Workflows overview

Workflows are the new automation experience in Copilot Studio. You build them in the new experience on a redesigned visual canvas with native AI actions, agent handoffs, and node-level testing.

Workflows in Copilot Studio automate repetitive tasks and integrate your apps and services. You can trigger a flow manually, based on other automated events or agents, or on a schedule.

Workflows consume Copilot Studio capacity for each action they execute.

Benefits of workflows

Workflows offer several benefits.

• Consistent execution: Workflows are deterministic. They execute actions or tasks following a rule-based path. The same input always produces the same output, making them reliable and predictable.
• Simple flow creation: You can design, edit, and automate workflows directly in Copilot Studio, using AI-driven suggestions for triggers, actions, and automation steps.
• End-to-end process visibility: Design workflows, monitor their performance, and get actionable insights to improve your automation projects, all in Copilot Studio's unified interface. You can also view details of a flow, such as the flow name, description, and status.

Triggers and actions in workflows

A flow consists of a trigger and at least one action.

Triggers

A trigger is an event that starts a flow. Triggers can be instant (manually run on demand), based on a schedule, or triggered by other events.

Actions

An action is a task that a workflow performs. Let's say you want to get a notification in Microsoft Teams when your manager sends you an email. Receiving an email from your manager is the trigger that starts this flow. Sending a message in Microsoft Teams is the action that happens in response.

There are different types of actions you can use in workflows:

• AI capabilities: AI-driven actions that leverage large language models (LLMs) to generate text, process documents, run a prompt on a model, call an agent, and create a natural language reply to a calling agent.
• Human in the loop: Actions that require human intervention, such as requesting information.
• Built-in tools: Control structures for looping and branching, data operations, date and time functions, and child workflows.
• Connectors: Connect to various services to perform tasks and retrieve data. Connectors include Microsoft 365 services, third-party services, and custom connectors.

Manage flow capacity usage

Every action your flow executes consumes Copilot Studio capacity, so it's a good idea to monitor flow capacity usage. In the Power Platform admin center > Licensing > Copilot Studio, review the Agent flow actions used by each flow.

Testing a flow in the flow designer or from the agent's test chat doesn't consume Copilot Studio capacity.

Here's how to calculate the capacity that's used when a flow is run as an action in an agent:

• When you run a flow from a topic, you consume one Classic answer plus the flow actions.
• When you run a flow using generative orchestration, you consume one Autonomous action plus the flow actions.
• When you run workflows from the agent's embedded test chat, either from a topic or as a generative action, you don't consume flow capacity.

Create workflows

You create workflows in the visual designer.

To get started in the new experience:

• Select Workflows.
• Select New workflow.
• Add a trigger, and then continue building in the designer.

Workflows that have the When an agent calls the flow trigger can be added as tools in agents. Learn more in Add a workflow to an agent.

Related content

• Edit and manage your workflow in the designer