Create your first custom AI enabled Copilot Studio Voice Agent – step-by-step guide

In this article, let me help you with the step-by-step guide you on how to quickly build-up a Copilot Studio voice agent to support your end-customers and provide informative voice support.

To complete this exercise, we’ll be using all free trials, so no licensing pre-requirements are needed.

Time to complete: 45 minutes

After completing this exercise, please leave your comments and let me know what you think about this approach.

We’ll be using the following infrastructure:

• Dynamics 365 Contact center with provisioned Voice channel and associated phone number (US based)
• Copilot Studio as the engine to build a voice agent
• Public web site as the knowledge source

Special thanks goes to Bart Vierbergen, who reviewed the article and very much helped to shape it to the final look.

Ready for the hands-on work?

To start, we need to provision a Dynamics 365 Contact Center free trial. Simply navigate to Start a Free Trial | Microsoft Dynamics 365, and use “Try for free” button. Enter your e-mail address and Start your free trial. You have the option to select the country (which will provide the environment closest to your location.

A few moments and you’ll be ready to use the system. You will be taken to the Contact Center workspace application. ?

NOTE: opening the Power Platform admin center you will notice the newly created environment (ContactCenter Trial)

Now open the new tab in your browser and navigate to the Maker portal (https://make.powerapps.com/) and change the environment to the newly created one (ContactCenter Trial). Note several applications that are provisioned:

Open the “Contact Center admin center” by clicking the play button next to the name. Explore the options in the left menu to get the feel of the settings options.

In the left menu, navigate to the Channels (under Customer support), and navigate to the Phone numbers – Manage option (last link on the page) to verify the phone number associated with your environment:

NOTE: you have been provisioned with the 60 calling minutes to be used in the system, incoming calls only. Be careful when using the free-toll option, if calling outside of the US, additional charges might happen.

With this we have successfully deployed the Dynamics 365 Contact Center with allocated phone number, and we’re ready to create our custom voice enabled Copilot Agent.

In the new tab of the same browser navigate to the Copilot Studio (https://copilotstudio.microsoft.com/) and first make sure you’re using the right environment (top-right option, select ContactCenter Trial).

Using the left navigation, navigate to the Agents and use the “+ New agent” option. You should see the screen like:

Enter the following:

• Name: (Any logical name like) Microsoft DEMO Voice bot
• Description: leave empty
• Instructions: play around with different elements like tone of the agent you would like to have (please refer to the Use prompt modification to provide custom instructions to your agent - Microsoft Copilot Studio | Microsoft Learn for more details). For fun, I’m using “Use the tone of the pirate”
• Knowledge: click on the “+ Add knowledge” and use the Public website option, enter the URL of your company public web-site and click the Add button. In my example I’ll use: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/

Click Add button once more, and finally “Create” button on the top-right.

After “Setting up your agent” screen you will enter the editing mode of your freshly created custom Agent:

We can immediately test our Agent by using the Test option in the top-right navigation and ask a question like:

• What are my learning options around PowerApps?
• Can you help me to prepare for the PL-200 exam?

Note you will immediately get pirate like answers with referrals to the Microsoft learn web site:

ASK YOURSELF: how is Copilot agent available to answer questions using the knowledge from the public web-site literary in a seconds after creation? Please leave your comments on this one.

Play around with different question types, explore the different answers on different question types.

If you’re using Copilot Studio for the first time, navigate the different elements in the top menu, I’m sure you’ll be opening many interesting questions on how to configure the Agent.

To continue with our scenario, we need to enable the voice channel and set up the security settings.

Navigate to the Settings area in the top navigation, and in the right navigation select the Voice option to enable the voice first capability:

Now navigate to the Channels on the top menu and select the Telephony channel. In the right pop-up screen, click on the “Turn on telephony” button. You should get this notification:

Close the right pane using the Close button and let’s focus on the security element.

Navigate to the Settings area in the top navigation and select the Security in the left navigation. Click on the Authentication option and select the “No authentication” option:

This will enable the use of our Agent without any authentication – in other words, we’ll be able to publish this bot against our Dynamics 365 Contact Center. Click Save, confirm the configuration with another Save option, and close the settings by “x” option on the top-right corner.

We’re now ready to Publish our Agent, so please use the Publish button on the top navigation and confirm by another Publish option. This process might take several minutes for the first time.

Now, we’re ready to expose our Agent to the Dynamics 365 Contact Center. Navigate to the Channels and select the “Dynamics 365 Customer Service” option in the Customer engagement hub area. In the right pane, simply select “Connect” option. In a few moments you should have the Status Connected as:

Finally, Publish your agent by selecting the “Publish” option in the top navigation. On the Overview screen, you can observe the publishing status of your Agent.

With this connection, we have completed the configuration of the Agent, and we can continue the configuration in the Dynamics 365 Contact center to expose our agent over the voice channel using the pre-configured workstream.

If you have been able to follow until this moment, you’re almost there – in few minutes you’ll be able to test your voice agent!

In your browser navigate again to the “Contact center admin center” and this time navigate to the Workstream area in the left navigation. You will notice several pre-configured workstreams:

By clicking on it, open the “Demo voice call workstream” which is already pre-configured for the Voice channel.

Note that the phone number is activated, and using the marked in red “Edit” option in the channel, note several the Behaviors options that are already pre-configured:

• Customers will be notified if queued
• Transcription and recording are enabled
• Custom automated messages will be played out as the introduction

Close the Voice settings by selecting Save, and navigate to the Bot part of the screen, where pre-configured bot is selected for us. Click on the three-dots and select “Remove bot” so we can associate our custom one we have built few moments ago:

Confirm removal by selecting "Remove bot".

Now add our bot by using the “+Add bot” option and select the Copilot agent we have just created (in my case “Microsoft DEMO Voice bot), and finally click Connect:

Now, the moment of the first test! I’ll be using the Teams app as my phone and will dial the number associated with my test environment (displayed on the top of the Workstream).

NOTE: It might take up to 15 minutes until your agent will answer the call, due to the configuration change that needs to take place, so be patient here.

On the answer to the call note the Greeting Message (remember the Behavior pre-configured setting). Now you can talk to the Agent we have configured in the Copilot studio, and in my example, I’ll use the same questions I have been testing the system earlier:

• What are my learning options around PowerApps?
• Can you help me to prepare for the PL-200 exam?

?

If you have been successful in conversation with your agent, this means you have successfully completed all the steps.

Please note that the intent of this article is not to train you in all the configuration options but now would be the perfect time to explore all the options available both in the Copilot Studio and in the Dynamics 365 Contact center.

If there are numerous questions in your mind right now, please share the top ones in the comments!

As the last step in this process, let’s explore the recordings of the call you have just made.

Use the Contact center workspace app, and navigate to the Activities, using the left navigation:

By clicking on the “My activities” switch the view to the “All activities”, where you should see the recent recording of the phone call you just performed.

Double click on the one where the Activity type is Conversation, and you will be presented with the screen where you can play back the recording of the call between the agent and the caller:

If you have reached this part, it means that you have successfully completed the step-by-step guide and you’re ready to explore some more advanced options.

Hope you have enjoyed the exercise, please share your comments and feedback in the comments.