Building a powerful and engaging conversational AI is no easy feat. That’s where Copilot Studio steps in to simplify the process. Whether you’re just getting started or an experienced bot builder, understanding how to utilize sample and system topics in Copilot Studio will allow you to craft more effective conversations for your users.
In this blog, we’ll dive deep into how sample and system topics work and how you can leverage them to streamline your copilot’s performance.
Getting Started with Sample Topics
Copilot Studio comes equipped with sample topics to guide you through the process of creating effective bot conversations. These topics are designed to demonstrate simple and advanced scenarios, covering various elements like conditional branching, variables, and custom entities.
Why Use Sample Topics?
Sample topics serve as a great learning tool, showcasing the best practices for designing conversational paths. They allow you to explore how different nodes—such as trigger phrases, decision points, and user responses—come together to form a conversation. However, it’s important to note that these sample topics are not meant for production use. They’re purely instructional.
Mastering System Topics in Copilot Studio
While sample topics are great for learning, system topics are crucial for managing core behaviors in your copilot’s conversations. These topics handle essential operations, such as greeting the user or escalating the conversation to a live agent.
Key System Topics
Copilot Studio automatically includes system topics when you create a new copilot. Let’s explore some of the most important ones:
- Conversation Start
This topic kicks off the conversation, greeting the user and introducing your copilot’s capabilities. It’s triggered at the start of every interaction. - Conversational Boosting
When your copilot can’t find a matching topic for the user’s query, this topic generates an answer from external data sources, making it a great fallback tool. - End of Conversation
This system topic is used to gracefully end a conversation. You can trigger this from any custom topic when the interaction has concluded. - Escalate
When the user needs to speak to a human agent, this topic is triggered. It can be configured to escalate automatically if certain conditions (like invalid responses) are met. - Fallback
If the copilot can’t match the user’s question to a known topic, this fallback system topic is triggered, asking the user to try rephrasing their question. - Multiple Topics Matched
When a user’s message closely matches more than one topic, this system topic asks the user to clarify their intent by selecting the most relevant option. - On Error
Errors happen! This topic informs the user when something goes wrong and provides helpful information like an error code and conversation ID for debugging.
System Topics: Built-In But Flexible
System topics are built into every copilot and cannot be deleted. However, if you find that some of these topics aren’t relevant to your bot, you have the option to disable them. You can also customize system topics, but it’s recommended to avoid heavy modifications until you’re comfortable creating custom topics.
In Copilot Studio, sample and system topics work hand-in-hand to guide you through bot development and ensure a smooth user experience. By exploring sample topics, you’ll learn how to create complex conversations. Meanwhile, system topics handle essential tasks automatically, allowing you to focus on refining your bot’s personality and responses.
Whether you’re just starting or looking to enhance your conversational AI’s capabilities, understanding and utilizing these topics will give you the foundation you need to build intelligent, responsive copilots.
Ready to take your copilot to the next level? Start experimenting with these topics today and watch your bot-building skills flourish!
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