Welcome to part 6 of this blog post series.
If you missed the previous parts, visit the links below:
- Part 1: Create a Microsoft Form
- Part 2: Create a Power Platform Environment
- Part 3: Create a Copilot Studio Agent (Name, Image, Description, and Instructions)
- Part 4: Create an Excel Spreadsheet Listing Trainers and Qualified Courses – Cloud Build
- Part 5: Create an Excel Log File to Record Mentor Requests – Cloud Build
In this blog post, I will create a trigger to detect when the Microsoft Form I created in part 1 is submitted by a trainer requesting a mentor to help with preparing for a course delivery.
What is a trigger in Copilot Studio?
A trigger in Copilot Studio defines when an agent should run.
Instead of waiting for a user to start a chat, a trigger allows the agent to run automatically when something happens. For example, when a Microsoft Form is submitted, a trigger can detect that event and start the agent without any user interaction.
Triggers are commonly used for autonomous agents, where the agent reacts to events such as:
- A Microsoft Form being submitted
- Data being created or updated
- A scheduled or system event occurring
- And many more
When the trigger fires, Copilot Studio passes the event information to the agent, and the agent responds according to the instructions it has been given.
Task: Create a trigger in the Course Mentor Agent to detect and process Microsoft Form submissions.
- Select the Overview tab and click Add trigger
2. You will find a library of triggers from Power Automate which can be used in Copilot Studio, including:
- When an item is created or modified in SharePoint
- When a new response is submitted in Microsoft Forms
- When a file is created/modified in OneDrive for Business
- When a feed item is published in RSS
- When an event is added to a calendar in Google Calendar
- When a pull request is closed (Git) in Azure DevOps
- When a task is completed in Planner
- When a Teams messages is posted or if @mentioned
- When a new email arrives
- and many more
Explore the different triggers available. There were 843 triggers available at the time of writing this post.
3. I’ll be selecting When a new response is submitted (Microsoft Forms). Click Next
4. The trigger will run using my currently signed‑in account. This can be changed if required.
This trigger uses the apps listed in the image below. A green check means the required connection is set up and ready to use.
Click Next
5. Now that I’m connected to Microsoft Forms using my account, the form I created in Part 1 of this blog series is available to select. I select the form and click Create trigger.
6. Click Close
7. Select the Overview tab. You’ll see that the trigger is now visible.
8. I test the trigger to confirm all is ok
There is still further work to complete before we have a fully functioning autonomous agent. In the next post, I will add tools to my agent, so it has permissions to read the data inside the form, read my Mentors.xlsx file, add a row in my log file RequestLogs.xlsx, and send an email to the assigned mentor.
Click the following link to continue to part 7: Building an Autonomous AI Agent in Copilot Studio – Part 7: Add Tools to a Copilot Studio Agent – Cloud Build
