Microsoft 365 Copilot At Work

CHAPTER 15Creating a Custom Teams Copilot

There will be instances when Copilot Studio may not satisfy the business use case you want to solve. Some reasons for this might be that the application logic is far too complex for what you can develop using a low-code application platform, or you may have unique performance or logging requirements based on your organization’s governance requirements. For these types of scenarios, you will need to develop these customizations using familiar programming languages such as JavaScript, TypeScript, C#, etc. There are a few benefits to this, including the ability to utilize developers who are already familiar with these programming languages. The learning curve will be relatively manageable, and you will have full control over the customization and its functionality.

Much like any other software development project, the key is to set up your development environment for optimal productivity. Doing so ensures that developers like us have the right tools, such as computing, data manipulation, and debugging options, all in one place. Additionally, for building custom Copilots or extending existing ones, writing full code means you can tap into Azure AI Studio, which will help unlock additional functionality for your use case. In this chapter, we will walk through setting up your environment to take advantage of all these capabilities and more. This makes it easy to add exactly what your project needs. You start by defining the plugin’s purpose, ...