Power Platform Community Forum Thread Details

Hello Copilot Studio Community,

I'm building an agent in Microsoft Copilot Studio and need guidance on capturing the agent's direct response into a variable.

What I'm trying to do:

I have configured my agent with instructions in Copilot Studio (using the Agent instructions section, not a Prompt node or Generative Answers node).
When the agent responds to a user query based on these instructions, I want to store that exact response text into a variable.
I then plan to use this variable downstream - for example, passing it to a Power Automate flow, logging it, or using it in conditional logic

My questions:

Is there a built-in way to capture the agent's direct conversational response (the one generated from agent instructions) into a custom variable?
If not, are there any workarounds ?
If this capability doesn't exist today, is it on the Copilot Studio roadmap?

What I've already checked:

I know that responses from Prompt nodes or Generative Answers nodes can be captured using completion mapping or output variables.
I've reviewed the variables documentation, but I don't see a system variable that exposes the final agent response when using instruction-based responses.

Any guidance, screenshots, or links to relevant documentation would be greatly appreciated!

Environment: Copilot Studio (web app), Power Platform environment

Categories:

Copilot Studio skills development

General topics

Hello SS-26050504-0,

Not directly — the output from the Agent instructions field can’t be stored in a variable. Because it’s generated by the autonomous orchestration layer, it isn’t exposed as a system or output variable. There’s no public roadmap commitment to change that.

A practical workaround

Instead, move the logic out of Agent instructions and into a Prompt action (or Generative Answers node) inside a topic, then map the result to a variable:

Topic: HandleUserQuery
├─ Trigger: On Unknown Intent (or specific phrases)
├─ Prompt action → input: Activity.Text
│                   system prompt: <your former agent instructions>
│                   output: Topic.AgentResponse
├─ Message node   → "{Topic.AgentResponse}"
└─ Power Automate → pass Topic.AgentResponse

With that in place, Topic.AgentResponse can be used for Power Automate, logging, and conditional logic.

Other options, though less ideal

Dataverse Conversation Transcripts — use Power Automate to read the last bot message after the fact, not in real time.
Custom channel (Direct Line / bot relay) — intercept outbound activities; heavy lift.

The Agent instructions field is intentionally opaque to topic flow — anything you need to capture has to live inside a topic node.

If you found the information above helpful, I would appreciate it if you could share your feedback.
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