If you read my last post on Copilot Studio harnesses, the natural next question is — where do I actually learn to build on one? Microsoft has the answer, and it's free: Agent Academy, a self-paced, hands-on curriculum for mastering agent building in Copilot Studio, with a dedicated track for each harness.
What Is Agent Academy?
It's a structured, mission-based training program built around a "Recruit → Operative → Commander" progression — think of it as a field-training arc for agent builders. You start as a Recruit, work through hands-on missions, and earn an official digital badge (issued through the Global AI Community) when you complete each path.
The Recruit rank splits into two paths, one per harness, and both start from zero:
- Standard Harness — best for rule-based, predictable conversations. Broadest coverage of classic Copilot Studio: topics, Adaptive Cards, Power Fx, agent flows.
- GitHub Copilot Harness — instruction-driven. Guide agent behavior with natural-language instructions, skills, tools, and workflows instead of manually built conversation paths.
Microsoft's own guidance: start with Standard if you want the broadest foundational coverage of Copilot Studio; start with GitHub Copilot harness if you're building on the new experience today and want the instruction-driven approach directly.
Track 1: Standard Harness (13 Missions)
The original, foundational course — comprehensive and hands-on, taking you from zero to a published, licensed agent. 🧭
What you'll build:
- Core agent concepts — LLMs, RAG, declarative vs. autonomous agents
- A declarative agent deployed into Microsoft 365 Copilot
- A packaged, reusable solution for environment management
- A custom agent grounded in your own knowledge sources
- Adaptive Cards built with Power Fx and SharePoint
- Agent Flows triggered from Adaptive Card input
- Event-based triggers for autonomous behavior
- Publishing to Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 Copilot
- Licensing and billing fundamentals
Track 2: GitHub Copilot Harness (Recruit NextGen)
The newer track, built specifically around the harness I covered in my last post. It intentionally reuses the same IT support business scenario as the Standard track — so you're comparing architectures, not learning a new use case from scratch.
What's different here:
- Instead of manually authoring topics and branching logic, you describe what your agent needs to do in natural language and let Copilot Studio generate the initial agent
- You refine the result — updating the agent name, adding knowledge sources, verifying instructions
- Missions cover adding skills, tools, and workflows rather than Adaptive Cards and agent flows
- The agent lifecycle follows create → build → test → publish → monitor
Worth flagging before you start: this track runs on Copilot Credits — consumption-based billing during natural-language authoring, Preview, and Evaluation. Manual configuration in the Build and Monitor tabs doesn't consume credits, but the billing exception available to licensed Microsoft 365 Copilot users in authenticated employee scenarios doesn't apply here — so check your environment's credit capacity before diving in. Mission 09 covers this in full, and it lines up directly with what I covered in my Copilot Credits breakdown.
Completing this path earns the Recruit NextGen badge.
What You'll Need Before Starting (Either Track)
- A Microsoft 365 Developer tenant with SharePoint enabled
- Access to Copilot Studio (trial or licensed)
- Optional: basic familiarity with SharePoint, Power Platform, or Power Fx
Each track has its own Course Setup mission to get you there.
Why This Matters
Reading about harnesses is one thing — building an actual agent, publishing it, and understanding its licensing is what turns theory into a skill you can bring to your organization. Microsoft built this as genuinely practitioner-grade training, not marketing fluff, and both tracks are free. Doing both back-to-back is also the fastest way to feel the architectural difference between topic-based authoring and instruction-driven building — rather than just reading about it.
Read here to know more: Agent Academy – Recruit (both paths)
Standard Harness track: Recruit – Standard Harness
GitHub Copilot Harness track: Recruit – GitHub Copilot Harness
Stay tuned for more updates...
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