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Tutorial: Trigger autonomous agents with business events

Business events in finance and operations apps provide a powerful mechanism for integrating external systems and automating workflows. These events are emitted when specific business actions occur, such as confirming a purchase order or approving a requisition. Use these events to notify external systems or trigger downstream processes. Learn more about the business events framework in finance and operations apps in Business events overview.

When you connect these business events to agents, you can unlock intelligent, event-driven automation. When a business event is raised, it can serve as a trigger for an agent to perform tasks such as:

  • Initiating reconciliation processes
  • Sending notifications or approvals
  • Updating external systems or databases
  • Launching low-code workflows via Power Platform

This approach enables seamless orchestration between finance and operations apps and Microsoft Copilot Studio agents, so you can extend business logic beyond the boundaries of the Dynamics 365 application. Whether the event is workflow-based (for example, approvals) or nonworkflow (for example, confirmations), you can harness it to drive real-time, contextual automation. By using low-code plugins, developers and solution architects can configure these triggers with minimal effort, ensuring scalability and maintainability across business scenarios.

Prerequisites

For this tutorial, you must first enable Copilot for finance and operations apps in your environment. Learn more in Copilot capabilities in finance and operations apps.

Scenario: Notify a manager when a purchase order is confirmed

In this scenario, you add a trigger capability to an agent. Once the business event conditions are reached (a purchase order is confirmed), the agent triggers and sends an email or Teams message to the manager of that company referring the purchase order is created, sending all relevant data via email.

You can achieve this scenario in two different ways:

  • Create a specific agent for purchase orders
  • Integrate the trigger on an existing agent (it can be the Copilot for finance and operations apps or any agent already created in Copilot Studio)

Here's an overview of the steps in this tutorial:

  • A trigger action for the business event. This action calls the agent once a purchase order is confirmed in finance and operations apps.
  • Add two tools (Send an Email and Send a Teams Message), so that a specific user is notified regarding this action on finance and operations apps.
  • Clear instructions so that the right tools are called based on the triggered event.

Step 1: Create a new trigger that monitors purchase orders confirmed

  1. In Copilot Studio, go to Overview > Triggers > Add trigger.
  2. Select All and, on the search bar, search for When a Business Event occurs Fin & Ops Apps (Dynamics 365).
  3. Select Next. A connection from Microsoft Copilot Studio to finance and operations apps is created. For this example, rename the trigger to "Notify a Manager When a Purchase Order Is Confirmed.".
  4. After selecting Next, define:
  • The instance (environment) where the agent looks for the business event trigger.
  • Category - select Purchase orders.
  • Business event - select Purchase order confirmed.
  • Legal entity - keep it blank. If you don't select a legal entity, the event triggers when the operation is performed in any legal entity.
  • Other instructions to the agent when it's invoked by this trigger - Use content from @{triggerBody()}.
  1. Select Create Trigger once you define all the options. The trigger is created for this specific purpose.
  2. The trigger appears in the Triggers section of the Overview page for the agent.

The agent is now called when a purchase order is confirmed on finance and operations apps.

Step 2: Add tools for email and Teams communication

In this step, you add tools so that the agent can communicate through email and Teams with a specific, predefined person.

  1. In Copilot Studio, go to Overview > Tools > Add tool.
  2. Select All and, on the search bar, search for Mail. Select the option Send an email (V2) with the Outlook connector.
  3. Select Next, and then select Add to agent for this specific tool. The option for your agent to send emails is available on its toolkit. Now you configure this specific tool.
  4. On Overview > Tools, select ... and then Edit. Here you can edit each field for customizing what this tool does if triggered by the agent.
  5. For this example, keep the inputs To, Subject, and Body set to Dynamically fill with AI so the agent understands what information to add for each field. You can customize it by changing the dropdown to Custom Value.
  6. On Additional details, use the Maker-provided credentials, as this is an autonomous agent.
  7. After defining the email tool, go to Tools > Add tool.
  8. Select All, and search for Post a message in a chat or channel.
  9. Select Next, and then select Add and configure. It creates the connection for Teams and you're redirected to the settings option.
  10. On Inputs, change the parameters to directly define how the tool interacts with the incoming message from finance and operations apps and delivers it to Teams.
    • Post as - Custom Value - Flow bot
    • Post in - Custom value - Chat with Flow bot
    • Recipient - Dynamically fill with AI
    • Message - Dynamically fill with AI
  11. On Additional details, select Maker-provided credentials, as this is an autonomous agent.
  12. Leave the default values for the remaining options, and select Save.

Step 3: Define the instructions for the agent

In this step, you define clear instructions for the agent to understand what to do when the purchase order is marked as confirmed in the application.

  1. In Copilot Studio, go to Overview > Instructions > Edit.

  2. Enter a prompt similar to the following text into the Instructions, replacing the email with the email address of the account where you want the notifications sent.

    Send the triggered message to **yourexample@email.com** via Teams and Email. When a Payment Journal is Posted - Be polite, send a good natural language phrase with all the relevant details from the journal that was posted. Also include some sort of follow-up that might be relevant. Add also relevant information around the currency code if detected (e.g. if it's EUR = EURO, define that on the payment amount). The end of the message should not include the name of the agent. Format the email as HTML.

  3. Save and Publish the agent.

Step 4: Test the agent

You can now test the agent, starting in your finance and operations apps client, with your Microsoft Teams and email inbox open.

  1. In finance and operations apps, in company USMF, open Accounts Receivable > Payments > Customer payment journal.
  2. Select New.
  3. Define the Name parameter with any entry already prepopulated, such as CustPay.
  4. Once added, select Lines from the action ribbon.
  5. Add the following values to the line:
    • Account - DE-001 (Contoso Europe)
    • Description - Check
    • Credit - 1000
    • Method of payment - CHECK
  6. Save the line with the defined inputs and return to the previous screen.
  7. Validate the journal entry. If successful, Post the journal by selecting Post > Post.

Once you post the journal, open Microsoft Teams and your email account to verify that the agent automatically sent the messages on the triggered event.

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