CoPilot: From Form Fatigue to Conversational Flow
- Arnaud LG
- Jun 2
- 4 min read
How One Customer Reinvented Their Support Experience with CoPilot Studio and Microsoft Teams
It all started when…
One of our customers operated with a legacy ticketing system—designed more for process control than people. To raise a support request, employees had to first navigate a decision maze: Which form should I use? What department does this fall under? Do I have all the required information?
The process was structured, but that structure was rigid. Users often didn’t know what exact form matched their issue. They guessed. They improvised. And they often failed.
The result?
Tickets submitted in the wrong format
Incomplete information
Delays from the very first click
What should have been a simple “I need help” became an exercise in frustration. This frustration wasn’t just anecdotal—it had consequences: lower user satisfaction, slower resolution times, and higher support workload.
And then…
As their business scaled, so did the complexity and volume of support needs. IT, HR, Facilities—each department had their own forms, their own rules, and their own queues.
Operators, too, were feeling the pain.
Requests arrived scattered across systems: emails, chat messages, call notes. Many lacked context. Follow-ups for clarification turned into long threads or missed messages. The cycle of inefficiency deepened, costing time and morale on both sides.
It became clear: they weren’t just dealing with support tickets—they were dealing with friction.
So, we learned…
The breakthrough came with a shift in perspective: What if people didn’t need to know how to ask for help? What if the system could figure it out for them?
Enter Copilot Studio, built into Microsoft Teams—their everyday collaboration hub.
Replacing forms with conversation
Instead of navigating forms, employees now simply type:
“I need help installing a new tool”
“My badge doesn’t work anymore”
“What’s the process for equipment replacement?”
The Copilot agent interprets the request, starts a natural conversation, and guides the user through any follow-up questions needed to clarify and structure the request—dynamically, in real-time.
There’s no longer a need to know “which” form. The agent collects the right details based on what the user provides, offering just-in-time, context-aware prompts to complete the request.
File uploads, status checks, and history
Users can attach files, receive confirmations, and check the status of their requests—all from within Teams. They can even reference previous tickets or ask for an update on a specific ticket number.
It feels less like submitting a form and more like chatting with a knowledgeable colleague who knows exactly what to ask—and when.
For the support operators
We built a PowerApps canvas app that gives operators a clean interface to:
View and prioritize assigned requests
Update ticket status
Follow up with users in-context
Track communication history...all within their Microsoft 365 ecosystem.
✅ The Benefits
The shift to conversational support brought tangible, far-reaching benefits:
Better data quality and structured intake
Information is collected progressively and accurately, reducing errors and missing context. This streamlines triage and speeds up resolution.
Reduced request resolution time
No more hunting for missing details or following up across channels. The bot ensures all required inputs are gathered upfront—or during live follow-up.
Lower onboarding and training effort
New employees don’t need to learn complicated internal processes. They just need to know how to describe their need—Copilot handles the rest.
Improved accessibility and reach
Because the experience is embedded in Microsoft Teams, users can request help wherever they work—desktop, mobile, browser, even on the go.
Analytics and process improvement
Every request is logged, classified, and structured. This enables dashboards for:
Top-requested help topics
Bottlenecks in the support process
Trends in resolution time
Service quality indicators
Employee satisfaction boost
People feel empowered. They no longer get lost in process or wait days for a simple fix. The result? A major uptick in user satisfaction.
Modular, scalable foundation
This solution can be replicated across departments—from IT and HR to finance, procurement, or facilities—with domain-specific extensions.
Self-service knowledge enablement
The bot doesn’t just take requests—it answers them. Integrated with a knowledge base, it can resolve common questions directly, reducing ticket volume.
⚠️ The Challenges We Had to Solve
Of course, building this wasn’t plug-and-play. Here are some of the key challenges we had to overcome:
Understanding vague or ambiguous requests
A message like “I need help” isn’t enough. We had to design smart intent detection flows and fallback prompts to progressively clarify what users need.
Working around Adaptive Card limitations
Adaptive Cards are powerful for static input, but they don’t support dynamic, real-time updates or branching. To tackle this, we split the data collection into multiple adaptive flows, triggering additional actions based on prior responses.
Keeping the knowledge base accurate
The bot’s helpfulness depends on a well-maintained, up-to-date repository of process and policy information. This required setting up clear content ownership and governance.
Designing granular Copilot actions
We had to think carefully about how to break down support needs into meaningful, automatable actions that the bot could execute or trigger—without becoming too generic or too narrow.
Ensuring security and compliance
With user data, attachments, and conversation logs flowing into Dataverse, strict data access controls, retention policies, and audit trails had to be enforced to comply with IT security and legal requirements.
User trust and bot perception
Not everyone loves talking to a bot. Early feedback showed that if the agent felt too robotic or “scripted,” users dropped off. We fine-tuned tone, added confirmations, and used empathy-driven phrasing to make the experience feel more human.
Aligning workflows between agent and operator
The agent collected and structured data. The PowerApps app processed it. Bridging the two required tight data mapping, custom schemas, and automation to ensure nothing got lost in translation.
The Point
This story isn’t just about replacing forms with chat.
It’s about removing friction, empowering people to ask for help without stress, and enabling support teams to do what they do best—resolve issues fast and effectively.
It’s about showing that technology—when designed with empathy—can fade into the background and make the process feel almost effortless.
The shift from ticket forms to a Teams-based Copilot agent transformed a daily pain point into a smooth, intelligent experience.
And that transformation didn’t just improve operations. It improved relationships.
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