The Art of Copilot Gallery
Wing IX

The Agents Wing

Where Copilot starts working on your behalf

Agents automate tasks, reason across multiple steps, and act on your data with your permissions. You can build your own agents directly inside Copilot: give them a name, a description, instructions, knowledge, capabilities, and suggested prompts. These agents are yours, so be creative and have fun, they are your little robots, ready to help the way you want.

Exhibit 01

Build your own agent

The agent builder gives you a simple form: Name and Description set the agent's identity; Instructions use the prompting power you learned in Wing I; Knowledge lets you attach documents the agent can reference; Capabilities let it use other M365 tools like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint; Suggested Prompts are quick-start phrases that save time retyping. Make it yours, give it a personality and make it helpful for you.

Try this — as a…

“Create a Copilot agent for me. Name: Morning Briefing Chief. Description: Prepares a daily 5-bullet executive briefing each morning by reading my calendar, recent emails, and flagged tasks. Instructions: Act as my chief of staff. Each morning, identify my top 3 priorities, list all meetings with required prep, summarize any follow-ups that still need action, and flag anything that looks urgent. Keep the tone direct and organized, and never invent facts, cite the source email, meeting, or task. Knowledge: Use my calendar, recent emails from the last 48 hours, and my flagged tasks/planner. Capabilities: Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft To Do. Suggested Prompts: 'What's my morning briefing?' / 'What needs my attention before noon?' / 'Prepare me for today's meetings.'”

Exhibit 02

Reasoning agents are built-in, Researcher & Analyst

Microsoft's built-in reasoning agents chain multiple steps together, gathering sources, running analysis, and producing a written result you can review and refine.

Try this — as a…

Task: produce a competitive landscape brief for the education market. Persona: Researcher agent acting as a strategy analyst. Format: one-page brief with players, positioning, and cited sources. Audience: the strategy leadership team. Tone: neutral and evidence-led. Context: public sources from the last 12 months and our internal market notes.

Exhibit 03

Tenant and partner agents

Browse the Agent Store for ready-made agents, or have your team build tailored ones in Copilot Studio grounded in your data, gated by your permissions.

Try this — as a…

Task: kick off onboarding for a new hire starting Monday. Persona: HR onboarding agent acting as a people-ops coordinator. Format: a checklist with owners and due dates plus a welcome email draft. Audience: the new hire and their manager. Tone: warm and organized. Context: the standard onboarding plan and the hire's role.