Forum Discussion

MichalZiemba's avatar
MichalZiemba
MCT
Jun 18, 2026

The Employee Self-Service agent - how to find it

I see that Microsoft has put a lot of efforts to marketing the Copilot Employee Self-Service Agent but it seems it is not available for every tenant. 

I have already checked on several small and mid ones (5-2k users) and cannot find it in templates. 
As I understand from what I already red and saw, this is a template that should be available to you when you start building agents. Unfortunately when I enter Copilot Studio and enter in the search ESS (abbreviation from Employee Self-Service) I got only those two agents marked red filtered (see screenshot below). 
When I installed IT Helpdesk agent, I do not see topics related to HRSD in ServiceNow which I need. 
I found the Employee-Self-Service-Agent-Developer-Kit that contains same examples of the ServiceNow HRSD topics, but when I copy the YAML code of those topics to my agent I got some references to topics that I do not exists in my agents. 

Anyone has struggled with the same? Or maybe you have access to the Employee Self-Service agent and can share the basic solution/topics with me?

Michal 

 

ai agents
copilot studio

1 Reply

  • AurelienAtibard's avatar
    AurelienAtibard
    MCT
    Jun 24, 2026

    You are not doing anything wrong. The Employee Self-Service agent is simply not available to all tenants yet. Access is rolling out in waves, starting with managed customers and expanding to all customers over time. If you want access sooner, you need to reach out to your Microsoft account team. Small and mid-sized tenants without a dedicated account team just have to wait, which explains what you are seeing.

    Also worth knowing: when the template does appear, you find it under Create then Managed Agents in Copilot Studio, not through a keyword search. The IT Helpdesk agent you installed is a completely separate template, which is why the ServiceNow HRSD topics are not there.

    As for the GitHub Developer Kit, the YAML topics will keep breaking in isolation because they depend on shared variables, helper topics, flows, and connectors that only exist once the full ESS solution is properly installed. Copying topics into a blank agent is not enough.

    The realistic options right now are to wait for broad rollout, or if this is for an active customer project, escalate through your Microsoft partner channel to request early access.

    Full details here: https://learn.microsoft.com/microsoft-365/copilot/employee-self-service/overview