Power Platform Community Forum Thread Details

Hi everyone,

I’m building an automation using Copilot Studio and Power Automate, and I’m running into an issue with handling validation responses back to the agent.

Scenario

A user uploads a PDF to a Copilot Studio agent
This triggers a Power Automate flow
The flow:
1. Extracts the report date using AI Builder
2. Checks a SharePoint list to see if a report for that date already exists

Requirement

If the report date already exists in SharePoint, the flow should stop immediately and the agent should respond with:
"This report has already been processed."

Challenges I’m Facing

Multiple “Respond to agent” actions
I tried placing a Respond to agent action inside the “Duplicate Found” branch, but I get schema errors because there is already a Respond action at the end of the main (success) path.
Using Terminate action
When I use a Terminate action, the agent often returns a generic system error instead of my custom message.

Questions

What is the recommended pattern for sending a validation or short-circuit response from Power Automate back to a Copilot Studio agent?
Should I use a variable (e.g., StatusMessage) and return it in a single Respond action at the end?
How can I ensure the agent displays a custom message (like "duplicate report") instead of a system error when the flow stops early?

Any guidance, best practices, or sample patterns would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

Categories:

Copilot Studio pre-built agents/templates

Autonomous agents

Calling actions from Copilot Studio