agent-academy

🧰 Mission 05: Using a Pre-Built Agent

🕵️‍♂️ CODENAME: `OPERATION SAFE TRAVELS`

⏱️ Operation Time Window: ~30 minutes

🎥 Watch the Walkthrough

🎯 Mission Brief

Welcome to your next mission in the Copilot Studio Agent Academy. You’re about to explore the world of pre-built agents—intelligent, purpose-driven agents created by Microsoft to accelerate your deployment and reduce time to value.

Rather than building from scratch, pre-built agents (also called agent templates) give you a head start by providing ready-to-use scenarios that you can customize and deploy in minutes.

In this mission, you’ll deploy the Safe Travels agent—an agent that helps your users prepare for business travel, understand company policies, and streamline planning.

🧭 Objectives

Your goals for this mission are:

Understand what pre-built agents are and why they matter
Deploy the Safe Travels agent template
Customize the agent’s responses and content
Test and publish the agent

🧠 What Are Pre-Built Agents?

Pre-built agents are turnkey AI agents created by Microsoft that:

Address common business needs (like travel, HR, IT support)
Include fully functioning topics, trigger phrases, instructions and sample knowledge.
Can be edited, extended, and grounded with your own data

These agents are perfect for getting started quickly or learning how agents are structured.

🧪 Lab 05: Quickly get started with a pre-built agent

We’re now going to learn how to select a pre-built agent and customize it.

5.1 Launch Copilot Studio
5.2 Choose the Safe Travels Agent Template
5.3 Customize the Agent
5.4 Test and Publish

We’re going to stick with the example from earlier, where we’re going to create a solution in the dedicated Copilot Studio environment to build our IT helpdesk agent in.

Let’s begin!

5.1 Launch Copilot Studio

Navigate to https://copilotstudio.microsoft.com
Sign in with your Microsoft 365 work or school account

!!! warning You must be in a tenant where Copilot Studio is enabled. If you don’t see Copilot Studio, revisit Mission 00 to complete your setup.

5.2 Choose the Safe Travels Agent Template

From the Copilot Studio homepage, click + Create
Scroll down to the Start with an agent template section
Find and select Safe Travels
Notice that the template comes pre-loaded with a description, instructions and knowledge.
Click Create

This will create a new agent in your environment based on the Safe Travels configuration.

5.3 Customize the Agent

Now that the agent is created, let’s tailor it to your organization:

Select Enabled generative AI to turn on the generative AI feature so that it can use the instructions provided in the template.
Now we’ll equip the agent with an additional knowledge source so it can answer questions about Europe travel. To do this, scroll down to the knowledge section and select Add knowledge
Select Public websites
In the text input, paste https://european-union.europa.eu/ and select Add
Select Add to agent

5.4 Test and Publish

Click Test in the top-right to launch the test window
Try phrases like:
- “Do I need a visa to travel from the US to Amsterdam?”
- “How long does it take to get a US Passport?”
- “Where is the closest US embassy in Valencia, Spain?”
Confirm the agent responds with accurate and helpful information and observe the Activity Map to see where it retrieved the information.
When ready, click Publish
Select Publish again in the dialog box
Optionally, add the agent to Microsoft Teams using the built-in Channels feature.

!!! note “🧳 Bonus Objective” Try grounding the Safe Travels agent with a SharePoint site or FAQ file to make it more relevant to your company’s travel policies.

✅ Mission Complete

You’ve now successfully:

Deployed a Microsoft pre-built agent
Customized the agent
Tested and published your own version of the Safe Travels agent template

⏭️ Move to Creating a custom agent from scratch lesson.

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