Microsoft Build 2025 has arrived, and with it comes a whirlwind of significant feature announcements for Microsoft Copilot Studio—one of the cornerstones of Microsoft’s vision for workplace automation and AI-driven development. As enterprises around the world race to gain a competitive edge through digital transformation, Microsoft is leaning further into the agent ecosystem, introducing a host of innovative features designed to empower developers, IT managers, and business users alike. In this feature, we’ll break down the most impactful Copilot Studio updates unveiled at Build 2025, critically examine their strengths and limitations, and explore what they mean for the future of work, automation, and AI adoption.
Copilot Studio is Microsoft’s low-code/no-code platform for building, connecting, and managing AI-powered agents—essentially, bots that can automate tasks, access data, and interact with business workflows. Since its debut, Copilot Studio has evolved from a chatbot builder to a robust environment that supports sophisticated agent logic, integration with external systems, and now, with this year’s announcements, a multi-agent orchestration framework and advanced developer controls.
For organizations seeking to harness the full potential of AI—whether to automate sales reports, streamline onboarding, or manage IT incidents—Copilot Studio is emerging as an indispensable tool. The latest updates underscore Microsoft’s ambition to turn every business process into an intelligent, seamless experience.
Microsoft is changing that paradigm. With multi-agent orchestration in Copilot Studio, organizations can now design solutions where agents delegate to one another, coordinate across platforms, and jointly execute complex workflows. For example:
Strengths
This is a notable evolution from API-driven automation. Many crucial processes happen in tools without official APIs—think legacy applications, web portals, or niche industry software. By teaching AI agents to “see” and control interfaces, Copilot Studio opens the door to:
Teams can also fine-tune these models using enterprise data, which is a critical requirement for generating relevant, domain-specific answers. Whether it’s legal, healthcare, or specialized manufacturing, fine-tuning ensures agents don’t simply regurgitate internet knowledge—they provide actionable, high-fidelity responses tailored to enterprise realities.
Strengths
With growing connector support, improved rendering of external tools, and enhanced scalability, MCP streamlines previously tedious integrations, helping agents ground their actions in real-time, organization-specific data.
Strengths
Yet several questions and challenges remain:
Microsoft Copilot Studio’s 2025 updates represent one of the most significant leaps in agent-oriented automation the enterprise world has seen. Multi-agent orchestration, direct computer use, broad model integration, richer channels, advanced developer controls, and comprehensive security upgrades combine to deliver a platform with immense potential. In the short term, organizations can expect to solve more complex, end-to-end business challenges while keeping a sharp eye on governance and security.
As enterprises move from pilot adoption to full-scale automation initiatives, the winners will be those who can balance innovation with responsibility—leveraging Copilot Studio’s power, while anchoring deployments in best practices, ongoing training, and robust oversight. Microsoft has clearly raised the bar, but the burden now shifts to customers and partners to turn this vision into reality—securely, efficiently, and at scale.
Source: Microsoft Multi-agent orchestration and more: Copilot Studio announcements | Microsoft Copilot Blog
Copilot Studio is Microsoft’s low-code/no-code platform for building, connecting, and managing AI-powered agents—essentially, bots that can automate tasks, access data, and interact with business workflows. Since its debut, Copilot Studio has evolved from a chatbot builder to a robust environment that supports sophisticated agent logic, integration with external systems, and now, with this year’s announcements, a multi-agent orchestration framework and advanced developer controls.For organizations seeking to harness the full potential of AI—whether to automate sales reports, streamline onboarding, or manage IT incidents—Copilot Studio is emerging as an indispensable tool. The latest updates underscore Microsoft’s ambition to turn every business process into an intelligent, seamless experience.
The Evolution of Agents: Multi-Agent Orchestration
Perhaps the most forward-looking announcement is multi-agent orchestration, a feature now in private preview and set for public release soon. For years, enterprise automation has often relied on siloed bots: one bot booking meetings, another pulling CRM data, and yet another generating reports, each working independently and rarely in concert.Microsoft is changing that paradigm. With multi-agent orchestration in Copilot Studio, organizations can now design solutions where agents delegate to one another, coordinate across platforms, and jointly execute complex workflows. For example:
- A Copilot Studio agent pulls sales data from the CRM system.
- That data is handed off to a Microsoft 365 agent, which drafts a proposal in Word.
- Another agent schedules follow-up meetings via Outlook.
Strengths
- Enables true end-to-end automation for business-critical processes.
- Reduces duplication and communication breakdowns between disconnected bots.
- Scalable: orchestration can span IT, HR, marketing, and vendor management.
- Initial configuration and monitoring may be complex; organizations must design agent handoffs and exceptions carefully.
- Without robust governance, errors or miscommunications between agents could escalate rapidly across systems.
- As orchestration moves into public preview, real-world scalability and interoperability with legacy systems remain to be proven; early adopters are advised to proceed with managed rollouts.
Computer Use: Agents That Emulate Human Actions
A standout technical leap is the “computer use” feature—now available through the Microsoft 365 Copilot Frontier program for high-volume customers in the US. This allows Copilot Studio agents to interact directly with desktop and web applications just as a human would: clicking buttons, navigating screens, entering data, and handling shifting interfaces.This is a notable evolution from API-driven automation. Many crucial processes happen in tools without official APIs—think legacy applications, web portals, or niche industry software. By teaching AI agents to “see” and control interfaces, Copilot Studio opens the door to:
- Automated data entry and invoice processing.
- Navigating regulated portals for compliance tasks.
- Conducting research across multiple web sources.
- Expands automation to cover previously inaccessible applications.
- Reduces the need for brittle, custom screen-scraping scripts or third-party RPA (Robotic Process Automation) tools.
- Built-in reasoning and end-to-end visibility in every automated step.
- Interface changes could still disrupt agent workflows; ongoing supervision and retraining may be necessary.
- Security and compliance risks must be actively managed, especially for applications handling sensitive data.
- Access is currently limited to select, high-usage customers—wider rollout and performance at scale remain to be observed.
Bring Your Own Model and Fine-Tuning: Customization Meets Enterprise AI
A major theme at Build 2025 is “choice”—organizations demand the flexibility to leverage the best AI models for their needs, not just Microsoft’s defaults. Copilot Studio now seamlessly connects with Azure AI Foundry, letting makers select from over 1,900 prebuilt and custom models, including OpenAI’s latest GPT-4.1, Meta’s Llama, DeepSeek, and organization-specific models.Teams can also fine-tune these models using enterprise data, which is a critical requirement for generating relevant, domain-specific answers. Whether it’s legal, healthcare, or specialized manufacturing, fine-tuning ensures agents don’t simply regurgitate internet knowledge—they provide actionable, high-fidelity responses tailored to enterprise realities.
Strengths
- Broadens the range of use cases, from customer support to scientific research.
- Empowers organizations to maintain brand voice, regulatory compliance, and data privacy.
- Maximizes ROI on enterprise data that would otherwise sit idle.
- Model governance becomes more complex as organizations juggle dozens of models.
- Fine-tuning requires careful data handling to avoid overfitting or leaking proprietary information.
- Success depends on robust management tooling and documentation—a common pain point in the AI ecosystem.
Model Context Protocol (MCP): Connecting to Enterprise Knowledge
Now generally available, the Model Context Protocol (MCP) is the “plumbing” that makes Copilot Studio less of a walled garden and more of an integrative layer in enterprise knowledge management. MCP enables Copilot Studio to plug directly into external knowledge systems—think databases, document management platforms, and intranets.With growing connector support, improved rendering of external tools, and enhanced scalability, MCP streamlines previously tedious integrations, helping agents ground their actions in real-time, organization-specific data.
Strengths
- Lowers friction for connecting to existing ERP, CRM, and content management systems.
- Improves agent reliability by referencing up-to-date enterprise facts.
- Fast troubleshooting and flexible connector expansion.
- Connecting to sensitive data sources increases risk if permissions or data-handling practices are lax.
- Still requires skilled IT integration—one-click connectors are becoming better but are not yet “magic wands” for all legacy or specialized systems.
Developer Tools: Enhanced APIs, SDKs, and Visual Studio Code Extension
Microsoft’s message to developers is clear: build agents how and where you want. With enhanced Microsoft 365 Copilot APIs, a comprehensive SDK, and a new Visual Studio Code extension, Copilot Studio is bridging the gap between low-code makers and professional programmers.- Microsoft 365 Copilot APIs: Securely access Microsoft 365 data, embed agents in apps, or create custom agent experiences—all in compliance with organizational permissions.
- SDK and Toolkit: Easily swap out models or orchestrators, jumpstart projects using templates, and deploy to Azure with sensible defaults.
- Visual Studio Code Extension: Professional developers can now manage Copilot Studio agents natively in VS Code, benefiting from advanced features like IntelliSense, reference lookups, and collaboration with GitHub.
- Meets developers “where they are,” reducing learning curves.
- Supports enterprise-scale workflows and versioning, rather than ad-hoc scripting.
- Encourages secure, compliant development practices.
- With more customization comes more responsibility for managing security, version control, and documentation.
- Integration with hybrid or on-prem environments may still require extra effort.
Agent Publishing and Channel Expansion: SharePoint and WhatsApp
Copilot Studio’s move to publish agents directly to new channels like SharePoint and WhatsApp demonstrates Microsoft’s commitment to meeting users where they work and communicate.- SharePoint: Makers can now deploy custom agents to a SharePoint site with a single click. Permissions and authentication are managed automatically, so team members can immediately benefit from AI assistants in their most-used collaboration portal.
- WhatsApp: Starting July 2025, organizations can publish Copilot agents to WhatsApp, engaging global users without requiring a separate app. This is a strategic play in regions where WhatsApp is the primary communication tool, lowering adoption barriers.
- Expands agent reach to frontline workers, mobile users, and distributed teams.
- Makes AI-powered support and automation accessible in familiar environments.
- WhatsApp and similar third-party platforms may impose their own limits or privacy requirements.
- Ensuring consistent experience and uptime across multiple channels is technically challenging.
Next-Level Maker Controls: Fine-Tuning Agent Behavior
One of the most requested features by the maker community—those building and customizing agents without deep coding knowledge—is more control over agent knowledge, responses, and moderation. Copilot Studio delivers:- File Collections: Makers can upload related files as a collection, and provide natural language instructions to guide agents toward the most pertinent source for each query.
- Response Customization: Choose primary response models, tweak length, enable advanced features like code interpreter and semantic search, and provide explicit response instructions.
- Moderation Controls: Custom responses for flagged (potentially harmful) outputs and user-configurable disclaimers.
- User Feedback: Built-in collection and display of feedback, improving qualitative assessment.
- Knowledge Scope: Decide if agents use internal sources, foundational model knowledge, or Bing web search, and whether users can upload images during conversations.
- Empowers more responsible and targeted agent design.
- Helps businesses meet compliance needs and build user trust.
- Iterative experimentation and rapid improvement made easier.
- More options can mean more complexity—training and strong documentation are essential.
- If not managed well, increasing maker controls could contribute to fragmentation and shadow IT.
Expanded Knowledge Sources: OneDrive, SharePoint Lists, Teams, Salesforce, and Beyond
A modern AI agent is only as good as the data it can access. Copilot Studio now supports a much broader range of knowledge sources, including:- Microsoft 365 Data: OneDrive, SharePoint lists, Teams chats and channels.
- Third-Party Platforms: Salesforce, ServiceNow, Zendesk (unstructured data); Snowflake, Databricks, SAP (structured data).
- Azure AI Search: Generally available for plugging enterprise search capabilities into agents.
- Copilot Connectors: More than 65 connectors available or in public preview, facilitating integration with tools like Gong, PagerDuty, and Unily.
- Facilitates consolidated, role-specific insights across disparate business systems.
- Supports advanced analytics, pipeline tracking, and churn risk identification.
- Connecting too many sources without proper governance could create data sprawl, privacy risks, and inconsistent experiences.
- Dependence on connector ecosystem and ongoing maintenance is a recurring challenge.
Code Interpreter in Copilot Studio: Python-Powered Workflow Extensions
The inclusion of a code interpreter—currently in preview—is a game-changer for developers who want to push Copilot Studio agents beyond generic conversation and into advanced logic, data processing, and visualization. There are two primary modes:- Dynamic Mode (With Agents): Python code is executed live at runtime, enabling agents to analyze data files, generate custom charts, or solve complex problems during a user session.
- Static Mode (With Prompt Builder): Makers predefine Python code to be run during certain prompts—ideal for repeatable data operations on platforms like Dataverse.
- Makes Copilot Studio far more extensible, especially for data analysis and operational automation.
- Lowers the barrier for custom logic—natural language prompts can trigger sophisticated Python routines.
- Outputs like charts or processed files can be delivered directly to the user.
- Security—dynamic code execution in a managed environment must be strictly sandboxed to prevent abuse or data leakage.
- Performance—live code may introduce latency; scaling needs thorough validation.
Pro-Developer Enhancements: Better Collaboration and Discoverability
As large organizations deploy more agents, discoverability and sharing become operational bottlenecks. Copilot Studio now supports:- Instant Sharing: Distribute shareable links from Copilot Chat’s sidebar.
- In-Conversation Agent Recommendations: Copilot automatically suggests the most relevant agent to handle specific user requests, transferring full context for continuity.
- Reduces friction in cross-team discovery, adoption, and sharing.
- Drives up agent utilization and justifies ROI.
- Must ensure discoverability does not compromise security—permissions and scopes need to be airtight.
- Users may become overwhelmed if recommendation logic is too aggressive or imprecise.
Security and Governance: Safeguarding the Agent Ecosystem
Amidst all the innovation, Microsoft reaffirms a commitment to enterprise-grade security and compliance, introducing several key features:- Privacy Controls: Optionally disable transcript recording, mask sensitive data, and suppress audio in chats.
- Automatic Identities: Agents are assigned identities tracked in Microsoft Entra, improving traceability and IT oversight.
- Shared Environments: Isolate agents created with the Microsoft 365 agent builder for better policy enforcement.
- Authentication Safeguards: Block unauthorized Copilot Maker authentication, require Entra ID for all interactions (in preview), and enforce explicit consent prior to agent sharing.
- Data Protections: Apply Data Loss Prevention (DLP), enforce auto-labeling, monitor sensitive data flows, and enforce connector management without PowerShell.
- Infrastructure Enhancements: Network isolation (public preview), automatic management of connectors, federated identity credentials to eliminate long-lived secrets.
- Keeps Copilot Studio deployments compliant with enterprise data, privacy, and security policies.
- Granular control for security teams, minimizing risk from unauthorized access or accidental data exposure.
- With more granular controls, complexity can increase—policy errors or misconfigurations pose real risks.
- Security features must keep pace with rapidly evolving threat models, especially as agent ecosystems grow.
The Road Ahead: Opportunities and Open Questions
Microsoft’s announcements at Build 2025 spotlight a Copilot Studio platform that is both maturing rapidly and expanding in ambition. The vision—a connected, flexible, and secure AI agent ecosystem—aligns perfectly with where enterprise automation is heading: collaborative, customizable, and governed by robust controls.Yet several questions and challenges remain:
- Scalability and Interoperability: Can multi-agent systems scale seamlessly across business domains and legacy systems, or will large deployments encounter unforeseen obstacles?
- User Experience: As agents proliferate across SharePoint, WhatsApp, Teams, and beyond, can Microsoft maintain a consistent, intuitive interface for users of varying technical backgrounds?
- Governance: How will organizations manage hundreds of agents, each with their own knowledge and permissions, without devolving into chaos?
- Security Posture: Can Microsoft’s new protections keep up with the evolving threat landscape—especially as dynamic code interpreters and complex workflows become the norm?
- ROI and Adoption: Will the increased control and flexibility yield tangible productivity gains, or will complexity undermine the promise of low-code/no-code automation?
Microsoft Copilot Studio’s 2025 updates represent one of the most significant leaps in agent-oriented automation the enterprise world has seen. Multi-agent orchestration, direct computer use, broad model integration, richer channels, advanced developer controls, and comprehensive security upgrades combine to deliver a platform with immense potential. In the short term, organizations can expect to solve more complex, end-to-end business challenges while keeping a sharp eye on governance and security.
As enterprises move from pilot adoption to full-scale automation initiatives, the winners will be those who can balance innovation with responsibility—leveraging Copilot Studio’s power, while anchoring deployments in best practices, ongoing training, and robust oversight. Microsoft has clearly raised the bar, but the burden now shifts to customers and partners to turn this vision into reality—securely, efficiently, and at scale.
Source: Microsoft Multi-agent orchestration and more: Copilot Studio announcements | Microsoft Copilot Blog