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Posted on by JA-02061639-0

I’m trying to build a Copilot Studio agent that can answer questions about an Excel table by calling a Power Automate flow. The flow is supposed to return employee counts based on filters like status, program, and termination reason.

Right now, I’m having trouble getting the topic to pass clean inputs into the flow. Sometimes it asks too many follow-up questions even when the answer is already in the user’s prompt, and other times it sends the wrong value (or no value at all), which causes the flow to return all rows or 0 results. I’m trying to figure out the best way to structure the topic so it uses what’s already in the prompt, only asks for missing inputs, and reliably sends the correct values into the flow.

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Vish WR 3,476 on at

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@JA-02061639-0

This is a standard slot filling problem that you're hitting in Copilot Studio. The simplest fix — check "Skip if already provided" on every question node. This makes the topic pull values from the initial user message rather than asking again unnecessarily.

For the flow sending empty/incorrect values, add a simple conditional in Power Automate — if a filter input is empty, don't apply that filter condition. That's what causes the all rows or 0 results behaviour.

some resources that cover this exact pattern:

Use entities and slot filling in Copilot Studio — Microsoft Docs

Call a Power Automate flow from a topic — Microsoft Docs

Vishnu WR

LinkedIn - Power Platform Insights

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CU15051649-0 10 on at

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Hi @JA-02061639-0,

I'll recommend using entity extraction + variables + conditional prompts.

Let Copilot extract Status, Program, and Termination Reason directly from the user's prompt.

Only ask follow-up questions for missing values. (like if the x variable value is received, only y is not received, then only prompt for y, not for x)

Normalize values before calling the flow (trim spaces, standardize naming, map synonyms).

Pass empty strings/nulls explicitly for unused filters.

Keep filtering logic in Power Automate, not in the topic.

Add logging/debug output to verify the exact values being sent to the flow.

Also, you can test the value of variable whether it is passing correctly or not.

So, the process will be the user submits a query, the agent extracts the required entities from the prompt, asks only for any missing inputs, normalizes and validates the values, calls the Power Automate flow through a tool, and then returns the flow result back to the user.

I hope this helps you!

Thanks,

Gurdeep

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