Partner Case Study | Appfie and Plopsa
What does it take to keep a theme park running smoothly when thousands of guests are buying tickets, moving through gates, and making purchases every hour? While visitors experience the rides and attractions, a different kind of choreography is happening behind the scenes—one where finance teams work to keep every transaction accurate, aligned, and moving at speed. For teams smoothing out these back-end operations, having the option to deploy AI-powered, no-code or low-code solutions can be a game changer. And for Microsoft partner Appfie, this kind of operational challenge is an opportunity to rethink how work gets done. With their focus on no-code and low-code solutions, Appfie helps organizations replace fragmented processes with centralized, scalable systems built on Microsoft Power Platform. To support this work, Appfie taps into the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program for access to funding, tools, and direct collaboration with Microsoft experts to accelerate early-stage prototyping and align stakeholders faster. In addition, they highlight their Solutions Partner designations to establish credibility with customers and stand out from the competition in Microsoft Marketplace. By combining these program benefits with a mentorship-led delivery approach, Appfie empowers their customers to move quickly from idea to implementation while building internal capability along the way. This model proved especially effective when Studio Plopsa NV, the amusement park company, sought a faster, more consistent way to manage their core financial processes. Keeping every transaction on track across multiple parks Based in Belgium, Plopsa operates eight amusement parks across Europe, including in Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands. The company is owned by family entertainment giant Studio 100, and their parks feature characters and locales from Studio 100 properties. Naturally, tracking financial transactions across ticket sales, events, souvenirs, food, and more is a monumental task. At the center of this effort was Plopsa’s main cash register process, a critical function that supports daily operations across all parks. As the business grew, managing this process in a consistent way became increasingly complex. This was especially true as the company was working with legacy technology—including, in some instances, pen and paper. Each location contributed to a shared financial picture, but without a centralized system, maintaining alignment across parks required additional effort and coordination. The lack of centralized data management also meant processes could vary from one park to another, creating inconsistencies in how data was handled and limiting visibility for the finance team. This fragmentation introduced friction into an otherwise smooth operational environment. Plopsa needed a solution that could be delivered quickly and that avoided disruptions to their fast-moving business. They weren’t looking for a lengthy transformation, but rather a way to modernize a core process and create a system that could deliver consistency, centralization, and speed. Their search for a solution led them to Appfie. Continue reading hereCopilot, Microsoft 365 & Power Platform Community call
💡 Copilot, Microsoft 365 & Power Platform weekly community call focuses on different use cases and features within the Copilot, Microsoft 365 and Power Platform - across Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, SharePoint, Power Apps and more. 👏 Looking to catch up on the latest news and updates, including cool community demos, this call is for you! 📅 On 2nd of July we'll have following agenda: Copilot prompt of the week CommunityDays.org update Microsoft 365 Maturity model Latest on PnP Framework and Core SDK extension Latest on PnP PowerShell Latest on script samples Latest Copilot pro dev samples Latest on Power Platform samples Picture time with the Together Mode! Shahab Matapour (Systra Canada) – How to build an offline SharePoint Form Customizer Sudipta Kumar Basu (Capgemini) AI-Driven Underwriting Hub (SharePoint AI with Outlook Add‑In) Chris Kent (Takeda) – List Formatting Tips & Tricks 📅 Download recurrent invite from https://aka.ms/community/m365-powerplat-dev-call-invite 📞 & 📺 Join the Microsoft Teams meeting live at https://aka.ms/community/m365-powerplat-dev-call-join 👋 See you in the call! 💡 Building something cool for Microsoft 365 or Power Platform (Copilot, SharePoint, Power Apps, etc)? We are always looking for presenters - Volunteer for a community call demo at https://aka.ms/community/request/demo 📖 Resources: Previous community call recordings and demos from the Microsoft Community Learning YouTube channel at https://aka.ms/community/youtube Microsoft 365 & Power Platform samples from Microsoft and community - https://aka.ms/community/samples Microsoft 365 & Power Platform community details - https://aka.ms/community/home 🧡 Sharing is caring!Copilot, Microsoft 365 & Power Platform Community call
💡Copilot, Microsoft 365 & Power Platform product updates call concentrates on the different use cases and features within the Microsoft 365 and in Power Platform. Call includes topics like Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, Microsoft Teams, Power Platform, Microsoft Graph, Microsoft Viva, Microsoft Search, Microsoft Lists, SharePoint, Power Automate, Power Apps and more. 👏 Weekly Tuesday call is for all community members to see Microsoft PMs, engineering and Cloud Advocates showcasing the art of possible with Microsoft 365 and Power Platform. 📅 On the 30th of June we'll have following agenda: News and updates from Microsoft Together mode group photo Joe Komban – How to improve your SharePoint Skills using out of the box skills Paolo Pialorsi - Work IQ: Leveraging A2A for context-aware agents interaction Bert Jansen & Vesa Juvonen – Considerations for SPFx Copilot Apps - SPFx Copilot Apps 3/3 📞 & 📺 Join the Microsoft Teams meeting live at https://aka.ms/community/ms-speakers-call-join 🗓️ Download recurrent invite for this weekly call from https://aka.ms/community/ms-speakers-call-invite 👋 See you in the call! 💡 Building something cool for Microsoft 365 or Power Platform (Copilot, SharePoint, Power Apps, etc)? We are always looking for presenters - Volunteer for a community call demo at https://aka.ms/community/request/demo 📖 Resources: Previous community call recordings and demos from the Microsoft Community Learning YouTube channel at https://aka.ms/community/youtube Microsoft 365 & Power Platform samples from Microsoft and community - https://aka.ms/community/samples Microsoft 365 & Power Platform community details - https://aka.ms/community/home 🧡 Sharing is caring!Copilot, Microsoft 365 & Power Platform product updates call
💡Copilot, Microsoft 365 & Power Platform product updates call concentrates on the different use cases and features within the Microsoft 365 and in Power Platform. Call includes topics like Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, Microsoft Teams, Power Platform, Microsoft Graph, Microsoft Viva, Microsoft Search, Microsoft Lists, SharePoint, Power Automate, Power Apps and more. 👏 Weekly Tuesday call is for all community members to see Microsoft PMs, engineering and Cloud Advocates showcasing the art of possible with Microsoft 365 and Power Platform. 📅 On the 23rd of June we'll have following agenda: News and updates from Microsoft Together mode group photo Anshul Jethwani & Harish Swaminathan – Getting started on using Agent Builder templates to kick start your agent journey Paolo Pialorsi - Understanding Work IQ Bert Jansen & Vesa Juvonen – Getting started with building Sharepoint Copilot Apps 📞 & 📺 Join the Microsoft Teams meeting live at https://aka.ms/community/ms-speakers-call-join 🗓️ Download recurrent invite for this weekly call from https://aka.ms/community/ms-speakers-call-invite 👋 See you in the call! 💡 Building something cool for Microsoft 365 or Power Platform (Copilot, SharePoint, Power Apps, etc)? We are always looking for presenters - Volunteer for a community call demo at https://aka.ms/community/request/demo 📖 Resources: Previous community call recordings and demos from the Microsoft Community Learning YouTube channel at https://aka.ms/community/youtube Microsoft 365 & Power Platform samples from Microsoft and community - https://aka.ms/community/samples Microsoft 365 & Power Platform community details - https://aka.ms/community/home 🧡 Sharing is caring!
Why Your Copilot Studio Agent Fails in Production (And How to Fix It)
Most Copilot Studio tutorials show you how to build a chatbot. This post is about something harder: building agents that actually work in production. I architect enterprise agents at a hospitality company — handling customer email triage, HR workflows, helpdesk automation, and reporting pipelines across multiple systems. One of those agents reduced human handling time per customer email from ~12 minutes to under 2 minutes (88% reduction) by orchestrating sentiment analysis, CRM lookups, SOP research via child agents, and response drafting — all before a human agent ever opens the email. Here is what I've learned building at that scale. The Four Layers Every Enterprise Agent Needs Most teams design only the top layer and treat everything else as "we'll figure it out later." By the time the other layers become urgent — usually after an incident — they're too expensive to retrofit. Layer Component Conversation Topics · Entities · Adaptive Cards · NLU Orchestration Agent routing · Context passing · State Integration Connectors · Power Automate · Azure Functions Governance DLP · Auth · ALM · Monitoring · Logging Build the governance layer first. Design the conversation layer last. The demo will be slightly less impressive. The production deployment will be significantly more stable. The Three Mistakes I See Most Often 1. Slot-filling designed for the happy path The default Copilot Studio pattern collects parameters one by one. It breaks the moment your flow has conditional branches — which every real enterprise workflow does. Use intent-first routing instead: identify what the user wants before collecting any parameters, then branch to a sub-flow that collects only what that variant needs. 2. Multi-agent context that gets dropped When you delegate from a router agent to a capability agent, the receiving agent needs to know who the user is and what conversation state to preserve. Native session variables don't cross agent boundaries. Build an explicit context envelope — a JSON object passed at delegation time — that carries user identity, security scope, origin topic, and return context. Your agents become stateless with respect to each other. Context travels with the conversation. 3. No async pattern for slow integrations A synchronous request that works for a REST API returning in 200ms will silently fail for a legacy system query that takes 45 seconds. Design async from day one: submit to an Azure Service Bus queue, return a correlation ID, acknowledge the user, and use proactive messaging to deliver the result when it's ready. This is the single biggest gap between demos and production deployments. A Note on Authentication — Chatbots vs. Autonomous Agents This is a distinction most articles get wrong, so it's worth being explicit. Chatbots have a human on the other end of the conversation. Authentication options here include Entra ID SSO (works in Teams and SharePoint channels where the user's identity is delegated to the agent) or client ID + secret (validates against AD but without user delegation — the agent authenticates as itself, not as the user). Autonomous agents are different in a fundamental way: there is no human in the authentication loop. The agent authenticates using the identity of the account that owns and runs it. There is no SSO because there is no interactive user session. This distinction matters because the security model shifts entirely — you are no longer protecting a user session, you are protecting a service identity. This gets more interesting when your autonomous agent connects to non-Microsoft systems. There is no universal pattern here — it depends entirely on what the external system supports: - API Key / Secret — the most common pattern for SaaS integrations. The external system issues a scoped key specifically for this integration. Store it in Azure Key Vault or encrypted Power Platform environment variables, never hardcoded in a flow. The scoping question is critical: is this a full-admin key or a least-privilege key issued only for what this agent needs? - OAuth 2.0 Client Credentials (machine-to-machine) — the agent authenticates as itself using client ID + secret against the external system's auth server and receives a bearer token. No user involved, fully automated. - Basic Auth on legacy systems — still common in enterprise environments. Credentials must live in Key Vault, not in flow variables or connector configuration in plain text. - Custom connector with encrypted connection — Power Platform manages the auth at the connector level; credentials are stored encrypted and scoped to the environment. The governing principle across all of these: the identity the agent uses to call an external system should be issued specifically for that integration, scoped to only the permissions that agent needs, stored securely (Key Vault or encrypted environment variables), and auditable — meaning the external system's logs show the agent's calls as a distinct identity, not a shared admin account that 12 other things also use. Before You Go to Production — Quick Checklist [ ] Autonomous agent's owning account/service principal is scoped to least-privilege — access only to systems the agent needs, nothing broader [ ] Non-Microsoft system credentials stored in Azure Key Vault or encrypted environment variables — never hardcoded in flows [ ] Each external system integration uses a dedicated, scoped credential — not a shared admin account [ ] External system audit logs show the agent as a distinct, identifiable caller [ ] DLP policies configured per environment — production is strict, dev is permissive [ ] Dataverse schema finalized before topic design begins [ ] Error handling designed for every integration point with user-readable failure messages [ ] Async pattern in place for any integration that may take > 10 seconds [ ] ALM pipeline configured: Dev → Test → UAT → Prod with automated solution checker [ ] Application Insights connected with custom events for key agent actions [ ] Escalation rate baseline established with alert threshold configured The One Question to Ask Before Building Anything "What does success look like in six months, and what data does the agent need access to in order to achieve it?" That answer determines your Dataverse schema, your integration architecture, your authentication model, and your DLP policy — before a single topic is created. Agents designed from that question forward are maintainable and trusted by the business. Agents designed from the conversation layer down spend their first year in retrofitting mode. Happy to go deeper on any of these layers in the comments — particularly multi-agent context passing and the async pattern, which I find generate the most questions in enterprise deployments.Copilot, Microsoft 365 & Power Platform Community call
💡 Copilot, Microsoft 365 & Power Platform weekly community call focuses on different use cases and features within the Copilot, Microsoft 365 and Power Platform - across Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, SharePoint, Power Apps and more. 👏 Looking to catch up on the latest news and updates, including cool community demos, this call is for you! 📅 On 18th of June we'll have following agenda: Copilot prompt of the week CommunityDays.org update Microsoft 365 Maturity model Latest on PnP Framework and Core SDK extension Latest on PnP PowerShell Latest on script samples Latest Copilot pro dev samples Latest on Power Platform samples Picture time with the Together Mode! Reshmee Auckloo (Avanade) – Insurance Claims Assist using AI in SharePoint with Copilot Studio Garry Trinder (Microsoft) – No API, No Problem: Building Declarative Agents with Dev Proxy David Warner (Quisitive) – Powerful Animations - VS Code Extension Updates for M365 and Power Apps 📅 Download recurrent invite from https://aka.ms/community/m365-powerplat-dev-call-invite 📞 & 📺 Join the Microsoft Teams meeting live at https://aka.ms/community/m365-powerplat-dev-call-join 👋 See you in the call! 💡 Building something cool for Microsoft 365 or Power Platform (Copilot, SharePoint, Power Apps, etc)? We are always looking for presenters - Volunteer for a community call demo at https://aka.ms/community/request/demo 📖 Resources: Previous community call recordings and demos from the Microsoft Community Learning YouTube channel at https://aka.ms/community/youtube Microsoft 365 & Power Platform samples from Microsoft and community - https://aka.ms/community/samples Microsoft 365 & Power Platform community details - https://aka.ms/community/home 🧡 Sharing is caring!Microsoft Power Platform community call - June 2026
💡 Power Platform monthly community call focuses on different extensibility options for builders, makers and developers within the Power Platform. Typically demos are from our awesome community members who showcase the art of possible within the Power Platform capabilities. 👏 Looking to catch up on the latest news and updates, including cool community demos, this call is for you! 📅 On 17th of June we'll have following agenda: Power Platform Updates & Events Latest on Power Platform samples Elliot Margot (Witivio) - Process Mining + Copilot Studio: Stop Reading Dashboards, Start Asking Questions Sailaja Mantripragada (Low Code Power) - From Prompt to a Filled-In Word Template: Automating Deep Customer Research with Copilot Studio and Agent Flows John Liu (Rapid Circle) - Using Copilot Cowork with MCP to build Power Automate flows 📅 Download recurrent invite from https://aka.ms/powerplatformcommunitycall 📞 & 📺 Join the Microsoft Teams meeting live at https://aka.ms/PowerPlatformMonthlyCall 💡 Building something cool for Microsoft 365 or Power Platform (Copilot, SharePoint, Power Apps, etc)? We are always looking for presenters - Volunteer for a community call demo at https://aka.ms/community/request/demo 👋 See you in the call! 📖 Resources: Previous community call recordings and demos from the Microsoft 365 & Power Platform community YouTube channel at https://aka.ms/community/videos Microsoft 365 & Power Platform samples from Microsoft and community - https://aka.ms/community/samples Microsoft 365 & Power Platform community details - https://aka.ms/community/homeCopilot, Microsoft 365 & Power Platform product updates call
💡Copilot, Microsoft 365 & Power Platform product updates call concentrates on the different use cases and features within the Microsoft 365 and in Power Platform. Call includes topics like Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, Microsoft Teams, Power Platform, Microsoft Graph, Microsoft Viva, Microsoft Search, Microsoft Lists, SharePoint, Power Automate, Power Apps and more. 👏 Weekly Tuesday call is for all community members to see Microsoft PMs, engineering and Cloud Advocates showcasing the art of possible with Microsoft 365 and Power Platform. 📅 On the 16th of June we'll have following agenda: News and updates from Microsoft Together mode group photo Vesa Juvonen – How to share and reuse SharePoint Skills - Introducing open-source SharePoint Skills Sahil Baid – Introduction to List Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot Vesa Juvonen & Bert Jansen – Introduction to SPFx Copilot Apps 📞 & 📺 Join the Microsoft Teams meeting live at https://aka.ms/community/ms-speakers-call-join 🗓️ Download recurrent invite for this weekly call from https://aka.ms/community/ms-speakers-call-invite 👋 See you in the call! 💡 Building something cool for Microsoft 365 or Power Platform (Copilot, SharePoint, Power Apps, etc)? We are always looking for presenters - Volunteer for a community call demo at https://aka.ms/community/request/demo 📖 Resources: Previous community call recordings and demos from the Microsoft Community Learning YouTube channel at https://aka.ms/community/youtube Microsoft 365 & Power Platform samples from Microsoft and community - https://aka.ms/community/samples Microsoft 365 & Power Platform community details - https://aka.ms/community/home 🧡 Sharing is caring!Copilot, Microsoft 365 & Power Platform Community call
💡 Copilot, Microsoft 365 & Power Platform Development bi-weekly community call focuses on different use cases and features within the Microsoft 365 and Power Platform - across Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, SharePoint, Power Apps and more. Demos in this call are presented by the community members. 👏 Looking to catch up on the latest news and updates, including cool community demos, this call is for you! 📅 On 11th of June we'll have following agenda: Latest on SharePoint Framework (SPFx) Latest on Copilot prompt of the week PnPjs CLI for Microsoft 365 Dev Proxy Reusable Controls for SPFx SPFx Toolkit VS Code extension PnP Search Solution Demos this time Mike Fortgens (Ichicraft) – Personalized SharePoint pages with configurable widgets Vipul Jain (Bosch Global Software Technologies) – Creating Smart Export to PDF in SharePoint Online using SPFx João Mendes (Kuehne & Nagel) & Hugo Bernier – Creating a custom events web part with React and SharePoint Framework (SPFx) 📅 Download recurrent invite from https://aka.ms/community/m365-powerplat-dev-call-invite 📞 & 📺 Join the Microsoft Teams meeting live at https://aka.ms/community/m365-powerplat-dev-call-join 💡 Building something cool for Microsoft 365 or Power Platform (Copilot, SharePoint, Power Apps, etc)? We are always looking for presenters - Volunteer for a community call demo at https://aka.ms/community/request/demo 👋 See you in the call! 📖 Resources: Previous community call recordings and demos from the Microsoft Community Learning YouTube channel at https://aka.ms/community/youtube Microsoft 365 & Power Platform samples from Microsoft and community - https://aka.ms/community/samples Microsoft 365 & Power Platform community details - https://aka.ms/community/home 🧡 Sharing is caring!Copilot, Microsoft 365 & Power Platform product updates call
💡Copilot, Microsoft 365 & Power Platform product updates call concentrates on the different use cases and features within the Microsoft 365 and in Power Platform. Call includes topics like Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, Microsoft Teams, Power Platform, Microsoft Graph, Microsoft Viva, Microsoft Search, Microsoft Lists, SharePoint, Power Automate, Power Apps and more. 👏 Weekly Tuesday call is for all community members to see Microsoft PMs, engineering and Cloud Advocates showcasing the art of possible with Microsoft 365 and Power Platform. 📅 On the 9th of June we'll have following agenda: News and updates from Microsoft Together mode group photo Vishal Anil – Announcing the Communicator App in Microsoft Teams Steve Pucelik – From Versions to Insights: AI-Powered Document Intelligence in SharePoint Embedded Anshul Jethwani & Harish Swaminathan – Introduction to 8 new Agent Builder templates for Microsoft 365 Copilot 📞 & 📺 Join the Microsoft Teams meeting live at https://aka.ms/community/ms-speakers-call-join 🗓️ Download recurrent invite for this weekly call from https://aka.ms/community/ms-speakers-call-invite 👋 See you in the call! 💡 Building something cool for Microsoft 365 or Power Platform (Copilot, SharePoint, Power Apps, etc)? We are always looking for presenters - Volunteer for a community call demo at https://aka.ms/community/request/demo 📖 Resources: Previous community call recordings and demos from the Microsoft Community Learning YouTube channel at https://aka.ms/community/youtube Microsoft 365 & Power Platform samples from Microsoft and community - https://aka.ms/community/samples Microsoft 365 & Power Platform community details - https://aka.ms/community/home 🧡 Sharing is caring!
