Microsoft to Launch AI Agents in Copilot Studio Public Preview Next Month, Firing Back at Salesforce

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks on stage at the company's Build conference in Seattle, Washington on May 21, 2024. Photo credit: Ken Yeung

Microsoft is inching closer to letting businesses create autonomous AI Agents using its Copilot solution. At its AI Tour in London this week, the software company announced plans to bring a new set of capabilities within Copilot Studio into public preview in November 2024. Originally introduced at this year’s Build developer conference, these features are designed to enable the creation of more intelligent bots.

“Organizations are always looking for ways to enhance efficiency, improve customer experience, and drive growth, but identifying the starting point is crucial,” Charles Lamanna, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President for Business and Industry Copilot, writes in a blog post. “Copilot Studio can help you modernize existing processes or create new ones, paving the way for innovation and unlocking additional business value.”

The news arrives just days before Salesforce launches its competing Agentforce platform. Indeed, there’s no love lost between the two tech titans, with Salesforce Chief Executive Marc Benioff openly rebuking Microsoft’s Copilot at his company’s Dreamforce conference in September. At one point, the charismatic enterprise tech leader even compared Copilot to the infamous Microsoft Clippy and claimed that Microsoft wasn’t adequately addressing enterprise challenges with AI.

Using Microsoft Copilot Studio to teach an AI agent. Image credit: Microsoft
Using Microsoft Copilot Studio to teach an AI agent. Image credit: Microsoft

Build-an-AI-Agent in Copilot Studio

Launched in 2023, Copilot Studio is an evolution of Microsoft’s Power Virtual Agents. Ryan Cunningham, the company’s vice president for its Power Platform Intelligent Applications, described it as equivalent to a “bot 1.0 world,” where organizations would try to anticipate “everything a human would need to ask about and then create very specific conversation guides.”

Since its rebranding to Copilot Studio, the app has provided agents directed to “point me at knowledge, at content sources and actions—connected data sources and give it instructions about how to operate over the two…” Cunningham believes this creates a more compelling experience for humans.

Since May 2024, Microsoft’s build-an-agent offering has been exclusively available to its Early Access Program members. The company estimated that it would be widely available later this year.

That time is close at hand.

Underscoring the power its Copilot Studio AI Agent builder possesses, Microsoft shared multiple case studies. In one case, Pets at Home, a UK pet care business, created an agent for its 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.” In another, McKinsey & Company built an agent to accelerate its client onboarding process, reducing lead times by 90 percent and administrative work by 30 percent.

New Copilot Studio Capabilities

Microsoft has also previewed four features coming soon to Copilot Studio, which Lamanna wrote will “allow agents to act independently, initiate events, and automate complex business tasks.”

Autonomous Triggers

How autonomous triggering will work within Microsoft Copilot Studio. Image credit: Microsoft
How autonomous triggering will work within Microsoft Copilot Studio. Image credit: Microsoft

AI agents can be programmed to respond to events or triggers automatically without human input. Triggers can include when a new section is created in OneNote, a feed item is published, a specific button is clicked, an email arrives, if someone specific is mentioned in a Teams channel message, or more.

Dynamic Agent Plan

Admins can evaluate the logic for each agent’s path, which provides critical details, steps and systems involved. This capability is vital for troubleshooting if the AI agent generates an error.

Activity Overview

Microsoft is adding an “Activity” tab, enabling agent builders to access the performance logs of past bots, display their progress, identify blocks, and review earlier decisions.

Addition of OpenAI’s o1 Model and More

To provide agent builders with the latest large language models for their bots, Microsoft is introducing support for OpenAI’s O1 model. However, this feature is currently available only as a limited private preview for autonomous agents.

Say Hello to 10 New Dynamics 365 AI Agents

“New autonomous agents enable customers to move from legacy lines of business applications to AI-first business process. AI is today’s ROI and tomorrow’s competitive edge. These new agents are designed to help every sales, service, finance and supply chain team drive business value — and are just the start,” writes Jared Spataro, Microsoft’s Chief Marketing Officer for AI at Work.

Microsoft is releasing ten into the wild to kick off the agent revolution in Dynamics 365. One of them is a sales qualification agent, built to help sellers focus their time on the highest priority sales opportunities, leaving the bot to research leads and guide customer outreach. Another is a supplier communications agent, helping to optimize the supply chain by tracking supplier performance, identifying delays and responding accordingly. Lastly, there are the customer intent and customer knowledge management agents, designed to help customer care teams tackle high call volumes, talent shortages and improve customer expectations.

These ten agents mirror Salesforce’s approach to its agent development platform—Agentforce comes with eight out-of-the-box agents. Regardless, it’s prudent for both companies to introduce AI agents to both CRM platforms to showcase what the respective solutions can do and help customers realize the potential of what they can build with AI. And Microsoft isn’t stopping with ten, either. Spataro stated the company will create more agents “in the coming year.”

Updated as of Oct. 21, 2024 at 3:31 p.m. PT: Salesforce’s Chief Business Officer Kendall Collins published his response to Microsoft’s news, writing on LinkedIn:

Marc Benioff, “Microsoft rebranding Copilot as ‘agents’? That’s panic mode. Let’s be real—Copilot’s a flop because Microsoft lacks the data, metadata, and enterprise security models to create real corporate intelligence. That is why Copilot is inaccurate, spills corporate data, and forces customers to build their own LLMs. Clippy 2.0, anyone? Meanwhile, Agentforce is transforming businesses now. Agentforce doesn’t just handle tasks—it autonomously drives sales, service, marketing, analytics, and commerce. With data, LLMs, workflows, and security all integrated into a single Customer 360 platform: This is what AI was meant to be.

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