Need guidance on the approach I took for a Copilot Studio Agent

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Posted on by P1999

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Hi,

So i have a set of documents in sharepoint which guide users through a set of instructions , I want to train my copilot studio agent. My way of doing it is mentioned below.

I created topics

Navigator ( for picking the user query )

Creating a custom prompt asking to identify stage and steps and intent as per the user's question and relaying the output in JSON -> navigating to the Helper.

Custom Prompt

Identify Stage and Steps from the knowledge sources.

    Intent can be of five types.

    Step Guidance → User is asking for instructions or next steps.

    Field Help → User is asking about meaning, purpose, or requirement of a field.

    Error → User is reporting an issue, failure, or unexpected behaviour.

    Navigation → User is asking how to move between pages, sections, or modules.

    Unknown → Intent cannot be clearly determined.

Helper ( for creating different prompts for different Intent Types that I later use in 'Create Generative Answer' node )

Here I create different prompts depending on different intent types. Inside these prompts I use Fx to include values of Stage & Steps so that responses will be custom to user's stage.

After giving appropriate response using the 'Create Generative Answer' node , I ask the user by providing these options - ['Want to move to the next step', 'Facing an issue', 'Ask another question']

I use conditional logic to redirect users to

------> 'Next Stage Finder' if they want to move to next stage in the Process.

------> Set the Intent to 'Error' ->'Back to the top of Helper Topic' if the user is facing issue in the given response.

------> 'Navigator' if they have more questions to ask.

Next Stage Finder ( Inputs - Stage , Step , Outputs - Next Stage , Next Step )

Here I use values from Stage and Step and use a custom prompt in 'Create Generative Answer' node for it to give me the next stage and steps which I send back to the Helper and it starts again from the top.

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P1999 143 on at

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Issue I am facing is that , the 'Create Generative Answers' node sometimes , doesn't give a response. It directly errors. Particularly for those .. where I am asking for JSON output.

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Valantis 3,490 on at

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Hi @P1999,

The Create Generative Answers node is designed for natural language conversational responses, not structured JSON output. When you ask it to return JSON it errors intermittently because the node validates and moderates responses as conversational text and structured formats like JSON can fail that validation unpredictably.
For JSON output you need a different approach:
1. Use a Prompt action (AI Builder custom prompt) instead. Prompt actions are designed for structured output and you can explicitly instruct the model to return JSON. They are more reliable for this use case.
2. Alternatively use a Power Automate flow with an AI Builder prompt action and return the JSON output back to your topic as a variable.
The Create Generative Answers node should only be used when you want a natural language answer to be shown to the user, not when you need structured data for processing.
Ref: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot-studio/nlu-generative-answers-custom-data

Best regards,

Valantis

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P1999 143 on at

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@Valantis For Intent , custom prompt would work. But for generating stages and steps , I need it to refer knowledge sources. ( in my case SharePoint documents ).

For AI Builder custom prompt.

The allowed documents is
Image and document formats accepted: .PNG, .JPG, .JPEG, .PDF. , and not docs.

How should I approach with Prompt then ?

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Valantis 3,490 on at

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Hi @P1999,

Yes correct it does not support .docx as direct input so you cannot pass SharePoint Word documents directly.

give a go this ones:

1. In your Copilot Studio topic, call a Power Automate flow and pass the user query as input
2. In the flow, retrieve and extract the text content from your SharePoint .docx document. There are several ways to do this in Power Automate depending on your setup.
3. Pass that extracted text as a string input to an AI Builder prompt action configured with JSON output mode
4. Return the JSON (Stage, Steps, Intent) back to your topic as output variables

This way Power Automate handles the document reading and the AI Builder prompt only receives text, which it handles correctly with JSON output.

For your Helper topic and Next Stage Finder where you are using Create Generative Answers for natural language responses to the user, those are fine to keep as is. The fix only applies to the Custom Prompt step where you need JSON output from document content.

Ref: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot-studio/process-responses-json-output

Best regards,

Valantis

✅ If this helped solve your issue, please Accept as Solution so others can find it quickly.

❤️ If it didn’t fully solve it but was still useful, please click “Yes” on “Was this reply helpful?” or leave a Like :).

🏷️ For follow-ups @Valantis.

📝 https://valantisond365.com/

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P1999 143 on at

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@Valantis Thank you for assisting.

Instead of extracting entire document if I map the stages and steps in a dataverse table. Will it be fine ?

For e.g. Process table and Stage Table ( one to many relationship )

I did a power automate flow where I sent the process and created a JSON of stages and steps and gave that to the Prompt to choose from.

This works fine in identifying the stage and saves some credits.

But as I mentioned , I am giving an option to the user to proceed to the next stage. So should I do this again...creating another power automate flow and creating another prompt within it just to get the next stage ?

Or is there a better way to do it ?

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Valantis 3,490 on at

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Hi @P1999,

Great approach using Dataverse tables, that is cleaner and cheaper.

For the Next Stage Finder you actually do not need another AI prompt at all. Since your stages and steps are already structured in Dataverse, finding the next stage is a simple data query not a reasoning task.

Just add an Order or Sequence column to your Stage table if you do not have one already. Then in a Power Automate flow:

1. Take the current Stage as input from Copilot Studio
2. Query Dataverse for the stage with Order = current Order + 1 using List rows with an OData filter
3. Return the next Stage and its Steps back to your topic as output variables

No AI credits consumed, faster, and deterministic. Save the prompt for the parts that actually need reasoning like identifying intent and stage from the user query. Navigation through a known ordered sequence is just a lookup.

Best regards,

Valantis

✅ If this helped solve your issue, please Accept as Solution so others can find it quickly.

❤️ If it didn’t fully solve it but was still useful, please click “Yes” on “Was this reply helpful?” or leave a Like :).

🏷️ For follow-ups @Valantis.

📝 https://valantisond365.com/

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