What is Microsoft Copilot Studio?
Microsoft Copilot Studio is a low-code platform that allows businesses to build custom AI agents — essentially bespoke AI assistants designed to handle specific tasks, answer specific questions, or automate specific workflows within your business.
Think of it this way: Microsoft 365 Copilot is a general-purpose AI assistant built into your everyday apps. Copilot Studio lets you build a specialist AI agent that knows exactly what your business does, works from your own documents and data, and is deployed directly in Microsoft Teams where your staff already work.
How is Copilot Studio different from standard Copilot?
Standard Microsoft 365 Copilot is a general assistant — it helps you draft emails, summarise meetings, analyse spreadsheets. It works across your whole Microsoft 365 environment.
Copilot Studio is different in three important ways:
- Purpose-built. You design it to do one thing — or a set of specific things — extremely well. A client intake agent. A company policy assistant. A property FAQ bot.
- Trained on your specific data. You feed it your own documents, FAQs, policies, product lists, or knowledge base — and it answers questions using that specific information.
- It can take actions. Connected to Power Automate, a Copilot Studio agent can actually do things — create a ticket, send an email, update a record, book an appointment — not just answer questions.
What can you actually build with Copilot Studio?
The possibilities are broad, but here are the most impactful agents we build for SMEs in your target sectors:
- Answers common tax deadline and allowance questions
- Guides clients through document submission processes
- Escalates complex queries to the right team member
- Available 24/7 in Teams or as a web chat widget
- Gathers client name, contact details, and matter type
- Asks qualifying questions specific to practice area
- Creates a CRM record or Teams task automatically
- Sends confirmation email to client via Power Automate
- Answers tenancy FAQs from your own documentation
- Logs maintenance requests and assigns to contractors
- Sends automated updates on request status
- Escalates urgent issues immediately
- Answers holiday entitlement and booking queries
- Explains company policies on expenses, working hours
- Guides staff through onboarding processes
- Escalates sensitive HR matters to the right person
How does Copilot Studio actually work?
Without going too deep into the technical detail, here is the basic process for building a Copilot Studio agent:
Define the agent's purpose
What does this agent do? Who does it talk to? What questions should it answer? We work with you to define the scope before building anything.
Connect your knowledge sources
We connect the agent to your SharePoint documents, internal FAQs, policy documents, or any other data source. The agent learns from your specific content — not generic internet data.
Design the conversation flows
We build out the conversation logic — what the agent asks, how it responds to different inputs, when it escalates to a human, and what actions it triggers automatically.
Connect to Power Automate (if needed)
For agents that need to take actions — creating tickets, sending emails, updating records — we connect to Power Automate flows that trigger automatically based on the conversation.
Deploy and test
We deploy the agent to Microsoft Teams, your website, or both — test thoroughly with real scenarios, refine based on feedback, and hand over with full documentation.
What does it cost to build a Copilot Studio agent?
There are two cost components to be aware of:
- Copilot Studio licence. Microsoft charges per message consumed by the agent — or you can purchase a capacity pack. For most SME use cases, costs are modest: a tenant FAQ agent handling 500 queries a month would cost approximately £50–100 in licence fees.
- Build and configuration fees. This is our fee for designing, building, testing, and deploying the agent. A straightforward agent (standard FAQ bot) starts from £800. A complex agent with Power Automate integration and multiple conversation flows ranges from £1,500 to £3,000.
Do you need a Copilot licence to use Copilot Studio?
No — Copilot Studio is a separate product and does not require Microsoft 365 Copilot licences. However, you do need to be on Microsoft 365 Business Premium or equivalent for the underlying security and data governance to work properly. Copilot Studio agents should never be deployed on a Basic or Standard licence environment without proper governance in place.
Why most IT providers can't offer this
Copilot Studio requires a specific skill set that goes beyond standard Microsoft 365 administration. Building effective agents requires understanding of conversation design, Power Automate, knowledge source configuration, and Microsoft's AI safety guidelines. It is a genuinely specialist capability — and one that most MSPs and IT support companies simply don't have in-house.
At SRX IT Solutions, we use Copilot and Copilot Studio daily. We hold a Copilot Premium licence and have hands-on experience building agents across multiple business types. This isn't a service we're figuring out as we go — it's something we do.
Want to see what a Copilot Studio agent could do for your business?
Book a free Copilot Discovery Call. We'll listen to your specific business processes and tell you honestly whether an AI agent would save you time and money.
Book Free Discovery Call →Key takeaways
- Copilot Studio lets you build custom AI agents trained on your own business data
- Agents can answer questions, handle intake, log requests, and trigger automated workflows
- Sector-specific agents for accountancy, legal, and letting agencies deliver measurable ROI
- It does not require Microsoft 365 Copilot licences but does require Business Premium
- This is a specialist capability — most IT providers cannot build or support it
About SRX IT Solutions
Microsoft 365 and Copilot AI specialist based in Birmingham. We build and deploy Copilot Studio agents for SMEs. Learn more →