Forum Discussion
Power Automate Flows Created Outside Copilot Studio Not Appearing in Tools
I am experiencing the same issue and wanted to share what I've found so far.
I initially created a flow directly in Power Automate (https://make.powerautomate.com/). After that, I created a Copilot Studio agent (https://copilotstudio.microsoft.com/) and successfully added that flow as a tool. As the agent evolved, I created several additional flows directly from within Copilot Studio.
Later, when I reviewed the Tools directory in Copilot Studio, I noticed that only the three flows created through Copilot Studio were listed. The original flow, which was created in Power Automate and successfully added to the agent, was not present in the Tools directory.
To troubleshoot, I verified the following:
- Flow starts with "When an agent calls the flow"
- Flow ends with "Respond to the agent"
- Flow is in the same environment as the agent
- Asynchronous response is turned off
- Flow is published and functioning correctly
I also tested moving the flow into a solution, but that did not make a difference.
At this point, I'm leaning toward the possibility that flows created directly in Copilot Studio receive additional metadata or registration information that enables them to appear in the Copilot Studio Tools directory, whereas flows created directly in Power Automate do not. That is the next area I plan to investigate.
If anyone has found a way to make Power Automate-created agent flows appear in the Copilot Studio Tools directory, I'd be interested in hearing about it.
Good luck, and I'll update this thread if I discover the root cause.
Thank you for sharing your findings. I was experiencing exactly the same behavior.
After additional troubleshooting, I found the root cause.
The difference was not related to the trigger, response action, environment, solution membership, or publishing process. It was actually related to the Plan assigned to the workflow.
In my environment:
- Flows created directly in Power Automate were assigned the plan "The user running the flow".
- Flows created from Copilot Studio were assigned the plan "Copilot Studio".
The Power Automate flow worked correctly and could be added to the agent, but it did not appear in the Global Tools directory.
After changing the flow's Plan to Copilot Studio, it immediately appeared in the Global Tools directory and became discoverable.
Based on my testing, this seems to confirm your theory that flows created from Copilot Studio receive additional metadata or registration that makes them visible to the Copilot Studio tooling experience.
One thing to be aware of: changing the Plan to Copilot Studio appears to be a one-way operation, so it may be a good idea to save or export the flow before making the change.
I hope this helps anyone else facing the same issue.
Best regards,
Adhonaï KOUKA