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Redefine development: AI-first innovation with agents and Microsoft Copilot in Power Platform

  • By Charles Lamanna, Corporate Vice President, Business & Industry Copilot—Microsoft

At Microsoft Ignite 2024, it’s incredible to reflect on the transformative journey we’ve had with Microsoft Power Platform. To date, nearly 600,000 organizations have used AI-powered capabilities like Copilot in Microsoft Power Platform, up 4x year over year.

After a successful Early Access Program, we are also excited to announce that Microsoft Copilot Studio autonomous agents are now in preview. Copilot Studio enables more customers and users to build powerful autonomous agents for a multitude of use cases. We’re also introducing major updates to Power Platform to enhance developer capabilities. Finally, we’re sharing streamlined management of security and governance for Microsoft Power Platform, including your agents.

Over the past year, we’ve witnessed how reimagining business processes with Copilot and agents has revolutionized what we build, including intelligent apps and AI agents. Additionally, enhancing efficiency through automation and AI has fundamentally changed how we build, unlocking even more rapid low-code development.

Supercharge business processes with agents: Change what we build

For years, Microsoft Power Platform’s AI-infused low-code capabilities have empowered organizations to create and deploy applications with ease. Now, with Copilot as the new UI for AI, any organization can build powerful agents that augment their workforce and execute business processes right inside Copilot Studio—without any coding. Autonomous agents can work independently, detecting events like an email arriving, and use generative AI to trigger a series of actions. By automating complex tasks, these agents can orchestrate workflows and work unprompted alongside or on behalf of users or entire teams.

Autonomous agents now in preview

Since its debut at Microsoft Ignite 2023, Copilot Studio has transformed how businesses apply AI to common conversational workflows. By enabling users to create custom agents with advanced AI integration, we’re empowering organizations to streamline customer engagement, employee experience, and partner relationships.

And the introduction of autonomous agents (preview) is a game-changer. Agents built in Copilot Studio can now operate independently, dynamically planning and learning from processes, adapting to changing conditions, and making decisions without the need for constant human intervention. These autonomous agents can be triggered by data changes, events, and other background tasks—and not just through chat.

We’re also announcing agent library (preview) so users can get a head start by choosing agents based on commonly used scenarios and autonomous triggers (preview), allowing agents to automatically respond to signals across your business and initiate tasks. These advancements make it easy to automate complex tasks and processes.

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Build agents with Microsoft Copilot Studio

Agent builder in Microsoft Power Apps now in preview

We’re also announcing the preview of agent builder in Power Apps, enabling organizations to rapidly transition into the AI-first era. By using existing knowledge, logic, and actions already built into the apps they create, makers can develop agents to handle tasks autonomously, eliminating repetitive processes, redefining individual productivity, and improving overall business efficiency.

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Stories and benefits from the Copilot Studio autonomous agent Early Access Program

Autonomous agents are expanding the boundaries of what’s possible, enabling the creation of innovative applications and solutions that drive significant business outcomes:

  • Accenture, a leading global professional services company that specializes in IT services and management consulting, has created agents to simplify complex operations and boost customer satisfaction.

“Accenture joined Microsoft Copilot Studio’s Early Access Program on autonomous agents and tapped into our deep industry and functional expertise to swiftly create high-impact, agent-driven use cases that drive workforce efficiency and enhance customer experiences. We developed nine powerful agents for Business Operations and Industry, positioned to increase operational efficiency by 40%, raise customer satisfaction scores by 10% to 20%, and lower costs by 15%. The simplicity of Copilot Studio’s agentic platform, ease of use, and configurability played a critical role in our success.”

—Rich Holsman, Senior Managing Director of Global Data and AI, Accenture

  • Pets at Home, a leading pet care business in the United Kingdom, has used Copilot Studio to create autonomous agents for specific business workflows. One agent that was created for the profit protection team enabled more efficient case compilation for human review, potentially saving seven figures annually.

“We’re using AI to do the time-consuming work so our colleagues can use all resource and expertise to make decisions quickly based on large amounts of data. It’s truly helped empower colleagues through both the level of information at their fingertips, and in time spent on more nuanced and insightful work. The agent solution allows the profit protection team to more effectively assess cases for potential profit loss and dedicate more of their time to skilled analysis, rather than simply information gathering.”

—William Hewish, Chief Information Officer, Pets at Home

Enhance efficiency with AI in low-code: Change how we build

Microsoft Power Platform has always been focused on enabling rapid development of solutions. With Copilot, that is truer than ever. It is increasingly possible to use natural language, images, and documents to develop applications, automations, and more. This will unlock faster development and make Microsoft Power Platform increasingly accessible.

Plan designer in Power Apps now in preview

The new plan designer in Power Apps (preview) is a game-changer, integrating AI-powered assistance directly into the app creation process. Makers can now simply describe their business challenges and provide context like process diagrams, data models, or even screenshots of legacy applications. From there, Copilot will draft user roles and requirements, which can then be refined or modified with AI assistance. Copilot offers real-time suggestions and automation within a single conversational interface, leading makers from problem definition to solution architecture.

Design intelligent applications with Microsoft Power Apps

Unlock endless possibilities with deeper Microsoft Azure integration

By integrating Copilot Studio with Microsoft Azure AI Foundry Portal, users can bring their own models, prompts, and knowledge, ensuring a smooth and efficient connection with Azure services—without the need for extensive coding.

Copilot Studio pay-as-you-go with your Azure subscription

As accessing Azure AI capabilities in Copilot Studio becomes more common, flexible pricing has become essential. On December 1, 2024, Microsoft will introduce an option to buy Copilot Studio messages with pay-as-you-go consumptive billing through existing Azure subscriptions. This pricing option empowers developers to harness the full potential of Azure AI, while providing the flexibility needed to scale and adapt to changing demands.

Empower administrators with streamlined governance and security

In 2022, we transformed governance with managed environments, empowering tens of millions of citizen developers around the world.

Now, we’re taking it further with managed security and managed operations. These new features bring advanced threat protection, proactive alerts, and seamless disaster recovery to Power Apps, Microsoft Power Automate, Copilot Studio, and Microsoft Dynamics 365. Integrated directly into the reimagined Power Platform admin center, these capabilities ensure your business applications are secure, scalable, and always performing at their best.

Embrace the future of AI-first development

The integration of Copilot and autonomous agents is further revolutionizing development in Microsoft Power Platform. These advancements are not just about automating processes; they are reshaping the landscape of digital innovation. Microsoft Power Platform enables organizations to become AI-first companies—innovating faster, making smarter decisions, and delivering greater value to their customers.

Explore new AI capabilities in Microsoft Power Platform

Explore Microsoft Power Platform blogs and sessions for Microsoft Ignite 2024

Copilot Studio introduces autonomous agents, agent library:

Copilot Studio and Azure AI announce new tools for developers:

Copilot Studio enhances platform with new updates:

New capabilities in Power Apps help leverage AI for business productivity:

New AI and governance features in Microsoft Power Automate:

Power Platform Admin Center simplifies security and governance experience:

Headshot of Charles Lamanna
Charles Lamanna
Corporate Vice President, Business & Industry Copilot—Microsoft
Charles leads the design, product development, and engineering teams responsible for creating intelligent business applications and low-code platforms with generative AI. This spans products and services across Microsoft Dynamics 365, Power Platform, Copilot Studio, Copilot apps, and Nuance Enterprise. These products include business applications for Microsoft Copilot, low-code/no-code tools, industry cloud solutions, conversational AI, RPA, CRM, and ERP applications.

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