AI assistants answer questions. AI agents go a step further: they are given a defined job, connect to business systems, and can take approved actions, sometimes without a person starting the conversation. For Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations customers, Microsoft Copilot Studio is the most direct way to build them.
What an ERP agent looks like
A good agent has a narrow, well-defined job. Examples we see working well:
| Agent | Job | Data it needs |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor inquiry agent | Answer “has my invoice been paid?” emails | Vendor invoices and payments |
| Order status agent | Tell customers or reps where an order is | Sales orders, shipments |
| PO change agent | Flag supplier date or quantity changes that affect production | Purchase orders, planned orders |
| Policy agent | Answer employee questions on expense or procurement policy | SharePoint documents |
How agents connect to Dynamics 365 F&O
Copilot Studio agents can reach F&O data in several ways:
- Dataverse, including virtual tables that expose F&O data entities
- OData and custom services published from F&O
- Power Automate flows for multi-step actions
- Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools, an emerging standard for giving agents structured access to business systems
Whichever route you use, the agent should operate within the user’s or a service account’s security roles, never with broader access than it needs.
Design tips
- Write the job description first. What should the agent do, and what should it never do?
- Ground it in the right knowledge. Point it to the specific SharePoint libraries or data it needs, nothing more.
- Require approval for changes. Reading data is low-risk. Posting, updating or sending should go through an approval step at first.
- Test with real questions. Build a test set of 50 to 100 real examples and measure accuracy before go-live.
- Monitor in production. Review conversations and failure cases regularly, and keep improving.
Getting started
Start with one read-only agent that answers a common question, prove its accuracy, then add actions. We help clients design, build and govern agents through our AI Agents & Copilot Studio service.