Introduction
A copilot is an AI assistant that can help you perform tasks and obtain information. You interact with a copilot by using a chat experience. Microsoft has added copilots across the different Microsoft products to help users be more productive. Copilots can be generic, such as Microsoft Copilot, and not tied to a specific Microsoft product. Alternatively, a copilot can be context-aware and tailored to the Microsoft product or application that you're using at the time.
Microsoft Power Platform has several copilots that are available to makers and users. This module explores some common considerations with the different Microsoft Power Platform copilots. The main Microsoft Power Platform copilots and their specializations are as follows:
Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft Power Apps - Use this copilot to help create a canvas app directly from your ideas. Give the copilot a natural language description, such as "I need an app to track my customer feedback." Afterward, the copilot offers a data structure for you to iterate until it's exactly what you need, and then it creates pages of a canvas app for you to work with that data. You can edit this information along the way. Additionally, this copilot helps you edit the canvas app after you create it. Power Apps also offers copilot controls for users to interact with Power Apps data, including copilots for canvas apps and model-driven apps.
Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft Power Automate- Use this copilot to create automation that communicates with connectors and improves business outcomes. This copilot can work with cloud flows and desktop flows. Copilot for Power Automate can help you build automation by explaining actions, adding actions, replacing actions, and answering questions.
Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft Power Pages- Use this copilot to describe and create an external-facing website with Microsoft Power Pages. As a result, you have theming options, standard pages to include, and AI-generated stock images and relevant text descriptions for the website that you're building. You can edit this information as you build your Power Pages website.
Other copilots
Microsoft offers copilots in many products and scenarios. The following video shows a few scenarios and where you might encounter them. Eventually, you can expect that copilots will be available across the Microsoft portfolio of applications. Microsoft Copilot is the most generic. Other copilots are more tailored to their application.
This module focuses on Microsoft Power Platform copilots, but the following example shows how Microsoft Copilot would respond compared to Copilot for Power Apps.
Consider the following scenario. You ask both copilots to Add a blue button with white text titled Open that uses the launch function. Both copilots respond and understand what you want to do, though the response differs:
Microsoft Copilot - Responds with, "To create a blue button with white text that uses the launch function, you can use the following HTML and CSS code." Then, it provides you with detailed HTML and CSS.
This copilot doesn't know that you want to add a button in Power Apps and that you're building an app.
You can guide the copilot to receive a response that matches more with what you're looking for by changing the prompt as follows: "Add a blue button in a Power Apps app with white text titled Open that uses the launch function." Now, the response is a set of detailed steps that you could perform in the Power Apps designer to complete the task.
Copilot for Power Apps - With the same original prompt, this copilot responds by adding a button to your screen that uses the launch function. This copilot already knows that you're editing an app in Power Apps and that it can perform the task for you instead of offering steps for you to perform.
Anatomy of a copilot
Each copilot is slightly different. However, they all share common elements where you can:
Compose a prompt to ask the copilot to take action.
Undo modifications if they don't seem to work.
Ask for help, including asking what the copilot can do.
Make the copilot hidden or visible with your main experience.
Microsoft Power Platform copilots share the screen with the main experience. As a result, you can interact with them while you're building an app or a flow. You can hide the copilot, or reshow it if hidden, by using a button in each experience.
Many copilot experiences require you to turn on the copilot in Power Platform admin center tenant settings. If the particular copilot isn't on the list, check with your admin.
In the following example from Copilot for Power Automate, you can select the sparkle icon to help you get started. Then, the program guides you on your selected path. For example, when you have a question about a formula to include in a flow action, you can start with "Ask a question," and the prompt prepopulates the best prompt for that "Tell me more about" section.
Prompts
A prompt is the way that you tell the copilot what you need. It's a natural language description of the desired outcome. It might be a vague request, or it might be a detailed narrative. The more specific and detailed the prompt, the greater accuracy of the results.
When you're preparing to use a copilot, it's helpful to know what you want to accomplish. Later, this module goes into greater detail about planning your prompts so that you're more likely to receive the desired outcomes.
How copilots work
You can create a copilot by using a language model, which is like a computer program that can understand and generate human-like language. A language model can perform various natural language processing tasks based on a deep-learning algorithm. The massive amounts of data that the language model processes can help the copilot recognize, translate, predict, or generate text and other types of content.
Despite being trained on a massive amount of data, the language model doesn't contain information about your specific use case, such as the steps in a Power Automate flow that you're editing. The copilot shares this information for the system to use when it interacts with the language model to answer your questions. This context is commonly referred to as grounding data. Grounding data is use case-specific data that helps the language model perform better for a specific topic. Additionally, grounding data ensures that your data and IP are never part of training the language model.
Data security
You are in control of your data. Microsoft doesn't share your data with other non-Microsoft entities unless you grant explicit permission to do so. Furthermore, Microsoft doesn't use your data to train or improve Copilot or its AI features, unless you provide consent for Microsoft to do so. Copilot adheres to existing data permissions and policies, and users only view responses based on data that they personally have access to.
The different copilots in Microsoft Power Platform provide powerful assistants that help you accelerate the building of business applications. The copilot works best with your critical thinking as a partner in solution building. Copilots are a rapidly changing technology. Keep up to date on new and upcoming features with the release notes and the Release Planner tool. For more information, see the Microsoft Power Platform release notes.
Responsible AI FAQs for the solution
Responsible AI FAQs are part of a broader effort to put Microsoft AI principles into practice. They aim to provide insights into the workings of AI technology, the decisions that can affect its performance and behavior, and the significance of considering the entire system, including the technology, people, and environment. We recommend that you use these FAQs to gain a deeper understanding of specific AI systems and features developed by Microsoft.
To learn about the AI capabilities and impact of specific features of this solution, see FAQ about using AI responsibly in Power Apps.