Imagine you’re the only HR person in a company of 300 employees, and your inbox is full of questions like “How many casual leaves do I have left?” and “What’s the maternity leave policy?”. You know these answers live in PDFs, SharePoint sites, and long policy emails, but people keep asking you directly.
A Microsoft Copilot Studio agent is basically a smart chatbot you build for your organization so it can answer these questions for you using topics, which are conversation paths triggered by what the user types.
In this article, we’ll use a simple HR leave helpdesk Copilot as our running example, and I’ll walk you through two powerful ways to build a custom topic that handles leave-related questions and actions end-to-end.
In this article, I’ll show you 2 ways to create custom topic in Microsoft Copilot Studio.
What Is a Topic in Microsoft Copilot Studio?
Before you start wiring up flows and generative answers, it helps to be very clear about what a topic actually is. Think of a topic as a small, self-contained conversation about one specific thing your copilot can help with, like applying for leave, checking leave balance, or explaining maternity leave policy.
In Microsoft Copilot Studio, a topic defines how a segment of the conversation progresses from the moment it’s triggered until it ends or hands off to another topic. Each topic has three core parts:
- Trigger – what starts the topic, such as trigger phrases (“apply for leave”, “leave policy”) or a generative description when you use AI-based authoring.
- Conversation path – the actual flow of messages, questions, conditions, and actions that guide the user step-by-step.
- End or redirect – how the topic finishes, either by ending the current topic, ending all topics, or redirecting to another topic like “HR – Apply for Leave”.
Types of Topics in Microsoft Copilot Studio
When you open the Topics page for your HR Leave Helpdesk agent, you’ll see two main types of topics: system topics and custom topics. Understanding the difference helps you decide what you should build and what Copilot Studio already handles for you.
- System topics – These are built-in topics that come with every new agent and handle common events like Greeting, Goodbye, Fallback, Escalate, and End of Conversation. For example, Greeting kicks in when someone starts a chat, and Fallback responds when Copilot Studio can’t match the user message to any topic. You don’t need to create these from scratch, but you can open them, read the wording, and customize them to match your HR tone.
- Custom topics – These are the topics you design for your own scenarios, like HR – Apply for Leave, HR – Leave FAQ and Request, or HR – Check Leave Balance. You choose the trigger phrases, build the conversation path, and connect tools as Power Automate flows or generative answers so your HR agent can actually do useful work.
Method 1 – Create a Custom Topic from Blank
Use this method when you want complete control over your conversation. Starting from a blank topic allows you to design every message, question, condition, and response exactly as your business requires. This approach is ideal for scenarios where you have a well-defined conversation flow and want to customize every interaction.
Imagine you’re building an HR Helpdesk Agent for your organization. Employees frequently ask questions such as:
- What is the company’s leave policy?
- How many annual leave days do employees receive?
- What is the work-from-home policy?
- What documents are required for onboarding?
Instead of answering these questions manually, you can create a custom topic that guides employees through a structured conversation and provides the appropriate information.
Step 1: Create a Blank Topic
Open Microsoft Copilot Studio and select your agent. Navigate to Topics, click Add a topic, and then choose From blank. Enter a meaningful name for your topic, such as HR Policy Assistant, and save it.
How does this work?
Choosing From blank creates an empty topic with no predefined conversation. This gives you complete flexibility to build the conversation from scratch by adding trigger phrases, questions, conditions, messages, variables, and other conversation nodes.
Step 2: Configure Topic Discovery
After creating the topic, select The agent chooses as the trigger method. Instead of adding trigger phrases, provide a clear description of what the topic is designed to handle.
For example: