Introduction
When you build an agent in Microsoft Copilot Studio, some requests call for current data or an action in an enterprise system. You need to choose a suitable tool, configure it for that job, and confirm that the agent uses it as intended.
Suppose you're planning a help agent for employees. Employees ask about equipment policy, the status of their own equipment requests, and how to submit new requests. Policy documents and a SharePoint list hold the information the agent needs, but the list changes throughout the day. An employee needs the current status of their request, and a new request needs a record in the list. The agent must also respect who has access to each request. These needs make the tool choice and its verification important.
Note
This module focuses on agents powered by the GitHub Copilot harness in Microsoft Copilot Studio. The tool configuration and Preview guidance that follow apply to that harness.
In this module, you explore:
- How to choose a tool type for a lookup or action, and how the agent decides when to call a tool.
- The common path for adding an existing tool, with a connector action as the example.
- How a tool's name and description affect whether the agent selects it.
- How to test tool use in Preview, read the activity trace, and identify tool-use cases to keep for repeatable evaluation.
By the end of this module, you'll be able to choose and configure a tool for a current-data lookup or authorized action, then verify its use in Preview and identify cases for repeatable evaluation.