Welcome back to another Raife Bytes episode today it’s another post about Microsoft Copilot autonomous agents and their potential use cases, specifically how we can unleash the Braveheart of Freedom of Information, a topic which i’m sure is at the heart of alot of people’s frustrations with the public sector.
It’s a tenuous link, but humour me….
So in the spirit of William Wallace’s legendary cry for freedom, we embark on a modern-day quest to liberate the public sector from the shackles of cumbersome Freedom of Information (FOI) requests management.
Today’s hero? well an autonomous Copilot Agent of course, armed with Power Apps, Power Automate workflows, and a trusty Microsoft Form.
This post will detail the journey of creating a solution to streamline FOI requests, saving time and resources while ensuring compliance with the UK Freedom of Information Act, doesn’t that sound fun!
The key battle faced? It’s one against time..
Every UK public sector organisation has to by law provide information to members of the public about its key undertakings and services it provides, as such they face the daunting task of responding to an unlimited number FOI requests from the public.
The key issue faced by these organisations is that under the UK Freedom of Information Act, public authorities are required to respond to FOI requests promptly and within 20 working days following the date of receipt.
This means that the clock starts ticking the day after the request is received, and the response must be provided within this timeframe to comply with the law.
With a 20-day deadline looming over their heads, staff members often find themselves overwhelmed by the sheer volume of requests. Many of these requests are repetitive, seeking information already available in previous FOI responses or board papers. The result? Lengthy delays and a frustrated public.
So, with that said and in true “raife bytes” manner, what can we do to help solve this challenge! Lets ask William shall we?
On to the battlefield with our William Wallace of Copilot Autonomous agent
So we have our challenge pretty well defined, and it’s abit of a beast, 20 days to respond, that’s not a lot of time even without a backlog, never mind with one!
So let’s imagine a scene from “Braveheart,” where the Scottish warriors are outnumbered and overwhelmed by the English army.
Similarly, public sector staff are inundated with FOI requests, struggling to keep up with the demand. The need for a more efficient solution is as pressing as the need for reinforcements on the battlefield.
So in steps our Copilot Autonomous agent as a modern-day William Wallace, fearlessly charging into the fray, armed with the power of AI and automation.
This agent tirelessly searches through mountains of data, identifying relevant information and streamlining the initial triage process. It’s like having a digital warrior on your side, ready to tackle the most daunting FOI challenges.
Look.. I know it’s a stretch of the imagination, but how else can you make Freedom of Information an interesting topic!
A Responsible AI Word of Warning
As pointed out by a trusted work colleague, you can’t be blogging about AI without a nod to responsibility, so here is my nod… (Thanks Kevin)
So while our autonomous agent can handle the initial triage, search and logging of the freedom of information request, the final decision on what information to send back to the public must rest with a human.
This ensures that the response is accurate and appropriate, maintaining the integrity of the Freedom of Information process.
So just as William Wallace relied on his trusted allies, our solution relies on human oversight to ensure that every response is carefully considered and accurate.
So with warnings heeded, let’s dig into the solution!
Building the Braveheart based Freedom of Information Management Copilot Autonomous Agent
1. Microsoft Forms
Our solution initially begins with the submission of an FOI request via a simple Microsoft Form. This could of course be a more complex form system but for the proof of concept it’s a simple to use publicly available form solution so why not…
The creation of the form is a simple process just go to https://forms.office.com/ and create a new form, in our demo form we capture all the mandatory values required for a Freedom of Information Request:
- Contact Details
- Requestor Name
- Address Details
- FOI Request Specifics
- Date Range
- Preferred Return Medium
Once the mandatory fields on the form are populated the member of the public can then submit their form and our Autonomous Copilot Agent can go off and do all the automated legwork!
So as you can see by using the Falkirk of Forms you can avoid the pitfalls of manual data entry with automated forms that ensure no information is lost in battle.
2. Power Automate Workflow
Here’s where the clever bit kicks in the submission triggers a Power Automate workflow that is coupled with the Copilot Autonomous Agent, this is the secret that causes the Agent to be autonomous, as it acts as a non interactive trigger, i.e not by an end user through a chat window but by a specific action.
This workflow itself is fairly straight forward, it extract’s the form’s contents and and then initiates a new request log record in Dataverse, nothing out of the ordinary here, the key point is to ensure that all the relevant fields are matched from the form into the respective fields in the Dataverse table for the FOI Requests.
Once we have successfully registered the new FOI request in Dataverse we extract the record row UID, which is the unique identifier for the new request and then send it back to our autonomous Copilot agent, using the “Execute Copilot” action.
So just as Wallace rallied his troops, you can let your workflows rally your data!
3. Copilot Autonomous Agent
So here we are at the William Wallace agent build process thankfully is is also relatively simple, you login to Copilot studio and and click “create new agent” you will be then presented with the following form, to create the agent you populate the values as follows.
Name: – Simply provide a descriptive name for your new Agent, lets go with “Freedom of Information Agent”
Description: – This field is essentially an internal description value for the agent, fill it out with a few simple descriptive words.
Instructions: – This is where the magic happens, this field is essentially the prompt to Copilot which explains to the agent how it should operate and handle the data and responses to the users, it is in effect how you prompt engineer the agent itself, as opposed to a specific prompt in the conversation.
Knowledge:- This is where you enter the source of knowledge for the agents, in this case we are using a SharePoint site which has been pre loaded with existing Freedom of Information request documents and board reports but equally it could be a set of internal documents, intranet site or even more complex data structures such as a database or another internal system via APIs, or even a bespoke AI solution surfaced through Azure AI Foundry
With our main Copilot Agent defined we can now focus on how to make the Copilot perform the initial search and then the magic part of updating the respective record in our Freedom of Information Management Power Apps solution:
Admittedly this bit is not so simple, but we can break it down into manageable chunks:
- Conversational Boosting: This topic is what Copilot uses when it is unsure what to respond with, at which point it will look to its knowledge sources (SharePoint Files). So we can use this topic to intercept the Agent before it performs it’ ‘ssearch and extract the request description from the new request log in Dataverse using the UID from the calling Power Automate workflow.
- Check for the ID: We perform simple check to see if the conversation message is in a specific format and if so then use the value to query the request detail
- Generative Request: We then use the create generative answers action to go and search for corresponding documents from the defined knowledge, and if there is a successful match log the resulting message into our “FOI Action Log” table, and join it with our initial “FOI-Request”, thereby creating a linked reference for the management team to review.
So with the Battle of Bannockburn fought with automated agents you can see how you can let them fight the good fight, finding the relevant information if there is any, and freeing your information team to focus on the more complex cases.
4. Power Apps Freedom of Information Manager App
With the request logged through our MS Form, initially triaged and handled by our Autonomous Copilot Agent, and any potential matching Freedom of Information Request founds, the next stage is over to the human connection.
Here is where the information management team can pick up and mange the request through the correct governance channels and approval processes accordingly using the Freedom of Information request management app, written in Power Apps.
Once the Agent has completed it’s search and then returned any match and logged the detail, it will then notify the information team of the newly created request record, this can be through a teams notification or via email and then they can login into the Power App and manage as normal either collate more content or craft a response to the original requestor.
The current mvp solution captures relevant details and stores them in a structured way however being Power Apps, the app can be built specifically to the organisations workflows and can also support approval workflows.
The solution could also be developed to send notification emails both internal and external, to ensure that the requestor is kept up to date and relevant internal stakeholders are also kept appraised at key stages, it could even be written to set and manage actions on other departments who are responsible for feeding into an FOI request if needed.
Finally the data can even be visualised through Power BI to enable SLA reporting around that dreaded 20 day time frame for ongoing service and quality management.
The battle is over Freedom (of Information) achieved! Mel Gibson, you would be proud!
So there you have it, if William were still alive today he would easily be celebrating the hard fought Freedom that we have won for the public in terms of their information requests!
It’s almost as if this victory was on par with his victory at the Battle of Stirling Bridge. As there are rather dubious parallels as just like the teams that manage the many FOI requests that hit our public services every day, he was heavily outnumbered.
However, he found a way to use a narrow bridge to his advantage, almost like how we have managed to create an information bridge through the use of Power Platform and Autonomous Copilot Agents to channel the requests through an automated initial processing and management workflow.
So there you have it, now you know how Copilot, William Wallace and Freedom of Information requests are all connected……
Onward to our next Copilot innovation and information freedom battle, unlike William Wallace who was unfortunately eventually captured and tried for treason #awks….
