Key concepts for Bot Framework Composer users

Important

Power Virtual Agents capabilities and features are now part of Microsoft Copilot Studio following significant investments in generative AI and enhanced integrations across Microsoft Copilot.

Some articles and screenshots may refer to Power Virtual Agents while we update documentation and training content.

If you're used to designing classic chatbots in Bot Framework Composer, you'll notice some similarities and differences with Copilot Studio. The following table lists some key concepts in Composer and where to find similar concepts in Copilot Studio.

Bot Framework Composer concept	Copilot Studio concept	Description
Dialogs and triggers	Topics	Use topics to organize conversation flow or paths. A topic has a set of trigger phrases that indicate when the copilot should start the topic and a set of nodes that describe the topic's conversation path.
Intents	Trigger phrases	Add trigger phrases to a topic for the phrases, keywords, and questions that a customer is likely to type related to a specific issue. Copilot uses natural language understanding to parse what a customer types and find the most appropriate topic.
Actions and prompts	Nodes	Use nodes, such as messages, questions, and conditional branches, on the authoring canvas to create a topic's conversation path.
Bot response variation	Response variations and question variations	Use response and question variations to add variety to your copilot's messages and questions.
Suggested actions	Quick replies	Use quick replies to provide default reply options to the customer.
Entities	Entities	Define and use entities to extract semantic information from what a customer types.
State, storage, and properties	Variables	Use variables to track state.
Formulas and expressions	Power Fx	Use Power Fx to create expressions.