Yeah, hello everybody. My name is Ty Smathers. I am with Microsoft as a low-code specialist, so I focus on talking about Power Platform every day. Specifically today, we’re going to be talking about Microsoft Copilot and Copilot Studio, where we’ve given you the tools to create your own copilot—pointing it to your own documentation and having this AI tool benefit your company with your own data. I work very closely with Rockhop, one of our great Power Platform partners. I’ll pass it over to Paige.
Yeah, thanks Ty. Hi everyone, my name is Paige Midness. I lead our customer experience team at Rockhop. For those of you who have not joined one of our prior webinars, we are a Microsoft partner fully dedicated to Power Platform. We are a team of industry veterans—just a code for we’ve been around for a while. We’ve spent a lot of our careers helping customers solve the challenges many of you are looking to solve, but with platforms that didn’t fully meet their needs.
We’re really excited about Power Platform and the ability to solve these challenges: automating business processes, creating applications that closely meet business needs, and delivering real, measurable value. ROI is always top of mind for us—making sure we’re working on the right things and that we can prove the value to your organization.
For today’s webinar, we’ll start with an overview of the Power Platform. Things are always changing, and Microsoft is constantly adding new features and functionality. We’ll walk through all of the tools in Power Platform, as well as Copilot, which is generating plenty of buzz. We’ll talk about where these fit in your organization. Then we’ll run through some governance considerations. Governance often feels like a heavy word, but we’re going to simplify it—helping you understand what to consider when starting your Power Platform initiative so you don’t feel like you’re facing an insurmountable hurdle.
Next, we’ll jump into technology. We’ll show how Power Platform and Copilot work together through demos of common customer scenarios. We’ll also share ways to make this easier for you and help get you started with Copilot and Power Platform. To kick things off, let’s start with a quick poll.
You’ve probably also heard “citizen developer” as a big buzzword. It’s a mature concept—we’re seeing organizations realize that you need the right foundation to have active citizen developers. I was surprised by a statistic: according to Gartner, what percentage of organizations surveyed said they have active citizen developer initiatives? I’ll put up a poll on your screen—go ahead and select what you think.
The actual number is 41%, according to Gartner. I was excited to see that so many organizations are already moving down this path. That’s where we want our customers to get, and we want to help you get there.
We want this webinar to be interactive. If you have questions, post them in the chat—we’ll pause throughout to answer. If you’d like to talk about your specific initiatives or challenges, our contact information will be shared at the end. With that, I’ll hand it over to Dave.
Excellent, thank you Paige. Hello everyone, good morning. We’re going to talk about Power Platform, the various copilots, governance, and then move to Michael for a demo. Let’s begin with Power Platform.
Power Platform includes several components. First is Power Apps—the low-code/no-code way of building business applications. These can range from simple form-based intakes and approvals, to enterprise-grade solutions capturing manufacturing processes, finance workflows, or employee onboarding. Power Apps sit on Azure Dataverse and connect seamlessly to external systems.
Next is Power Automate—the engine for workflow approvals, moving data between systems, and robotic process automation for legacy apps or repetitive tasks. Power Pages follows, enabling external-facing websites for sign-ups, forms, or service requests, tightly integrated with Dataverse and Power Apps.
Copilot Studio is another key component—your way to build targeted chatbots with generative AI capabilities. Power BI rounds out the platform as the visualization tool, delivering actionable intelligence that integrates tightly with apps, workflows, and copilots.
Now, let’s demystify copilots. They come in three categories: informational copilots like Copilot Chat or Bing Chat Enterprise that answer questions based on your company’s data; assistant copilots embedded in tools like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Power BI to summarize, create, or guide you; and creation copilots that help you build apps or reveal copilots inside apps to serve users directly. Copilot Studio enables you to build targeted copilots quickly, while Azure AI Studio offers deeper customization with more control.
Let’s talk governance. Governance spans all of Power Platform, including copilots. Four pillars guide this: Secure—who has access, what data and connectors are allowed, and how sensitive information is protected. Manage—ensuring solutions go to the right environments with proper change management and DevOps practices. Nurture—providing training, support, and a guided path for both IT and citizen developers. Protect—monitoring for appropriate usage, sprawl, backups, and environment health.
Governance is a journey. Start small—prove out value with your first app or copilot. Build a governance committee, set initial controls, then expand nurture and protect practices. Over time, you’ll funnel ideas, empower developers, and continuously improve as Microsoft releases new features.
With that, I’ll stop and hand it over to Michael for demos of Copilot Studio in action.
Thanks Dave. First, let’s cover governance tools for copilots. Using the CoE toolkit, you get a Power BI dashboard to view what copilots, apps, flows, and pages are being created—by whom, and with what connectors. You can also set controls: restricting generative AI publishing, applying DLP policies to copilots, and managing connectors.
Now for the demos. First, a copilot embedded in model-driven apps. Copilot can answer questions about records, follow context from previous questions, and provide direct links to records. The same applies in canvas apps.
Next, using copilots to trigger workflows. For example, reviewing flagged invoices: a copilot parses your input (company, total, reason) and triggers an approval flow, filling details automatically and requesting approvers if needed.
Another demo shows copilots pulling data from external systems. In a budget management project, a copilot connects to an external time tracking system via custom connectors and actions, retrieving time entries and budget data to help fill out a project status report.
Actions in Copilot Studio power these integrations—mapping natural language questions to external API calls, parsing JSON, and returning formatted answers to the user.
Finally, we’ll close with follow-up. Anyone who responded “yes” to learning more will be contacted soon to schedule time. Our contact information is also available on the last slide—please reach out directly. Thanks everyone, and have a great weekend.