When routine work takes care of itself
Microsoft Copilot Studio is the low-code platform of the Microsoft Power Platform for building customised AI agents. Companies use it to develop agents that answer questions in natural language, perform tasks autonomously, control processes and interact with company data, systems and services - without in-depth programming knowledge. According to Microsoft, more than 90 per cent of Fortune 500 companies already use Copilot Studio in some form.
Copilot Studio is the tool that turns the general Microsoft Copilot into a company's own specialised AI agent. Instead of generic AI answers from the internet, a Copilot Studio agent provides answers based on the company's own SharePoint documents, its own Dynamics 365 data and its own internal knowledge base - contextually accurate, GDPR-compliant and completely under the company's control.
Copilot Studio has evolved from a chatbot platform to a complete agent development environment. Today, agents don't just answer questions - they perform actions: They search for data in Dynamics 365, create records, trigger Power Automate flows, send notifications and control multi-step processes autonomously. Autonomous agents work in the background without human interaction and only escalate when human judgement is required.
GPT-5 has been generally available as a standard model in Copilot Studio since the end of 2025 - with noticeably improved response quality, consistency and reasoning capability. Multi-agent orchestration enables teams of specialised agents: An HR agent creates new employees, an IT agent assigns authorisations, a planning agent schedules introductory meetings - all coordinated, with a separate Entra ID for each agent and central monitoring via the Power Platform Admin Center.
Copilot Studio is built for both target groups. Departments create simple knowledge agents via drag-and-drop, connect SharePoint libraries as knowledge sources and publish agents in teams or on a website - without a line of code. Developers extend agents with custom connectors, Power Automate flows, Azure OpenAI models and their own APIs to create complete enterprise agents. collana develops Copilot Studio agents on both levels.
Knowledge agents answer questions based on internal documents, SharePoint pages, manuals, process descriptions and guidelines. Employees ask questions in natural language - the agent searches the connected knowledge sources, synthesises a precise answer and provides the original sources as evidence. This is the most direct route to effective knowledge management for companies with large document inventories, frequent employee queries or a high loss of knowledge due to staff turnover.
Relevant for: All industries, especially Healthcare, Production & Manufacturing, Wholesale & Foreign Trade, NPOs & associations
Customer service agents in Copilot Studio answer incoming enquiries, solve common service cases independently and escalate complex issues to human employees. They can be published to websites, Teams, WhatsApp, SharePoint and Microsoft 365 Copilot. Voice-based agents take over telephone-based initial processing. Order status, delivery information, product questions and standard complaints are processed automatically - around the clock, with no waiting time.
Relevant for: E-Commerce, Wholesale & Foreign Trade, Telecommunications & IT, Food industry, Healthcare
Copilot Studio is the native platform for extending Microsoft 365 Copilot with company-specific knowledge and actions. Instead of generic answers, Copilot gets access to internal data in Teams, Outlook and Word: Contract templates from SharePoint, customer data from Dynamics 365, process descriptions from the intranet. The general company Copilot becomes a specialised assistant for your own organisation.
Relevant for: All companies with a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence
Process agents in Copilot Studio perform multi-stage tasks independently: They check order data in Dynamics 365, create quotes, send notifications and update records - triggered by events, schedules or user requests. Integration with Power Automate turns every flow into a possible agent action. For companies that not only want to automate processes but also enrich them with AI decision logic, this is the next step beyond pure workflow automation.
Relevant for: All industries, especially Production & Manufacturing, Wholesale & Foreign Trade, Healthcare, Logistics & Transport
HR agents answer employee questions about holiday guidelines, payroll accounting, benefits and internal processes around the clock. Onboarding agents accompany new employees through their first few weeks: they answer questions, refer to documents, coordinate induction tasks and collect feedback. What used to take up the time of HR employees for standardised enquiries is now handled by the agent - so that the team can concentrate on more complex HR issues.
Relevant for: All industries, especially companies with high employee growth or high staff turnover
Maintenance agents are a particularly effective use case for manufacturing companies and service organisations. Technicians ask the agent for maintenance instructions, fault diagnoses or spare part numbers - and receive immediate answers from networked manuals, maintenance histories and technical documents. collana has developed a comparable AI chat app on Azure OpenAI for Bucher Municipal that makes maintenance data available in seconds and measurably reduces service costs.
Relevant for: Production & Manufacturing, process industry, Logistics & Transport, Healthcare
Not because AI is a trend. But because the first agents are taking over real work and creating freedom. Anyone who introduces Microsoft Copilot Studio does not gain a chatbot, but a first autonomous employee: one that never sleeps, never forgets and never invents a wrong answer as long as it has the right data. The following companies have taken this step with collana and show what is possible.
Many companies have already had their first experiences with chatbots: rule-based systems that work through predefined dialogue paths and get stuck at the first unexpected user input. Copilot Studio is a fundamentally different approach. Agents understand natural language, dynamically access knowledge sources, perform actions in connected systems and generate responses that match the user's actual context.
The path to a productive Copilot Studio agent begins with a clearly defined use case: What questions should the agent answer? What data should it access? What actions should it be able to perform? And in which channel should it be available? collana accompanies this process from the AI discovery workshop to the architecture decision to the go-live - and ensures that the first agent is actually used and brings measurable benefits.
For companies already using Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio is the natural next step: the general enterprise Copilot becomes a specialised assistant with its own knowledge and actions. For companies that do not yet have a Copilot, a standalone Copilot Studio agent is the most direct entry into productive enterprise AI - no Microsoft 365 Copilot licence required.
An AI agent is as good as the data it is based on, the instructions it receives and the processes in which it is embedded. Copilot Studio makes it easy to set up - but a truly useful agent needs more than a technical configuration. It needs an understanding of which questions are actually asked, which answers really help and how the agent is integrated into everyday working life. This is exactly what collana provides.
collana is a six-time certified Microsoft Solutions Partner and fulfils the requirements in several areas of expertise: Business Applications, Data & AI, Digital & App Innovation, Infrastructure, Security and Modern Work. These certifications are not an end in themselves. They prove that we not only know the Microsoft platform, but that we have mastered it at enterprise level and are continuously developing it further.
What sets collana apart from a pure implementer is its own experience with productive AI agents. ILAI, collana's own AI platform for chatbots and voice assistants, is built on Azure OpenAI and used by customers. The AI chat app for Bucher Municipal, which makes maintenance data available in seconds, is concrete proof of what is possible with the right architecture. collana knows what makes AI projects work in practice - and what doesn't.
collana not only supports companies right up to the first productive agent. The aim is long-term partnership: from use case identification in the AI Discovery Workshop to architecture, development and rollout through to company-wide agent governance. More than 1,000 customers in Germany, Switzerland and other European markets rely on this collaboration.
The AI Discovery Workshop is the structured introduction: specific agent use cases are identified, evaluated and prioritised in a short space of time. Which use case brings the fastest measurable benefit? Which data needs to be connected? And what does a realistic implementation plan look like that will lead to a productive agent within weeks?
Microsoft Copilot Studio is a low-code platform from the Microsoft Power Platform for developing your own AI agents. Companies use it to build agents that answer questions in natural language, perform actions in connected systems and control processes independently. Typical use cases include knowledge agents for internal FAQs, customer service agents on websites and in teams, HR onboarding agents, process agents for autonomous task completion and specialised extensions for Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Microsoft 365 Copilot is the AI assistant embedded in Word, Excel, Teams and Outlook - a general enterprise Copilot that accesses Microsoft Graph data. Copilot Studio is the development tool that companies use to build their own specialised agents and extend Microsoft 365 Copilot with company-specific knowledge and actions. Microsoft 365 Copilot is the product that employees use every day. Copilot Studio is the platform on which IT teams and specialist departments customise this product to their specific requirements.
Copilot Studio is a low-code platform for business departments and IT teams: visual development, direct integration with Microsoft 365 and Power Platform, rapid publication in standard channels. Azure AI Foundry is a pro-code platform for developers: full access to AI models, RAG architectures, fine-tuning and complex agent architectures. Many companies use both: Copilot Studio for departmental agents, Azure AI Foundry for complex, technically demanding AI applications.
For companies with a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, Copilot Studio is included for all licensed users at no extra charge. For standalone agents without a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, Copilot Studio is billed on a usage-based model: according to the number of messages agents process. There are free quotas to get started. The actual costs depend on the message volume, the complexity of the agents and the premium connectors used. collana advises on licence planning and cost optimisation.
Copilot Studio agents can be published on a variety of channels: Microsoft Teams, websites (as embedded chat), SharePoint, WhatsApp, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Azure Bot Service and many more. Once developed, an agent can be active on multiple channels simultaneously, with channel-specific customisation if required. Voice-based agents for telephony are also possible.
Copilot Studio connects agents with knowledge sources via connectors: SharePoint libraries, websites, uploaded documents and structured Dataverse tables are integrated as a knowledge base. For actions, the agent accesses Dynamics 365, SAP, databases and external APIs via Power Automate flows or custom connectors. The agent has access to data from the company's entire Microsoft 365 ecosystem via Microsoft Graph.
Yes, Copilot Studio agents run entirely in the company's own Microsoft Tenant environment. Input data is not used for training Microsoft models. Governance is handled via the Power Platform Admin Centre: Data loss protection policies, role-based access rights and audit logs are available as standard. Microsoft Purview also protects sensitive content in agent responses through confidentiality designations and DLP policies.