Use lesson topics

Copilot Studio includes sample topics with every new agent. These samples range from simple to complex scenarios that use conditional branching, variables, and custom entities.

The topics are functional but aren't designed for production use. These examples help you learn how to create content for your agents.

Prerequisites

  • An existing agent, or if you need to create one, see Quickstart: Create and deploy an agent.
  • If you're using a bot that has classic added to the name, you can upgrade your bot to see the latest versions of the sample topics. All bots made in the Teams app are classic bots.

Use sample topics to understand how topics work

  1. Open your agent, or create one, and go to the Overview page.

  2. Review the agent's details for name and description. The agent derives topic phrases from the description (if any).

  3. Select Topics at the top of the page to view the agent's conversation flow.

    Screenshot that shows where the details button is located and how it reveals the topic name and description.

  4. Select each topic from the list to open it. In this case, trigger phrases were added manually to the Trigger node.

    The flow includes the agent's comments, expected user responses, decision points, and entity references used in each topic. This sample flow is for Lesson 3.

    Screenshot of lesson topic 3 on the Topics & Plugins page of Copilot Studio.

Available sample topics

Each sample lesson topic is designed to teach you how to create basic and advanced agent conversations. We recommend that you start with Lesson 1 and work through each topic in order.

Lesson 1 - A simple topic

This sample template is a topic that responds to a question about store hours.

Lesson 2 - A simple topic with a condition and a variable

This sample shows you how to create a question that asks customers which store they're interested in and keeps the response in a variable. The condition uses the variable to determine which store's hours to return.

Lesson 3 - A topic with a condition, variables, and a prebuilt entity

This sample asks customers to enter a shipping state. The agent uses the prebuilt State entity to recognize the US state in the user's response, and stores it in the State variable.

A condition uses the State variable to determine which shipping message to send to the user. Another condition uses the customer's response to a multiple-choice question, stored in the variable Item, to determine which product to order.