Microsoft Copilot Studio

Microsoft Copilot Studio is the tool for building custom AI agents and publishing them to channels including Microsoft 365, websites, applications and social platforms. Access to a standard build harness is included with Microsoft 365 Copilot, and standalone use runs through Azure with credits.

Publishing the same agent to internal and external channels is the practical distinction. An organisation that builds an agent answering questions about its own policies frequently wants a version of it answering customers, and rebuilding the knowledge and guardrails twice in two tools is where such projects stall. One authoring surface with several publish targets removes that duplication.

Bundling the standard harness with a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence is a deliberate distribution choice. It means the buying decision for a company already paying for Copilot is not whether to purchase an agent platform but whether to use one it already has, which is a much lower bar than any competitor can offer that customer.

The trade off is the familiar Microsoft one. The value depends on being inside the Microsoft estate, and an organisation running Google Workspace gains far less from the integration that makes this compelling.