Microsoft adds central tools for building reusable Copilot agents
Microsoft has introduced business skills, a feature for defining custom tools and rich user interfaces in one location using Dataverse, its business data platform. These skills become available to agents in Copilot Studio and integrate into M365 Copilot conversations while also supporting GitHub Copilot, VS Code, and Azure AI Foundry. The capability launched in public preview on 1 May.
Until now, anyone trying to create agents had to rebuild the same custom tools and interfaces separately for each Microsoft platform, which produced inconsistent results and extra maintenance work. The central Dataverse method allows one definition to apply everywhere, yet it only delivers value to organizations that already run Dataverse with proper access controls, leaving most teams still stuck with spotty basic Copilot performance and unresolved data safety concerns.
Analysis
This preview does nothing to solve the unreliable outputs and low adoption you face today, so treat it as a future option rather than a fix. Choose one high-frequency task such as meeting recaps in Teams, apply a structured prompt template to it on your next three calls, measure the time difference versus manual notes, and share the results with your manager to protect the licence budget.
Citation
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