Solution Template: IT Helpdesk Triage Agent¶

What this builds. A Copilot Studio agent that deflects tier-1 IT queries with instant KB answers — and for anything that needs a human, collects the right structured information and raises the ticket automatically via Power Automate.

🛠️ Build it step by step → IT: Triage support requests and answer from the knowledge base — the click-by-click Studio build for this blueprint.

Pattern: Triage → Answer from KB or collect fields → Create ticket → Confirm

Two harnesses for this use case

This template's system prompt and topic specs target the standard harness — predictable and covered by a Microsoft 365 Copilot license inside Microsoft 365 channels. The same use case also has a GitHub Copilot harness version that plans and runs the task with generative orchestration (autonomous; bills Copilot Credits for all usage, and a license never covers it). Compare the engines.

What the agent does¶

Capability	Detail
Answers from KB	Resolves tier-1 queries (password, VPN, software how-to) from your IT knowledge base
Triage decision	Determines whether a KB answer resolves the issue or a ticket is needed
Ticket collection	Collects category, urgency, and description in a structured conversation
Ticket creation	Submits to your helpdesk system via Power Automate and returns a ticket reference
Known issues	Optional: surfaces active outages before the user raises a duplicate ticket
Escalation	Clear handoff for P1/major incidents that need immediate human contact

System prompt — copy and adapt¶

You are the IT Help agent for [Company Name].

When an employee describes an IT issue or asks for help:
1. First, try to resolve it from the IT knowledge base. If you can resolve it,
   provide a clear step-by-step answer and cite the KB article.
2. If the knowledge base doesn't cover it, or the user says the KB answer
   didn't work, guide them through raising a support ticket.
3. For raising a ticket, collect: issue category, urgency, and a short description.
   Then confirm the details before submitting.

Rules:
- Never guess. If the KB doesn't cover it, move to ticket creation.
- Be concise. Employees asking IT questions are usually blocked — get to the
  answer or the ticket as fast as possible.
- For P1 / major incidents (full system outage, data loss, security breach):
  respond immediately: "This sounds like a major incident — please call the
  IT emergency line at [number] or contact your IT manager directly."
- Tone: calm, practical, efficient.

Knowledge sources¶

Source	What to include	What to exclude
IT KB SharePoint site	How-to articles, known fix procedures, access request guides, software installation steps	Incident logs, internal IT run-books not intended for end users
Known issues page	A single SharePoint page the IT team updates with active outages	Historical resolved incidents
Onboarding guides	New joiner IT setup steps, first-day access checklist	Archived onboarding cohort data

KB quality gate

Run a plain-language review of your top-20 KB articles before connecting them. Articles written for IT engineers ("disable NetBIOS over TCP/IP via registry key…") will confuse employees. Rewrite the top articles for a non-technical audience before launch.

Topics to configure¶

Topic 1 — P1 / Major incident escalation¶

Build this first. Fires immediately for anything that sounds like a widespread or critical incident.

Trigger phrases: - "everything is down" / "total outage" - "data loss" / "lost all my files" - "security breach" / "I think I've been hacked" / "phishing" - "ransomware" / "virus" - "the whole team can't work"

Response node:

"This sounds like a major incident. Please call the IT emergency line: [number], or contact your IT manager directly. Do not wait for a ticket response — this needs immediate human attention."

Then: End conversation. Do not loop to KB or ticket collection.

Topic 2 — Known issues check (optional but high value)¶

Before the user raises a ticket, surface any active outage that matches their description.

Trigger phrases: "is [system] down", "not working", "can't access", "[system] broken"

Flow: - Check the known issues SharePoint page (grounded knowledge) - If a matching outage exists: "We're aware of an issue with [system] and the IT team is working on it. Estimated resolution: [ETA from the page]. You don't need to raise a ticket — we'll update the page when it's resolved." - If no match: continue to KB answer / ticket collection

Topic 3 — Ticket collection flow¶

The core structured flow for issues the KB can't resolve.

Triggered when: user says KB answer didn't help, or asks for something that clearly needs a human (e.g. "I need a new laptop", "request admin access", "set up a new user").

Conversation flow:

Turn	Agent says	User provides
1	"I'll raise a ticket for you. First — what category best describes this? [Hardware / Software / Access & accounts / Other]"	Category
2	"How urgent is this? [Blocking — I can't work / Degraded — I can work but it's slow / Low — not time-sensitive]"	Urgency
3	"Briefly describe the issue in one or two sentences."	Description
4	"Just to confirm: [Category] / [Urgency] / [Description]. Shall I raise this?"	Confirm
5	[Power Automate action fires] "Done — your ticket reference is [Ref]. The IT team will be in touch within [SLA by urgency]."	—

Power Automate action spec¶

Build this flow and connect it to the ticket collection topic.

Inputs from agent: - category (string) — Hardware / Software / Access / Other - urgency (string) — Blocking / Degraded / Low - description (string) — user's free-text description - user_email (string) — from the session context

Flow steps: 1. Receive inputs from Copilot Studio (instant cloud flow) 2. Create item / raise ticket in [ServiceNow / Jira / Zendesk / SharePoint list] 3. Return ticket_id to the agent 4. (Optional) Send email confirmation to user_email with ticket reference and SLA

Error handling: If the ticketing system connector fails, the flow should return an error code. The agent should catch this and respond: "I wasn't able to raise the ticket automatically. Please email [helpdesk@] with these details: [repeat the collected fields]."

Starter prompts¶

"My laptop won't connect to VPN"
"I need to request access to a system"
"Software isn't working — I need help"
"Is [system] currently down?"

Test cases¶

#	Input	Expected behaviour
1	"How do I reset my password?"	KB answer with steps, cites article
2	"I can't connect to VPN"	KB answer; if not resolved, offer ticket
3	"I need a new laptop"	Moves to ticket collection (no KB answer)
4	"Everything is down, the whole company"	P1 escalation topic fires immediately
5	"Is Outlook down?"	Known issues check fires
6	KB answer provided → user says "that didn't work"	Moves to ticket collection
7	Ticket collected → confirm → submit	Ticket reference returned
8	Ticket collected → PA connector fails	Fallback message with email instruction

Deployment checklist¶

[ ] KB articles reviewed for plain-language readability
[ ] Known issues SharePoint page created and IT team knows to update it
[ ] Power Automate flow tested end-to-end including error path
[ ] P1 emergency line number confirmed and current
[ ] SLA times confirmed with IT management and reflected in confirmation messages
[ ] All 8 test cases pass
[ ] Agent pinned in IT/general Teams channel with intro message
[ ] Analytics review scheduled for 2 weeks post-launch

What to build next¶

Closed-loop resolution notification — a PA flow that messages the user in Teams when their ticket status changes
Self-service password reset integration — connect directly to Azure AD / Entra self-service reset rather than pointing to a KB article
Proactive outage notification — an autonomous agent that monitors a status feed and posts to the IT channel when a new known issue is detected

📚 References. Copilot Studio docs · Add actions · Power Automate connector

Want the full story first?

The IT Helpdesk walkthrough covers the design decisions, what to agree with the helpdesk team before building, and what to watch out for in production.

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