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Extend the capabilities of your agent

Copilot Studio lets you extend the capabilities of agents using various mechanisms. This includes:

  • Topics
  • Tools
  • Knowledge sources
  • Other agents (preview)

Tools and knowledge sources that require accessing another service make use of connectors. Connectors let you integrate data with various enterprise systems and APIs, letting your agents access and use this data effectively. You can use prebuilt connectors or create custom connectors to connect to your enterprise data sources.

Connectors can link to:

  • Data sources within the productivity cloud in Microsoft 365
  • Business data in Dynamics 365
  • Analytical data in Microsoft Fabric
  • Non-Microsoft enterprise data sources

Through connectors, you can perform actions and ground your agent responses with multiple enterprise data sources for more relevant and reliable responses from custom agents and agents for Microsoft 365 Copilot.

How does it work?

When you sign in to Copilot Studio, you can access specific agents based on the license associated with your credentials. The list of agents available to you depends on these permissions. If you don't see the agent you want to extend, verify your credentials. Also try connecting to the agent itself, or try to trigger any jobs that must occur to prepare the agent for use. See the sections detailing the authoring experience for examples.

A maker starts by selecting the agent whose functionality they wish to extend:

  • Custom agents
  • Other agents that they have maker access to in their organization
  • Microsoft 365 Copilot

For custom agents, you can add tools and knowledge directly to the agent.

For Microsoft 365 Copilot, you don't extend directly with tools and knowledge. Instead, you extend Microsoft 365 Copilot with an agent built in Copilot Studio. You can bring tools and knowledge into Microsoft 365 Copilot in a three step process:

  1. Create an agent.
  2. Add tools and knowledge to the agent.
  3. Publish the agent and make it available to Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Requirements

  • Maker access to the agent to allow you to extend it
  • Copilot Studio license for the maker
  • Data sources to use to integrate other data
  • Information you need to connect to the content sources (connectors, APIs, and so on)
  • Credentials for any systems you're connecting to
  • Assistance from the administrator of your agent to enable the extension once you publish the agent

Extend an agent

To select an agent to extend, start by selecting Agents in the main menu.

For a custom agent, select from the list of custom agents on the Agents page.

For agents created for Microsoft 365 Copilot, select Copilot for Microsoft 365 and then select the agent from the Copilot for Microsoft 365 agents list.