The City of Montréal has quietly turned a classic municipal pain point—finding timely information on services, schedules and rules—into a 24/7 conversational surface by deploying a virtual agent built with Microsoft Copilot Studio that now answers citizen questions across the city’s public website and connects directly to key backend systems.
Montréal is a dense, bilingual metropolis with complex municipal services that range from waste collection and library hours to tax payments and permits. The city’s population (the municipal population is commonly reported above 1.7 million and the broader metropolitan area exceeds four million) means large volumes of routine inquiries that strain call centers and website search functions. (www150.statcan.gc.ca)
Local governments worldwide are experimenting with conversational assistants to deliver fast answers, reduce simple call volumes and surface public information in more accessible ways. Microsoft’s Copilot Studio is one of the low‑code platforms positioned to make that work practical: it lets municipal IT teams convert website content and forms into knowledge-driven agents, connect to data sources, and combine curated chatbot flows with generative responses. (microsoft.com)
Background
Montréal is a dense, bilingual metropolis with complex municipal services that range from waste collection and library hours to tax payments and permits. The city’s population (the municipal population is commonly reported above 1.7 million and the broader metropolitan area exceeds four million) means large volumes of routine inquiries that strain call centers and website search functions. (www150.statcan.gc.ca)Local governments worldwide are experimenting with conversational assistants to deliver fast answers, reduce simple call volumes and surface public information in more accessible ways. Microsoft’s Copilot Studio is one of the low‑code platforms positioned to make that work practical: it lets municipal IT teams convert website content and forms into knowledge-driven agents, connect to data sources, and combine curated chatbot flows with generative responses. (microsoft.com)
What Montréal built and why it matters
A citizen-facing assistant that draws from the city’s knowledge base
Montréal embedded a conversational assistant on its public website that can answer natural‑language questions about public services, administrative procedures, tax payments, public space maintenance and more. The agent indexes and reasons over the city website’s content—reportedly more than 40,000 pages—and furnishes answers that include links back to the official pages for verification. These capabilities are intended to reduce friction for residents who previously had to sift through menus or call 311 for routine queries.Direct system integrations for action-oriented responses
Crucially, the assistant is not just a search overlay. The city connected the agent to two internal systems to provide live, contextualized responses:- A waste‑collection system that lets the assistant provide a customized pickup schedule based on the user’s location.
- A facilities system (for example, public libraries) that allows the assistant to return specific location and schedule information on request.
Built by the city’s own team using Copilot Studio
Montréal’s IT department designed and deployed the assistant internally using Microsoft Copilot Studio. The project was led by city staff without outside consultants, and the team leaned on existing APIs rather than building new connectors, which the city says saved time and resources during development. Mohammed Arhab, Solution Architect with Montréal’s IT department, notes the hybrid approach—mixing pre‑built chatbot responses and AI‑generated outputs—helped the city increase accuracy beyond what generative models would deliver alone.Architecture and operational plumbing
Platform components and telemetry
The published architecture diagram shows the agent as a Copilot Studio agent grounded in site content and augmented with backend integrations and analytics. The team initially used a customized Power BI dashboard for telemetry and plans to migrate to Copilot Studio’s built‑in analytics capabilities as they mature. Security and governance reviews were performed by the city’s cybersecurity group before production deployment. Key platform elements that underlie the deployment:- Copilot Studio for authoring, testing, and publishing the agent.
- Knowledge grounding from the public Montréal website (the primary content corpus).
- API connectors to municipal systems (waste collection, facilities).
- Telemetry and dashboards (initially Power BI, moving to Copilot Studio analytics).
- Governance controls and an internal cybersecurity sign‑off. (microsoft.com, microsoft.com, learn.microsoft.com, microsoft.com, learn.microsoft.com, microsoft.com, microsoft.com, microsoft.com, City of Montréal supports citizens with a virtual agent built using Microsoft Copilot Studio | Microsoft Customer Stories
