How do I trigger a tool in copilot studio

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Posted on by pooja_jayant Microsoft Employee

I have an agent where knowledge contains dataverse connectors and within tools, I have added log analytics. when the user asks a question, the agent should get the data either from dataverse or from log analytics, How can I control this? Right now, log aanalytics related questions are being queried in dataverse and result comes "Not found".

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Calling actions from Copilot Studio

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chiaraalina 2,425 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi @pooja_jayant

In Copilot Studio, the Generative Orchestrator chooses automatically whether to answer from knowledge sources, tools, and topics, agents etc.. It makes this choice mainly from the names and descriptions of your knowledge sources, tools, and topics. So always make sure you have good descriptions.

I guess because you added Dataverse as a Knowledge source, the agent may tries Dataverse first. So when a user asks a Log Analytics question, it still searches Dataverse knowledge, can’t find anything, and returns “Not found.” Good tool descriptions help, but they don’t always override this behavior.

My recommendation is: Use Topics when you need reliable routing.

Create two Topics and call the correct tool inside each topic:

Topic: Log Analytics
Trigger: The agent chooses
Description (something like, you can also use Copilot for better description):
“Show me errors from the last 2 hours”
“Any failed requests today?”
"Show me logs"

"Show me failed requests"

Inside: Call Log Analytics tool

Topic: Dataverse Business Data
Trigger: The agent chooses
Description: [add description/explain the topic here]

Hope it helps!

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André Arnaud de Cal... 679 on at

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Hi Pooja,

In addition to the reply from Chiaraalina, some additional thoughts. If you use the generative orchestration, then AI decides what to query. The outcome heavily depends on the language model you select (with or without deep reasoning) and the provided instructions. You can try to mention in the instructions that in case nothing is found in the knowledge source, that the tool should be used. Then a smarter language model should understand this.

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Valantis 6,735 on at

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Hi @pooja_jayant,

What I did when I wanted to get information from the system (for example, from Dataverse and Cases):

I created a topic that triggers on a question like "case update." It asks for the case number, or you can set it up to grab the info directly from the message, like "case update for case 123456."

Then I run a flow that gets the list of cases and the specific information I need from Dataverse. After that, I run a prompt to summarize the info and display it as output.

Hope that helps you get an idea of how to build it!

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David_MA 14,956 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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I am not sure the responses so far have told you how to trigger a tool, but all of them are saying to use the same approach I am using:

Set orchestration to: Yes - Responses will be dynamic, using available tools and knowledge as appropriate.

Use topics, that when triggered can then call a tool.

I have a topic called request human assistance, for example. The trigger description is:

Used when a user requests human assistance, asks to talk to a real person, or seeks direct contact with support. This topic initiates an escalation workflow and emails the support group

Then in the topic where you want the tool called, click the plus button and choose Add a tool > Tool > select the tool.

This has been working for me so far. However, I would not consider myself an expert in agents yet as this is my first real one. Time will tell how well I did when it goes live. :-)

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