Designing a multi-agent solution in Microsoft Copilot Studio now begins with a fundamental architectural decision: which harness should run the solution?

The standard harness supports rule-based agents and structured, repeatable conversations. The GitHub Copilot harness is designed for reasoning-intensive, multistep business processes that may use files, skills, memory, tools, and connected agents. The Customer Conversation harness supports customer-facing voice and chat scenarios through a primary agent, specialized sub-agents, and defined human-escalation paths. Harness selection affects orchestration behavior, supported capabilities, publishing options, operational characteristics, and billing.

In this technical session, you’ll learn how to design, compose, and operate multi-agent solutions in Microsoft Copilot Studio. Rather than assuming that more agents automatically produce a better solution, we begin with the workload and determine whether it should be implemented with a single agent, deterministic workflow, reusable skill, lightweight child agent, independently managed connected agent, MCP-based tool integration, or A2A-connected external agent.

We will examine Microsoft’s current multi-agent composition option:

Through reference architectures and focused demonstrations, we will explore how a front-door agent can orchestrate other agents and connection.

Finally, the session moves beyond design-time demonstrations into production operation. We will cover clear capability descriptions, context handoffs, identity and access controls, environment policies, data-loss prevention, evaluation, analytics, telemetry, incident investigation, and human checkpoints for consequential actions. Microsoft’s implementation guidance organizes enterprise agent delivery around planning, implementation, adoption, management, continuous improvement, and extensibility.

By the end of the session, attendees will have a practical decision framework and reference architecture for building multi-agent solutions that remain understandable, testable, governable, and operationally resilient.