment.

The SharePoint channel respects the Authenticate with Microsoft setting by default, ensuring secure, identity-aware responses. It also follows existing data loss prevention (DLP) policies, and admins can manage its availability through the Power Platform admin center using DLP rules.

Makers must have write access to the SharePoint site in order to configure and deploy agents.

Often you will have a need to use an action in multiple Copilot deployments, however today you need to recreate the same action in each deployment to have the same experience.

This feature allows you to select a previously published connector action and publish it to additional Copilot deployments in their organization. For example, you can use a previously published connector from Copilot for Sales and publish it again for Copilot for Customer Service or other Copilot for Sales distributions.

This means you will be able to reuse important functionality without requiring them to reconfigure the same action multiple times.

The interface provides a Publish button that provides a list of all available endpoints within the environment that you can select from. You can then submit the actions to additional selected endpoints for administrator approval with a few simple clicks.

This feature is turned on by default and does not require any configuration to enable.

Previously, makers had to create and configure various agent tools in a separate location (the Library page in Copilot Studio) from the agents where they wanted to use the tools.

With this update, the new Tools page streamlines how makers can view, create, and use tools.

Tools listed on the page can be added directly to any agent within the environment where the tool was created, and makers can craft reusable and valuable tools across multiple agents in the same environment.

Tools available on the page include:

• prompts
• agent flows
• custom connectors
• REST APIs
• computer using actions (CUA)
• model context protocol

Makers can create and view tools on the Tools homepage and also select Add to agent to directly add selected tools to their agents.

This feature allows makers and admins to unpublish a previously published Copilot connector.

Copilot connectors allow makers to connect actions and activities from other services to Microsoft 365 Copilot. However, connectors may need to be disabled in certain scenarios. For example, the content or data being connected to is out of date, your business is no longer using a specific service, or you need to take it offline to make updates to the connector's configuration.

A maker can select a connector and unpublish it to return it to its draft state and prevent it from being shown as ready and usable in Microsoft 365 Copilot. When a published connector is returned to a draft state, its associated solutions will also be updated. Draft solutions can either be edited and published or deleted.

Admins in the environment can unpublish any connectors present; makers can only unpublish the connectors they own.

This applies to all Microsoft 365 Copilot agents, such as Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales. It doesn't apply to custom agents created in Microsoft Copilot Studio.

With enhanced visibility into how actions are being utilized within an agent, you can leverage analytics to drive actionable insights. This visibility allows you to understand usage patterns, identify areas for improvement, and optimize performance. By analyzing this data, you can make informed decisions, proactively address issues, and continuously refine your strategies to enhance user experience and operational efficiency.

The metrics provided will include answer rate, action usage rate, and error rate, giving you a comprehensive view of how users are interacting with actions.

Additionally, there will be a detailed breakdown of errors, allowing you to pinpoint specific issues and address them effectively. You can view how many times the extension was used by users in their organization over a period of time, providing valuable visibility as they iterate on the extension built. This experience will be available for connector, prompt, and REST API extensions.

By analyzing how often each action is used, which sources are utilized, and the error rates, you can improve the agent's effectiveness and reliability, leading to better user satisfaction and business outcomes.

This feature brings analytics specific to knowledge curation in Copilot Studio.

When working with knowledge sources in Copilot Studio, you can see valuable insights into the performance of your individual knowledge sources. You can view detailed metrics for the following, directly from the knowledge page in Copilot Studio:

Knowledge source usage: This metric shows the frequency of use for each knowledge source, helping you understand which sources are most popular or effective. Answer rate: This metric indicates the percentage of queries that were successfully answered using the knowledge sources, providing insight into their accuracy and reliability. Error rate: This metric tracks the number of errors encountered, allowing you to identify and address any issues with the knowledge sources.

By analyzing these metrics, you can make informed decisions to improve the performance and effectiveness of their knowledge sources.

Power Platform connectors play a critical role in allowing makers to build low-code apps, workflow automation, and AI agents. They provide seamless connectivity to various data sources.

With the release of this feature, you can now build enhanced Power Platform connectors on top of structured data. These connectors allow makers to leverage PowerFx while building apps, and use knowledge sources in agents built in Copilot Studio.

The Power Platform Connector SDK for structured data allows developers to build out a Web API that provides structured data. The Web API can then be registered as a connector in any Power platform environment as a connector with structured data. Doing so will automatically light up the enhanced experience for makers.

With this feature, you can use the simplified interface in Copilot Studio to quickly and easily build custom agents, either by using simple, natural language or manually.

You can author your custom agent in two ways:

• Via the Describe tab, using natural, conversational language.
• Via the Configure tab where you can build it manually.

Both tabs work seamlessly to provide a rich authoring experience.

The Describe tab allows you to create an agent using everyday natural language. As you provide information conversationally, the agent's name, description, instructions, and starter prompts update continuously to refine the agent's behavior.

This experience provides a rich yet simple natural language way to create a customized agent. You build agents in plain language by answering the questions asked in the Describe chat. This progressively updates the agent in each turn of the conversation, and changes are saved automatically.

You can make updates to the agent in any turn of the conversation. Changes to the agent's name, description, and instructions update automatically.

You can also add common knowledge sources, such as connecting to a public website or uploading a file by dragging and dropping into the field in the Describe tab.

In addition to using the Describe tab, you can also directly configure the agent's behavior using the Configure tab.

The Configure tab provides you with the ability to view and edit information about the agent, giving you more control and precision.

The Describe and Configure tabs stay in sync between your changes, so the fields in the Configure tab update to reflect the latest changes from the Describe tab. You can switch between the tabs to use the experience that is most comfortable to you to author the agent.

Agent Fields

The following table describes the fields that make up the agent:

Test Your Agent

The agent in the right pane is an ephemeral instance of the agent that shows up as a side-by-side screen within the authoring experience. You can use it to test the agent while you're creating or making updates to it. You can test your agent in the test pane to experience it in a similar way as end users would. The test pane is enabled as soon as the agent has a name, description, and instructions. It behaves according to those instructions like a fully-fledged agent, including the ability to respond to complex queries within its realm of specified knowledge. The agent updates during each turn of the conversation as new information is added in the Describe or Configure tab.

Building agents is an iterative process that goes through an author-edit-test cycle. Once you are satisfied with the initial setup of your agent, select Continue to complete the initial creation phase, beyond which you can deeper into the world of tools, triggers, and topics.

Connecting agents with the end user's work data with knowledge sources enhances the accuracy of the agent's responses through domain knowledge. The main challenge in knowledge source selection is identifying relevant data and its location.

With this update, we're rebuilding the experience in Copilot Studio when you select the data sources they want to use in their agent.

Previously, selecting data sources required either existing knowledge of the precise name and location of the data source, or dedicated time to locate and select the source. Now, when you configure your agent's data sources, you'll have a search-first experience that responds to queries and returns applicable data sources.

The new selection experience is backwards compatible with existing knowledge sources and allows for easily integrating new sources.

You will see the new experience when selecting data sources while configuring an agent.

Customers often face challenges when the original owner of an agent leaves the organization or changes roles, leading to orphaned agents that lack proper management. This can disrupt business processes and create security risks, as there may be no responsible party to manage the agent's settings and compliance requirements.

With this feature, admins (with Tenant admin, Power Platform administrator, or Dynamics 365 Service Administrator roles) can use PowerShell commands to assign new owners to agents.

The new owner must have a Copilot Studio license and must be a member of the environment where the agent is located.

After an admin changes the owner of an agent, the new owner is:

1. Granted access to all the agent's components with standard owner permissions (including delete permissions).
2. Assigned the Environment Maker security role for the environment where the agent exists.

The previous owner will lose any access to the agent. All other co-owners won't be affected by the change.

This feature improves how you can test and improve you actions when building agents:

Enhanced testing experience: By providing clear and actionable testing information, you can easily understand and implement the necessary steps without confusion. This ensures you can maintain the context of your ongoing tasks in Copilot Studio or Microsoft 365, leading to a more seamless workflow.

Debugging and recommendations: Features such as plugin run history, in-line recommendations, and workflow visibility are invaluable. These tools help you trace issues, understand exceptions, and make effective improvements to your actions. This comprehensive approach to debugging ensures that any problems are quickly identified and resolved, enhancing the overall efficiency of the development process.

Simulated test data: Creating a set of test data allows you to verify the functionality of your actions in a controlled environment. This step is crucial for ensuring correctness and reliability before live deployment. By testing in a simulated environment, you can confidently deploy your solutions, knowing they have been thoroughly vetted for any potential issues.

This feature provides a critical layer of security that addresses a significant element of security enforcement and remediation: quarantine.

When an agent is potentially compromised (for example, if it violates data loss prevention policies), it can pose a risk to your entire system. By quarantining the agent, admins can isolate the threat, preventing it from spreading and causing further damage, while they investigate and remediate the issue.

Admins (with the Tenant admin, Power Platform administrator, or Dynamics 365 Service Administrator roles) can quarantine agents with PowerShell, by blocking and un-blocking an agent.

Once an agent is blocked by an admin, makers will see an indication of the agent's blocked status in Copilot Studio. Makers can edit the blocked agent but not test it.

Agent users can't interact with the blocked agent and will see an error message if they try to interact with it.

The integration of single sign-on (SSO) for connectors in Copilot Studio ensures that users of your agents are authenticated for the connectors used in the agent instantly.

By handling authentication for connectors through SSO, you agent users don't need to manually enter login credentials or navigate through multiple screens whenever the agent tries to retrieve information through a connector to a secured service.

When a maker creates an agent, they can configure SSO authentication for their agent's connections. Then, when the user of your agent initiates the connection, all authentication and connection details are automatically handled in the background, using the pre-configured data set by the maker.

Microsoft Teams is a comprehensive collaboration platform within the Microsoft 365 suite, designed to enhance workplace communication and productivity. The data in Teams, such as chat history, meeting recordings/transcripts, shared files, and channel communications, is the fuel that empowers an organization's effectiveness.

With this update, makers can add Teams knowledge sources as a URL endpoint or through a data source selector. This includes messages shared or sent in channels, meetings, and group chats.

When asked a question by the agent user, the agent will respond with information gathered from message threads in Teams.

The availability of the chats and information available depends on the maker and end user's access to the chats, channels, or meetings that have been specified as the source.

This means makers can't connect their agents to Teams chats if the maker doesn't have the meeting invite or isn't a member of the team or channel. Agent users will also only receive responses generated from chats they currently have access to. In the case of mismatching permissions, either the maker or the agent user will be notified that they don't have access to the data source and given options to resolve the problem.

With this capability, makers can now add structured business data from Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations directly into Copilot Studio.

This enables agents to provide high-quality answers based on operational data, such as financials, inventory, or customer records.

Makers can select specific Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations tables to use as knowledge sources, and agents can answer grounded questions over enterprise data with accuracy and context without manual integration or scripting to surface data.

Makers can add the knowledge sources within Copilot Studio, either when creating a new agent or when configuring or updating an existing agent.

The feature is automatically turned on for every agent created in Copilot Studio. This feature includes:

• Protection shield across views: Views for makers indicating their agent's security throughout Copilot Studio, giving makers confidence that their agents are covered and secure.
• Agent-specific insights: Provide a detailed view of an agent's security status, so that makers and coders can easily monitor and assess threats and configurations for that agent.
• Actionable suggestions: Explain security information to makers clearly, with straightforward calls to action. This includes guidance on actions makers can take (such as requiring authentication) and other actions that affect the agent (such as an admin policy).
• Session and activity drill-down: Help makers investigate specific sessions, activities, or prompts in test mode with detailed security events and actions. The drill-down also includes the scope of prompt attacks prevented, content moderation issues, and governance enforcement.

All customer data stored in Copilot Studio is encrypted at-rest with strong Microsoft-managed encryption keys by default. Microsoft stores and manages the database encryption key for all your data, so you don't have to.

However, Power Platform provides an option to use customer-managed encryption key (CMK) for added data protection control. Admins can rotate or swap encryption keys on demand and revoke and manage their own keys to control access to your customer data at any time.

In this wave we're adding support for CMK in Copilot Studio, giving your admins the ability to control access to your data through Power Platform Managed Environments. CMK can be turned on at environment creation and will apply to all agents in that environment.

Admins can set up, configure, and manage CMK with Power Platform and Azure Key Vault. Power Platform only allows Managed Environments to be enabled for CMK.

If CMK is enabled in an environment after the public preview date, all Copilot Studio data will be encrypted using customer keys. You can then cycle, disable, and manage keys within your environment to control data access as the needs of your agents and business changes.

If CMK was already enabled in an environment before the public preview date, the environment won't use CMK.