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Agent Workshop

Agent Workshop - Connect Your Agent to Your Information Inside Copilot

Week 3Agent Workshop

  • 25–35 minGuided walkthrough

Use a desktop browser for this workshop. Number your Safety & Security Rules and add them to the Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat Notebook that holds your and style guide. Then learn what a connector can reach and what Copilot lets you limit, and give your agent a meeting transcript.

Watch the video walkthrough in StormWind Campus (sign in with your bootcamp login).

What You Need for This Guide

  • A desktop browser.
  • Your approved Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat account with Notebook and file-upload access.
  • Your My Agent Notebook from last week's workshop, with your Agent Profile and Communication Style Guide in it.
  • Your saved My Safety & Security Rules from this week's session.

Give Your Agent Your Voice Inside Copilot

Build Your Safety & Security Rules

Choose the tool you’re allowed to use

Your approved tool

The tool your company approved.

Pick your approved tool above to see the steps and screenshots for it.

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6 steps · At your own pace
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Standard Data rules for AI at work

Data Rules

Data rules for AI at work

Check with your IT Team before you paste any work data into an AI tool. Avoid names, account numbers, customer data, or anything sensitive without explicit permission from IT. If you aren't sure, redact anything sensitive and replace it with generic information. AI makes mistakes, make sure to fact check your agents outputs even if they sound right.

Before you start

  • Check with your IT teamAsk what your company allows before you put anything from work into an AI tool. Your company policy is the one that counts, and it is the one this library cannot see.
  • Use the tool your company approvedChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and Gemini are all covered here. Use the one your company approved, not the one you like best.
  • Sign in with your work accountA work account keeps your chats inside the agreement your company signed. A personal account in the same product sits outside it.
  • Connected appsAn email or file connection your IT team approved can read the names and addresses in what it opens. Everything else under “Never put this into an AI tool” still applies.
  • No approved account yetFollow the steps with made-up example text, or on paper, until IT gives you one.

Never put this into an AI tool

  • Customer or personal detailsNo names, email addresses, phone numbers, home addresses or account numbers. That covers colleagues as well as customers.
  • Regulated recordsHealth, financial, HR and legal records stay in the systems built to hold them, unless IT has told you in writing that this tool may see them.
  • Passwords, keys and access codesNo credentials of any kind, yours or anyone else’s, and nothing that grants access to a system.
  • Anything under an NDA or not yet publicUnreleased plans, contracts, pricing and source code need clearance before they go near a chat window.
  • Anything your company policy prohibitsYour company’s rules win over anything in this library. If policy keeps something out of AI tools, it stays out, whatever a guide suggests.

Do this instead

  • Swap real details for placeholdersWrite “Customer A”, “[client name]”, “$X”. You get the same quality of answer, and you put the real details back yourself.
  • Describe the situation rather than pasting the documentMost of what an agent needs is the shape of the problem, not the file it arrived in.
  • Trim a file before you upload or paste itTake out the identifying columns and pages first, or work from a short extract.

Check the answer before you use it

  • Read it as if a colleague had drafted itAn agent states wrong things with complete confidence. Your name goes on the work, so the check is yours.
  • Say where the agent helpedFollow your company rule on disclosing AI assistance, especially in client-facing or formal work.

When you are not sure

  • Ask before you paste or upload, not afterA question to your IT team takes a minute. Cleaning up after a data incident takes a great deal longer.
  • When in doubt, leave it outIf you would not put it in an email to someone outside the company, keep it out of the chat.
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Step

Number your rules and add them to My Agent

This week your agent gets a third file to follow: your Safety & Security Rules. Number them first, like your profile and style guide, so each change becomes a new file you can compare and go back to.

This builds on last week's workshop, Give Your Agent Your Voice Inside Copilot, and on the rules you built with this week's session guide, Build Your Safety & Security Rules. Do those first if you haven't.

If your account doesn't offer Notebooks, run this step in a regular chat and keep attaching or pasting your three files into each chat. If it doesn't offer uploads either, ask IT about access.

  1. In My Agent Files, make a folder called Safety Rules beside your other two folders and move your rules file into it.

  2. In Copilot Chat, open Notebooks, then My Agent. In the Message Copilot box, select +, then Upload images and files, and choose your rules file. Send Set up versioning for your rules (no change), as the video does. If you have one change ready, such as an organization detail you've now confirmed, send Set up versioning for your rules, with your change instead.

    Set up versioning for your rules (no change)
    I want to set up versioning for my Safety & Security Rules, so I can track every change.

Change to make: None, set up versioning only

Put any change in my rules file, not your built-in memory, so my file stays my master copy. Unless a rule conflicts, do all of this in one reply:

1. If I gave a change, put it in the section it fits best, such as My Organization-Specific Rules. Use my words, and don't add rules I didn't give you. If it would weaken or contradict a rule already there, stop before writing anything: quote both and ask me which one to keep.
2. If my rules have no RULES VERSIONS section, add the one below to the end of the file, word for word. If the file has no version number in its title, version line or filename, treat the current file as Version 1. Otherwise continue from its current number. Do not restart numbering.
3. Follow RULES VERSIONS to return the entire updated file, with the new version number in both its title and its filename. Keep every other section and rule word for word, including Rule Priority and anything I've added to a rule.
4. In the What changed table, list my change, if I gave one, and say whether you added RULES VERSIONS. Do not claim a section was added if it was already there.
5. End by walking me through saving it, as RULES VERSIONS describes.

RULES VERSIONS

The rules title, the version line under it, and the filename all show the same version number. Use simple whole numbers: v1, v2, v3, and so on. The title uses readable spaces, like My Safety & Security Rules v2. The filename uses hyphens and no spaces, like My-Safety-and-Security-Rules-v2.txt.

- If I ask which version you're using, give that line's number and date.
- If I ask you to update these rules, create the next version:
  1. Raise the current version number by one. Use that new number in the title and in the version line below it, like Version 2 | Updated October 20, 2026. These are examples: use the actual next number and today's date. If you can't see today's date, write DATE NEEDED.
  2. Apart from the title, version line and version history, change only what I asked. Keep every other rule and section word for word, in the same order.
  3. Add a one-line summary to the top of VERSION HISTORY. Keep the five newest lines.
  4. Give me the entire updated rules file as one downloadable plain-text file named My-Safety-and-Security-Rules-vNUMBER.txt, replacing NUMBER with the new version number. Use only plain letters, digits, hyphens and the dot before txt. Include every section and all unchanged content. If you can't create files, put the entire file in one code block and give me the exact filename above it.
  5. Show what changed in a table: Section, What changed, Why.
  6. Walk me through saving it: save the new file in the same folder as my earlier versions, keeping every older file. Then replace the rules in your saved setup the same way I first added them, start a new chat, and ask which version you're using.
- Never weaken, shorten or remove a rule unless I ask for that exact change. If a change would weaken or contradict a rule already here, quote both and ask me which one to keep before you write the new version.
- If I tell you something new that belongs in these rules, offer a new version. Wait for my yes.
- Never overwrite an earlier version or reuse its number.
- You can't change your own saved setup, so don't say my rules are updated until I've replaced the file.

VERSION HISTORY
- Version 1: Original rules.
    Set up versioning for your rules, with your change
    I want to set up versioning for my Safety & Security Rules, so I can track every change.

Change to make: [type one change, such as an organization field you've now confirmed, or write "None, set up versioning only"]

Put any change in my rules file, not your built-in memory, so my file stays my master copy. Unless a rule conflicts, do all of this in one reply:

1. If I gave a change, put it in the section it fits best, such as My Organization-Specific Rules. Use my words, and don't add rules I didn't give you. If it would weaken or contradict a rule already there, stop before writing anything: quote both and ask me which one to keep.
2. If my rules have no RULES VERSIONS section, add the one below to the end of the file, word for word. If the file has no version number in its title, version line or filename, treat the current file as Version 1. Otherwise continue from its current number. Do not restart numbering.
3. Follow RULES VERSIONS to return the entire updated file, with the new version number in both its title and its filename. Keep every other section and rule word for word, including Rule Priority and anything I've added to a rule.
4. In the What changed table, list my change, if I gave one, and say whether you added RULES VERSIONS. Do not claim a section was added if it was already there.
5. End by walking me through saving it, as RULES VERSIONS describes.

RULES VERSIONS

The rules title, the version line under it, and the filename all show the same version number. Use simple whole numbers: v1, v2, v3, and so on. The title uses readable spaces, like My Safety & Security Rules v2. The filename uses hyphens and no spaces, like My-Safety-and-Security-Rules-v2.txt.

- If I ask which version you're using, give that line's number and date.
- If I ask you to update these rules, create the next version:
  1. Raise the current version number by one. Use that new number in the title and in the version line below it, like Version 2 | Updated October 20, 2026. These are examples: use the actual next number and today's date. If you can't see today's date, write DATE NEEDED.
  2. Apart from the title, version line and version history, change only what I asked. Keep every other rule and section word for word, in the same order.
  3. Add a one-line summary to the top of VERSION HISTORY. Keep the five newest lines.
  4. Give me the entire updated rules file as one downloadable plain-text file named My-Safety-and-Security-Rules-vNUMBER.txt, replacing NUMBER with the new version number. Use only plain letters, digits, hyphens and the dot before txt. Include every section and all unchanged content. If you can't create files, put the entire file in one code block and give me the exact filename above it.
  5. Show what changed in a table: Section, What changed, Why.
  6. Walk me through saving it: save the new file in the same folder as my earlier versions, keeping every older file. Then replace the rules in your saved setup the same way I first added them, start a new chat, and ask which version you're using.
- Never weaken, shorten or remove a rule unless I ask for that exact change. If a change would weaken or contradict a rule already here, quote both and ask me which one to keep before you write the new version.
- If I tell you something new that belongs in these rules, offer a new version. Wait for my yes.
- Never overwrite an earlier version or reuse its number.
- You can't change your own saved setup, so don't say my rules are updated until I've replaced the file.

VERSION HISTORY
- Version 1: Original rules.

  3. Check the reply before you save anything. What changed should say whether RULES VERSIONS was added, and list your change if you gave one. The new file's title, version line and filename should all show the next version number: v2 if your rules had no number, or one higher than the number they had. Every other section should be kept word for word. If something's wrong, ask in the same chat for a complete corrected file.

  4. Save the new file from the reply's download link, under the filename the reply gives, such as My-Safety-and-Security-Rules-v2.txt, into your Safety Rules folder beside your earlier file. If Copilot gives you the rules in a code block instead of a file, copy all of it into a new plain-text file with that exact filename. Then, in the Content pane, select Add references, then the upload-arrow control, choose the new file, and select Open, then Add.

    If an earlier rules file is already in References, open its three-dot menu and select Remove. References should then list three files: your , your style guide and your new rules version.

Step

Tell My Agent to follow your rules

This card replaces last week's instructions, adding one line: your agent follows your Safety & Security Rules in every chat. The video doesn't show this change, so make it here.

  1. At the upper right of My Agent, open the three-dot menu and choose Instructions. In Tell Copilot how to respond, select all of last week's text, paste the card in its place, then select Save. If you added lines of your own last week, add them to the new card before you save.

    Notebook instructions with your rules
    You are my work agent. You help me with my day-to-day work.

You have these reference files. Use each one for its job:
- Agent Profile: my role, priorities, the people I work with and how I like answers. Use it as background whenever it's relevant.
- Communication Style Guide: how I write, including any My Voice Dial settings. Use it whenever you draft something I'll send or share. Copy its patterns, not the particulars of its examples. If one of its sections has its own instructions, follow them.
- Safety & Security Rules: how you must handle information, uncertainty, verification and human review. Follow them in every chat.

How to work with me:
- Don't invent facts about me, my organization or my work. If a missing detail would change your answer, ask me one question first.
- Run a file's First Setup Check only when I ask for it.
- My files are the master copies. When I ask to update one, follow that file's own VERSIONS section if it has one and give me the complete next version. Remind me to save it as my master file, keep the old file, and replace that file in this Notebook. Don't tell me the saved setup has been updated.

  2. Start a new chat in My Agent with nothing attached and send Check my file versions, with my rules. It should name the new rules version you saved in step 1 beside your and style guide. If it names an earlier rules file, check References and try another new chat. Without a Notebook, skip Instructions and send the check in a new chat with your three files attached.

    Check my file versions, with my rules
    Which versions of my files are you using?

Read the current Safety & Security Rules, Agent Profile and Communication Style Guide saved in this Project or Notebook, or attached to this chat. For each one, give its version number and updated date. If a number or date is missing, say so. Then quote the newest line of my rules' VERSION HISTORY. Use the files rather than an older conversation. Do not guess or change any file.

Step

Read Microsoft's connector page with your agent

Connectors link your agent to the systems you work in every day, such as email or a CRM. Microsoft changes them often, so learn them from Microsoft's own page, and let your agent explain what matters for your role.

  1. Open Microsoft 365 Copilot connectors overview on Microsoft Learn. In the menu beside Ask Learn, select Copy Markdown to copy the whole page as plain text. If it isn't there, copy the article's text instead.

  2. In a new chat in My Agent, send Explain this page in a way that matters to me, pasting the page in place of its bracketed line. You can ask for a shape too, such as the three points that matter most.

    Explain this page in a way that matters to me
    Can you explain this in a way that matters to me?

[paste the page you copied here]

  3. Check that the reply ties the page to your work from your . Anything it says about what your organization allows is a guess: your IT team decides that.

Step

Find where Copilot's connectors live, and who decides

What your agent can reach depends on your licence and what your admin has turned on. A connector on your screen isn't permission to use it.

  1. Select New chat and look at the top for the Work IQ button. With the Microsoft 365 Copilot licence and your admin's say-so, Work IQ lets a chat reach your Outlook mail, calendar, Teams chats and meetings, and work files. If you don't see it, most likely you don't have the licence or your admin has turned it off.

  2. Open the three-dot menu at the upper right, then Settings, then Sources, which lists connectors to other systems. Third-party systems such as Salesforce usually aren't on by default: your admin adds them.

  3. Don't select Connect on anything yet. Get your IT team's yes in writing first, for the connector and what it may do. A missing or greyed-out connector is an answer, not a bug. Without the licence, neither Work IQ nor the connectors in Sources are available, so your route is the same: ask IT what they plan to allow.

Step

Know what a connector can change, and Copilot's real limits

The most important thing to know about a connector is whether it can change things.

  1. In a new chat in My Agent, send Read-only vs write-back tools and read the reply.

    Read-only vs write-back tools
    Can you explain the difference between a read-only tool and a write-back tool in a connector?

    A read-only tool reads what your account can see, and can't create, change, send or delete anything. A write-back tool can, which is more useful and riskier, so IT usually tests it first. If read-only is enough, ask IT for that: it's safer and more likely to be approved.

  2. A rule to stay out of a folder makes a look there unlikely, but no rule can guarantee it. If a system holds anything AI must never see, don't connect it.

  3. Copilot gives you these controls:

    • Turn Work IQ off in a chat that doesn't need your work data.
    • In Sources, select a connector you've connected. Its Tools section lists Read tools, which run without asking, apart from any Write/Delete tools. Keep each write tool on Needs approval, never Always allow, so Copilot asks first. When it asks, read what it will do, then select Allow once, or Cancel if you didn't ask for it.
    • You can't block a write tool yourself. Your admin can, so ask IT.
    • When you no longer need a connector, turn it off in Sources.

Now pick the one connector you'd want first, decide whether read-only is enough for it, and note what you'll ask IT.

Step

Give your agent your meetings

Here's something to use this week, with or without connectors. A meeting transcript gives your agent far more than your notes, including the side decisions that otherwise get lost.

  1. Record and transcribe a meeting only where your organization's rules allow it, and tell everyone first. Teams, Zoom and Google Meet can transcribe, and in person you can record on your phone with everyone's agreement. If you can't record, your notes work too, with less detail.

  2. Your Safety & Security Rules apply to a transcript like any other file, and a transcript names everyone who spoke. Then get it to your agent:

    • Without Work IQ, download the transcript from your meeting app and make a copy. Change each person's name to their role, such as Project lead, check the copy against your rules and the data rules, and attach it to a chat in My Agent. Inside My Agent, Copilot reads only the files you add.
    • With Work IQ, a regular chat can find a Teams transcript itself, names included, so use it only if your IT team approved it for this, and only for a meeting where nothing the data rules keep out was discussed. Select New chat, check that Work IQ is on, and attach your current rules file, since My Agent's instructions and files aren't in that chat. Then ask Copilot to find the meeting's transcript.

  3. Ask for the decisions and action items, with an owner for each. Check them against the transcript, and if you changed names to roles, put the real names back yourself before you share them.

For more, work through Turn Your Meeting Transcripts Into Something Useful: download it with Download Guide and attach it to a chat in My Agent, as you did last week.

Agent Workshop - Connect Your Agent to Your Information Inside Copilot

Confirm your result

Confirm the outcomes below to finish this guide.

Final checks

A new chat in My Agent (or a chat with your three files attached) names the current version of your Safety & Security Rules (the one the versioning card gave you) beside your profile and style guide.

You can name the connector you'd want first, whether read-only is enough for it, and what Copilot lets you limit or switch off, and your IT team has said yes in writing, or you know what you'll ask them.

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Agent Workshop - Connect Your Agent to Your Information Inside Copilot · Guide Library