You can create Copilot Agents in both the web Copilot interface, and from within the Copilot app in Teams. Watch the video below or follow the written instructions. Note: Microsoft update Copilot quite often, so it may look different when you use it to how it looks in the video, but the steps to create an Agent should roughly be the same.
📹 Video – Creating and sharing Copilot Agents
Step 1: Create a new Agent
- Go to the Copilot website or open the Copilot app within Teams.
- Select ‘Create an Agent’ on in the side-panel of the Copilot interface.
- Choose ‘Configure’ for manual set up.
- Give your Agent a name (e.g. ‘Find an Ed Tech tool!’)
- Add a description of what your Agent does (this doesn’t affect how it behaves, it’s purely to inform the user).
Step 2: Add instructions and knowledge
- Use the ‘Instructions‘ field (8,000 character limit) to:
- Define the Agent’s goal
- Set constraints for responses
- Include examples of ‘good’ answers or the required format (e.g. if you want the agent to output a table with specific headings)
- Add knowledge it should reference
- Best practice: Write your instructions (prompt) in a separate Word document first to help you stay within the character limit and easily refine content.
Tip – How to write good instructions
Writing good instructions (or ‘prompts’) for AI is often a case of trial and error – have a go, see how the AI responds, and tweak your instructions if it doesn’t behave the way you want. However, there are a number of things you can consider including in your prompts to make them more effective. We’ve made a series of resources to help you experiment with writing good prompts:
⭐ Here is a colour-coded ‘infographic’ style webpage that breaks down the structure of a good prompt: 🔗 Anatomy of a Good Prompt
⭐ Here is an interactive Template that suggests things you could include in your instructions, with examples: 🔗 Copilot Agent Prompt Builder
⭐ If you’re new to creating Agents, we’ve made a Copilot Agent that will try to help you write instructions for your own Agents: 🤖 Agent Instruction Writer. Please note that you will probably get a better understanding of what goes into good prompts (and possibly better results) if you write your instructions manually, as it’s often a case of trial and error as you write instructions, test the Agent, and tweak your instructions to improve it.
⭐ On the Copilot Agents – Example Agents page you can download the instructions that were used to create the demo agents – you may find it helpful to look at them as a reference when writing your own instructions.
⭐ See the Tips page for general advice about how to write good instructions for AI. These tips work equally well for both normal Copilot and Copilot Agents. For a more interactive approach, see the Games page, and particularly the 🎮 Prompt Painter Game, which guides you to break down example prompts.
Step 3: Give the Agent access to websites (optional)
- Turn on web search and / or give the Agent access to specific URLs (these need to be ‘open’, i.e. they can’t require a log-in).
- Copilot Agents will only be able to access static content from the first page of the link you give it access to.
- With our licence, we can’t give Agents access to documents. All the information you want it to access must be in the instructions field, or on the first page in the websites you give it access to.
Tip: Should you give your agent access to the web?
Where possible, put important information in the ‘Instructions’ field (the prompt), rather than relying on giving the Agent access to URLs – the Agent will always hold the prompt in its memory, whereas it will perform a search to access information on websites and may not always find the most relevant information. Putting key information in the prompt can also help reduce hallucinations. For more tips, see ‘How can I reduce hallucinations?’
Step 4: Add ‘Suggested prompts’ (optional)
- Add prompts that help users begin conversations. Use these to guide people as to how to use the different functions of the Agent. Add some of the Agents on the Copilot Agents – Example Agents to explore how they use ‘Suggested prompts’ to guide the user.
- Give each prompt a short title.
- Write out the full message users will see when clicking the prompt.
- For Agents that can do many different things, you can add multiple ‘Suggested prompts’ to guide different user scenarios.
Step 5: Test your Agent
- Click on your suggested prompts to see how they work.
- Test with sample questions to confirm responses follow your instructions as you intended
- Make adjustments to your instructions if needed.
Step 6: Share your Agent
- Click ‘Create’ to finalize your Agent
- Click ‘Change Sharing Settings’
- Set to ‘Anyone in the organisation’
- Copy the link.
- Share the link, e.g. by pasting in Aula, or sending via email.