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Copilot Studio Message Billing Clarification

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Posted on 16 Dec 2024 18:11:17 by 19
Hi,
 
I understand the licensing model for Copilot Studio as outlined here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot-studio/requirements-messages-management
 
It's 1 billable message for every message that an agent sends. May it be a greeting or a response. 1 non AI message by agent = 1 message unit consumed.
 
However, after recently posting a chatbot on our website, we've seen over 90k billable messages being consumed with all of them showing as the "SessionOutcome" being "Unengaged" in the span of 3 days. This is without anything showing in the "ChatTranscript" and no "InitialUserMessage" under the Analytics/Sessions tab. Note from the range and data set below, there was only 27 actually recorded conversations.
 
e.g.
 
 
It appears that as if every page load, ping to the site (say google analytics or something checking if the site is live) etc is causing a message to be billed even though the chatbots are fully unengaged. 
 
As a result, we ran a set of specific tests to validate in which scenarios an interaction/message being sent from the agent is being recognised as a billable message and have found that even in scenarios where there was no "Conversation Start" topic set up, aka the agent was not sending any message, we still appear to be charged a billable message. This is under a scenario where you literally just let the chatbot load, either embedded on a website or the demo site and then close the browser without any interaction or any messages being sent.
 
e.g. in the below example, Test IDs 3 and 7 should not be billed as no message was sent by agent or user.
 
How do we know these are being billed? Because all of the "Unengaged" messages in the first screenshot above have come out of our capacity.
 
Has anyone else come across this?
 
The only alternative we have come up with so far to try and control this while still being able to send a greetings message would be to have javascript code that would only set the source of the embedded iFrame to the chatbot if the user clicks the chatbot icon on the website. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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  • UL-09100816-0 Profile Picture
    UL-09100816-0 19 on 19 Dec 2024 at 09:20:43
    Copilot Studio Message Billing Clarification
    Am in contact with Microsoft. 

    For those curious, the javascript approach has mended the issue of wrongful messages after a lot of testing.

    P.S

    I can't seem to mark anything as an answer even though I'm ticking the box.


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    Vinoth Selvam Profile Picture
    Vinoth Selvam 1,161 on 19 Dec 2024 at 01:56:56
    Copilot Studio Message Billing Clarification
    Yes, this seems very unfortunate.
     
    Microsoft has to help in providing the clarifications, since there are no clear documentation exist on this so far.
     
    Kindly help to update the outcome if someone gets the answers.
  • Artur Stepniak Profile Picture
    Artur Stepniak 704 on 18 Dec 2024 at 11:17:54
    Copilot Studio Message Billing Clarification
    Hello,
     
    this is something that you should address to MS directly. I guess events are also counted as engagement, that's why it happens.
     
    Best regards,
     
    Artur Stepniak
  • UL-09100816-0 Profile Picture
    UL-09100816-0 19 on 18 Dec 2024 at 09:29:32
    Copilot Studio Message Billing Clarification
    Yeah it's unfortunate that we need to do something like this to accommodate it. There also isn't good documentation to suggest a fix, plus cause the chatbot is loaded on click, it won't be as quick as a pre-loaded one. 
     
    In general, all welcome messages/first messages sent by an agent should be excluded from billing. 
  • Suggested answer
    Artur Stepniak Profile Picture
    Artur Stepniak 704 on 16 Dec 2024 at 21:40:51
    Copilot Studio Message Billing Clarification
    Hello,
     
    "The only alternative we have come up with so far to try and control this while still being able to send a greetings message would be to have javascript code that would only set the source of the embedded iFrame to the chatbot if the user clicks the chatbot icon on the website. " - and that's the solution.
    It's because each time you reload a website, it reloads the widget, so it's counted as conversation start. To avoid this, you'd need to use JS as you've mentioned to inject iframe only when user clicks the bubble.
     
    In case of any other questions, let me know. If the answer helped you, mark it, so that others can benefit from it.
     
    Best regards,
     
    Artur Stepniak

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