Copilot Studio (formerly Power Virtual Agents) lets you build company-specific AI agents without writing code. A chatbot that answers HR questions, an assistant that recommends products to the sales team, a bot that handles IT support requests — all are possible with Studio.
01. How Does It Work?
A "topic" is defined in Studio. What the user's question will be, which data the agent will look at, which systems it will connect to — all through a visual interface. A GPT-4 model is used in the background.
02. Data Connection
The agent can connect to SharePoint documents, Dataverse tables, SQL databases and external REST APIs. This lets the agent talk to your company data (RAG logic).
03. Use Cases
The most common areas of use:
- HR: leave requests, policy queries
- IT: password reset, equipment requests
- Sales: price quotes, product recommendations
- Customer service: answering frequent questions
- Management: KPI queries
04. Publishing Channels
The created agent can be published to different channels: inside Teams, the company website, WhatsApp, Slack, a mobile app. Additional configuration may be needed per channel.
05. Pricing
Copilot Studio uses message-based pricing. ~$0.01-0.10 per message, depending on volume and complexity. Small-scale pilot applications can be run for $200-500 a month.