Create Autonomous Agents in Copilot Studio

Yesterday, one of my colleagues informed me that their IT team was receiving too many support emails every day. They had to check each email, identify the issue, determine its urgency, set a deadline, update a tracker, and then send a reply to the person who had asked for help.

It was taking a lot of time and effort, and they wanted a better way to handle it.

Therefore, I suggested to create Autonomous Agents in Copilot Studio to simplify the process.

With just a few steps, we created a smart system that:

• Reads new emails automatically
• Understands the issue and sets a priority
• Calculates when the issue should be fixed
• Saves everything in a SharePoint list
• Sends a reply to the user with all the ticket details

Everything happens in the background; no need for anyone to do it manually.

In this tutorial, I will explain what Autonomous Agents are and how to create one in Microsoft Copilot Studio.

Autonomous Agents in Copilot Studio

Autonomous Agents in Microsoft Copilot Studio are intelligent, AI-powered workflows that can run in the background and perform tasks independently, requiring no user interaction.

Think of them as your digital assistants that can:

• Take action based on triggers (like a new email or form submission),
• Understand and process information using AI,
• Make decisions (like setting priority levels),
• And perform follow-up actions (like saving data or sending emails).

Just like humans need a problem, tools, and instructions to get a job done, Autonomous Agents in Copilot Studio also need a few things to work smoothly.

Here are the four primary building blocks of every autonomous agent:

1. Trigger – What starts the agent (You tell your agent when it should start working.)
2. Knowledge – What the agent needs to know (Just like we need information to do our jobs, agents need knowledge or context.)
3. Actions – What the agent can do (Send an Email, Create an item)
4. Instructions – What the agent should do (This is where you give the agent its job description. Tell it exactly what it needs to do.)

Create the Agent in Copilot Studio

Before we jump into how to create the agent flow, let’s first look at the structure needed for our use case. For this scenario, I’ve created a SharePoint list named IT Support Tickets with the following columns:

Column Name	Type
Title	Single line of text
Subject	Single line of text
Description	Multiple lines of text
Priority	Choice (Low/Medium/High)
Status	Choice (Open/In Progress/Resolved/Closed)
Expected Resolution Date	Date and Time
ID	Default Column

Steps to Create Your First Autonomous Agent:

1. Go to Copilot Studio. Click Create -> + New agent.

2. Please assign a name (IT Help Desk Agent) and provide a brief description explaining its purpose (such as tracking and responding to support emails). Then click on Create.

3. Then, you can see that our agent has been successfully created here.

Add Actions to the Agent

Now that our agent is set up in Copilot Studio and we have a SharePoint list named IT Support Tickets, let’s add functionality to our agent. We want it to perform two key actions:

• Save ticket details to a SharePoint list
• Send an email to the user

Add Create Item Action in Agent Flow

To save the ticket details in SharePoint, follow the steps below to add a Create item action:

1. In the above agent, select the “Tools” tab, then click the + Add a tool button.

2. Then, a pop-up will open where you search for “Create item”. Select “Create item” from the SharePoint connector, as shown in the screenshot below.

3. Once selected, you’ll see a new screen prompting you to choose how you want to proceed. At the bottom right, you’ll find three buttons:
   • Add to agent – This adds the action to your agent without any configuration.
   • Add and configure – This option adds the action and opens the configuration screen where you can input the required details, such as:
     • Site Address
     • List Name
     • Mappings for each SharePoint column
   • Cancel – Closes the pop-up without taking any action.
4. In my case, click Add to agent. After that, we will add the site address and other required things.

5. Then, select the “Create item” action, which will open the screen below.

6. Next, expand the ‘Additional details’ section, then select ‘Agent author authentication’ under Authentication.

7. In the Inputs section, add the Site Address where you create the SharePoint list. Then, in the List Name, change ‘Dynamically fill with AI’ to ‘Custom value’ under ‘Fill using’, and select your SharePoint list, in my case, ‘IT Support Tickets’.

8. Then, click the + Add input to the column where you want to add the item. In my case, the fields are Title, Subject, Expected Resolution Date, Priority, and Description.

Then we need to customize the above input parameters. Here I will customize one; you need to customize the rest of the field.

9. Click Customize in the Priority input field. Then, under the Description, provide the following things:

Importance of the ticket. Categorize tickets based on their urgency. Categorize in High, Medium and Low Priority

These steps are designed to guide the agent flow to perform this action based on your text; it will work.

9. In the same way, add a description for Title, Subject, Expected Resolution Date, and Description.

Title	Summary for the Subject.
Subject	Email Subject
Expected Resolution Date	Add 24 hours to the current time if it is a High Priority, 48 hours for Medium, and 72 hours for Low.
Description	Subject for the overall ticket.

You can change the description according to your requirements.

10. After that, save the action by clicking the “Save” button on the top right side.

Now, our first action, ‘Create Item’, is added to the agent.

Add a Send an Email Action in Agent Flow

Next, let’s configure the second action, sending an email to the user once the ticket is submitted.

1. Go back to the Tools tab in your agent. Click + Add a tool again. Search for ‘Send an email’ (V2) or ‘Send an email‘ under the Outlook or Mail connector (depending on what’s available). Click Add and configure to open the setup screen.

2. Next, expand the ‘Additional details’ section, then select ‘Agent author authentication’ under Authentication.

3. Here, I do not want to add any inputs. Instead, I would like to modify the email body description.

Once the email body is ready, click the Save button at the top right.

Add a Trigger to the Agent

To activate the agent and initiate the conversation flow, you need to define a trigger, which is something the user might say to start the ticket creation process.

Follow the steps below to add a trigger:

1. Now, go to the Overview tab, scroll down, and look for the section at the top labeled ‘Triggers’.

2. Click + Add trigger, then a pop-up will appear with a search bar. In the search box, type: When a new email arrives (V3). Select the trigger “When a new email arrives (V3)” from the Outlook connector. Click Next.

3. Next, the screen will add the connection, then click the ‘Next’ button to create the trigger.

4. The next screen will ask if you want to add any parameters. (In my case, I only want the agent to trigger when an incoming email’s subject contains the word “Support.” This helps avoid triggering the agent for unrelated emails.) In the Subject box, type: Support. Click the Create trigger button at the bottom right.

5. Then you can see that our trigger has been added to the agent flow.

If you still want to make any changes to the trigger after it’s been added, you can do so easily using Power Automate.

In the Triggers section of your agent in Copilot Studio, locate the trigger you just created. Click the three dots (…) next to the trigger name. Select Edit in Power Automate from the dropdown.

This will redirect you to the Power Automate portal, where the trigger flow is created. Here, you can make any modifications, such as changing the subject filter, adding conditions, or connecting additional actions.

Once you’re done editing, click Save draft in the top-right corner. Then click Publish to apply your changes and push them live.

Add General Instructions to the Agent

To make your Copilot agent behave more naturally and follow your desired workflow, it’s helpful to provide general instructions. These instructions guide the agent.

1. Go to the Overview tab. Then click on Edit under Details, next in the General instructions section. Add instructions.

You need to completely automate the auto reply process for the any support emails you're receiving. AS soon as any incoming emails arrive determine the urgency of the emails and categorize the email to High, Medium or Low Priority. After that you need to call below actions without any human interactions.
-Create item in the SharePoint list
-Send an email

2. Next, click the Save button.

Now our agent is ready to work, so click the Publish button on the top right side.

Test the Autonomous Agents

Now that your agent is built and published, it’s time to test it in action to make sure everything works as expected.

Send a test email to the mailbox that the trigger is monitoring. Ensure the subject line contains the word “Support”.

After some time, go to the SharePoint list, and you will see that the item has been created with all the necessary details.

Then the user who sends will receive an email like below:

Also, you can check the agent run activity.

With just a few easy steps, you’ve now built an Autonomous Agent in Microsoft Copilot Studio that can completely automate your IT support email process.

No more manually checking emails or setting priorities, your agent does all of that intelligently and automatically.

If you encounter any difficulties or have questions, please comment below. I’m happy to help.

Also, you may like some tutorials:

• SharePoint List as Knowledge in Copilot Studio
• Add Copilot to Power Apps
• Add a List in Power Pages
• Create a Power Apps Weather App
• Add a Multistep Form in Power Pages