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Note
This article applies to multiple harnesses. The harness you use affects the billing, features, and capabilities of what you build.
Workflows are an automation experience built in Copilot Studio and powered by the GitHub Copilot harness. You build them on a redesigned visual canvas with native AI actions, agent handoffs, and node-level testing.
Workflows in Copilot Studio automate repetitive tasks and integrate your apps and services. You can trigger a workflow manually, based on other automated events or agents, or on a schedule.
Workflows consume Copilot Studio capacity for each action they execute.
Benefits of workflows
Workflows offer several benefits.
- Consistent execution: Workflows follow a defined sequence of actions and rule-based branches, making process execution predictable. Results can vary when actions use AI or retrieve changing data.
- Simple workflow creation: You can design, edit, and automate workflows directly in Copilot Studio, using AI-driven suggestions for triggers, actions, and automation steps.
- End-to-end process visibility: Design workflows, monitor their performance, and get actionable insights to improve your automation projects, all in Copilot Studio's unified interface. You can also view details of a workflow, such as the workflow name, description, and status.
Triggers and actions in workflows
A workflow consists of a trigger and at least one action.
Triggers
A trigger is an event that starts a workflow. Triggers can start a workflow on demand, on a schedule, or in response to an event.
Actions
An action is a task that a workflow performs. For example, you want to get a notification in Microsoft Teams when your manager sends you an email. Receiving an email from your manager is the trigger that starts this workflow. Sending a message in Microsoft Teams is the action that happens in response.
There are different types of actions you can use in workflows:
- AI capabilities: AI-driven actions that use large language models (LLMs) to generate text, process documents, run a prompt on a model, call an agent, and create a natural language reply to a calling agent.
- Human in the loop: Actions that require human intervention, such as requesting information.
- Built-in tools: Control structures for looping and branching, data operations, date and time functions, and child workflows.
- Connectors: Connect to various services to perform tasks and retrieve data. Connectors include Microsoft 365 services, third-party services, and custom connectors.
Manage workflow capacity usage
Important
Once you fully consume your environment's prepaid Copilot Studio capacity, new workflow runs are blocked until capacity is available. Running workflows complete normally. To avoid interruption, monitor capacity usage and consider turning on pay-as-you-go billing. Learn more in workflow enforcement.
In the Power Platform admin center > Licensing > Copilot Studio, review the Agent flow actions used by each workflow.
Create workflows
You create workflows in the visual designer.
To get started with the GitHub Copilot harness:
- Select Workflows.
- Select New workflow.
- Add a trigger, and then add actions in the visual designer.
Workflows that have the When an agent calls the workflow trigger can be added as tools in agents. Learn more in Add a workflow to an agent.
Manage workflows on the Workflows page
Use the Workflows page to review and manage your workflows.
- The Credit usage (last 30 days) column shows the credits that a workflow consumed during the last 30 days.
- The Enabled column shows whether a workflow is enabled. When a workflow is enabled, its trigger is active, so a new run starts whenever the trigger fires: on schedule, on a connector event, or when an agent calls it. When a workflow is disabled, it keeps its definition and run history, but its trigger doesn't start new runs until you turn it back on.
- Classic workflows show N/A because credit usage data for them isn't available on the Workflows page. N/A doesn't mean that the workflow consumed no credits.