From Code to Skill: Build Copilot Studio Agents in VS Code and Teach Them Your Business with Dataverse Skills

In this 90-minute hands-on workshop, you'll experience the complete developer-to-process-owner workflow for building intelligent agents on the Microsoft Power Platform — no paid licenses required.

In the first half, you'll install the Copilot Studio extension for Visual Studio Code, clone an agent to your local machine, and edit its components — topics, tools, triggers, and knowledge — using YAML with full IntelliSense and validation. You'll work with Git-based source control and sync changes back to Copilot Studio, experiencing the pro-developer authoring model for agents firsthand.

In the second half, you'll move to Dataverse business skills — a new capability (public preview) that lets you capture organizational processes, policies, and domain expertise as natural-language instructions stored centrally in Dataverse. You'll create business skills in Power Apps, configure sharing and visibility, then connect your agent to the Dataverse MCP server so it automatically discovers and follows those skills at runtime. Update a skill and every connected agent picks it up immediately — no republishing needed.

By the end of this session, you'll have built an agent in VS Code and taught it an organizational process through a Dataverse business skill, demonstrating a complete end-to-end workflow from code to business logic.

Prerequisites: Attendees should set up the following free resources before the session:

• A laptop with Visual Studio Code installed (v1.80 or later)
• A Power Apps Developer Plan (free — sign up at aka.ms/PowerAppsDevPlan with a work or school account to get a Dataverse developer environment)
• A Copilot Studio trial (free — sign up individually at copilotstudio.microsoft.com)
• Enable Managed Environment and Dataverse Intelligence on your developer environment via the Power Platform admin center (setup instructions will be provided in a pre-workshop guide)

No paid Microsoft 365 or Power Platform licenses are required. All work is done in free developer/trial environments.

Level: Intermediate (familiarity with VS Code and basic Power Platform concepts helpful but not required)

Format: Hands-on lab (90 minutes)