Live Event: Copilot Studio and the PMO – Creating a Capable and Useful AI Assistant

Wednesday, March 20, 12:00pm – 1:00pm EDT

Earn 1 PDU: 1 Ways of Working

Click to register now and join us live!

Copilot Studio is an offering from Microsoft that enables power platform administrators to create chatbots without (a lot of) coding. Copilot Studio used to be called Power Virtual Agents, but it has been rebranded and enhanced with new features and AI capabilities. In this article, I’d like to give you a brief overview of the studio and get you excited for the upcoming webinar on this topic.

Copilot Studio is part of the Microsoft Power Platform, a suite of low-code / no-code solutions that empower users to automate processes, analyze data, and build applications. There are integration options available to connect with other Microsoft products, such as Teams, the Power Platform, Azure, and even third-party services, such as Salesforce, Zendesk, and Slack. I will explore how Copilot Studio can help the PMO improve their project management capabilities by providing them with a simple and effective way to create a chatbot that can assist them in various PPM-related tasks.

Create a new Power Platform solution to store your bot.

Like most things in Power Platform, it is best practice to build a solution first, where you are able to store all the related content. This is also a great way to share a good solution on subsequent environments.

Accessing the main page for Copilot studio is done through its old name: https://mpugwp.wpengine.com/. When you access the site for the first time, you will see a message stating that there has been a name change (fig 2).

Creating a chat bot starts with the basics, such as the name, language and a first content source website to give the bot initial Generative AI capabilities.

Using MPUG's blog as a source of content. — Using MPUG’s blog as a source of content.

The main page has advanced options as well. You can give the bot an icon and lesson topics (for user training purposes). There is also a way to provide the solution and schema name mentioned before.

In the advanced options, the bot can be linked to the solution created earlier. Bot image must be small.

Once you have provided these values, the bot will be created, and you can give it a initial test drive.

Generative AI capabilities in Copilot Studio

Copilot has a few different ways to improve its AI capabilities. You can add additional sources, files and improve AI settings.

Because we added MPUG as a source, the bot can tell us more about the website.

Asking for information outside the source content can be difficult for the bot to comprehend, which is what prompted the below response.

You can add additional content sources to the bot’s generative AI features, as shown below.

You can add additional sources to the bot’s Generative AI features.

Additional sources can be leveraged to provide more value to the bot.

Adding files gives the bot very specific information. For now, the file size is limited to 3 MB. You will be able to add multiple files, but none very big. I couldn’t add the whole training booklet from Sam Hofman, for instance.

Sadly Sam Hofman’s “Do's and Dont's” e-book was larger than 3 MB. — Sadly Sam Hofman’s “Do’s and Dont’s” e-book was larger than 3 MB.

By adding a file such as a Scrum / Scale guide, the bot will be able to answer a lot more questions related to the topics.

Just imagine the power when you add your company’s Project Management best practices and processes document. It could be your training assistant for any new employees or veteran PM’s that missed the latest documentation.

The bot solution package contains component and the chatbot.

With any change to the bot, the solution we created will get more components and subcomponents. Sharing the bot now becomes much easier throughout the company environments, or even across organizations, if you are building a common practice.

Copilot Studio can already do a lot, but we can see that Microsoft is investing in some preview features as well.

Microsoft is investing a lot in the Copilot / Generative AI ecosystem. It’s great to see three preview features already available to most organizations.

Upcoming Live Event

On Wednesday, March 20, at 12:00pm EST, Erik van Hurck will guide you through the Copilot studio and will show you the chatbot’s capabilities in combination with AI. Supercharge your Project Management Office by giving it an extra pair of “digital eyes, ears and hands.”

Live Event: Copilot Studio and the PMO – Creating a Capable and Useful AI Assistant

Wednesday, March 20, 12:00pm – 1:00pm EST

Earn 1 PDU: 1 Ways of Working

Click to register now and join us live!

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