Copilot Gift Guru- Build Your Own No-Code AI Gift Assistant in 15 Minutes

This session delivered a clear and practical overview of what agents are and how anyone can start building them. Led by Jim Spignardo, Director of Cloud Strategy and AI Enablement at ProArch, the session focused on making AI agents approachable, usable, and accessible without requiring any coding experience. 

What Are Agents and Why They Matter 

The session began with an overview of agents and what makes them different. Agents were described as purpose-built AI designed to help solve a specific need. Rather than being general assistants, agents are created with a defined goal in mind and tailored to perform a particular task. 

A key message was that no coding experience is required to create agents, opening the door for more people across an organization to build solutions that meet their needs. 

Getting Started: What You Need Before You Build 

Before jumping in, Jim outlined the basic prerequisites required to use agents. These included: 

• An M365 subscription 
• Access to Copilot Chat 
• Organizational permissions to use Copilot agents 

With these in place, users are ready to begin creating their own agents. 

A Hands-On Demonstration: Building a Gift Assistant 

One of the highlights of the session was a fun, hands-on demonstration showing how to build a no-code AI gift assistant in just 15 minutes. This example helped bring the concept of agents to life and showed how quickly a custom agent can be created to address a specific use case. 

Beyond the demonstration, the session equipped attendees with the skills needed to start building custom agents for a variety of purposes. 

Step by Step: How to Build Your Own Agent 

Jim walked through the process of creating an agent from start to finish, breaking it down into clear, manageable steps. 

The process included: 

• Opening Copilot Chat 
• Choosing the option to create a new agent customized to your needs 
• Configuring the agent visually by defining its purpose 
• Customizing the agent’s actions using intuitive, no-code visual tools 
• Testing the agent directly within the chat environment 
• Adjusting and refining the agent to improve performance and usability

Our Takeaways 

This session showed how approachable and practical agent creation can be. By removing the need for coding and providing visual, guided steps, agents become a powerful way to solve specific needs quickly and effectively. 

A big thank you to Jim Spignardo for the clear walkthrough and for showing how easy it is to go from idea to a working AI agent in minutes.