Exercise - Select a harness for a business scenario
In this exercise, you apply harness-selection criteria to three independent business requirements. No Copilot Studio environment is required.
Scenario 1: Contract review
A legal operations team needs an agent that receives contract files, extracts key terms, compares them with an approved playbook, checks customer records, and routes exceptions to a lawyer. The sequence can change based on the contract and tool results.
Recommended harness: GitHub Copilot harness.
The solution performs file-intensive, reasoning-heavy work across several tools. It must adapt its plan to intermediate results and route exceptions. Those requirements align with the GitHub Copilot harness.
Scenario 2: Equipment return
An IT team needs an agent that always collects an asset number, validates the employee's location, presents the correct shipping options, and follows explicit branches for damaged and undamaged devices. The team wants makers to control each question and path.
Recommended harness: Standard harness.
The solution requires a structured, predictable conversation with maker-defined questions, conditions, and branches. Those requirements align with the standard harness.
Scenario 3: Onboarding questions
An HR team wants employees to ask Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat questions about internal onboarding policies. Answers must use content that each employee has permission to access in SharePoint. The team doesn't need a separate external channel or a long-running business process.
Recommended harness: Copilot Chat harness.
The primary requirement is to extend Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat with enterprise knowledge for internal users. Those requirements align with the Copilot Chat harness.
Review the decisions
The scenarios use different harnesses because they require different operating models:
- Contract review prioritizes dynamic planning, file operations, and multitool reasoning.
- Equipment return prioritizes maker-defined conversation paths.
- Onboarding prioritizes grounded answers in Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat.
When requirements include elements from more than one scenario, identify the dominant job and required control model. A solution can also combine agents and workflows, but each agent still runs on one selected harness.