AI Sales Engagement, Part 2: Building a Copilot Workflow with Dynamics 365 Sales

This article is the second in our AI Sales Engagement series exploring how AI is transforming modern sales engagement.

In Part 1, we introduced the concept of AI Sales Engagement and showed how Microsoft Copilot Studio, Power Automate, and Dynamics 365 Sales form the foundation for a smarter, connected sales process.

In Part 2, we’ll bring those ideas to life through a practical example. We will build a Copilot-powered workflow that captures leads, automates follow-up, and feeds those insights directly into Dynamics 365 Sales.

If you missed the first article, you can read AI Sales Engagement, Part 1: Transforming the Modern Sales Process

AI Sales Engagement Workflow refers to the automated steps that connect a customer conversation to your CRM system using tools like Copilot Studio, Power Automate, and Dynamics 365 Sales.

It ensures customer input is captured cleanly, routed correctly, and turned into actionable sales data with minimal work. In this article, we show how these tools work together to create a consistent, guided experience for both customers and sales teams.

Streamlining Sales Processes with Copilot Studio

For this demonstration, we’ll use a fictitious company named Fabrikam Ironworks, a B2C manufacturer of custom iron doors, gates, and railings. Their products come in multiple styles (Classic, Traditional, and Modern) and each order is fully customized to the customer’s exact measurements.

Fabrikam engages customers in two primary ways: online sales and in-home consultations. They want to offer online shoppers the same personalized, high-quality experience that customers receive from their in-person design specialists.

This scenario illustrates how modern sales engagement systems can support that goal.

Their field sales team also needs help. These reps spend the day visiting customer homes and often lack quick access to the right brochures, product details, and follow-up materials needed to close the sale.

The solution is to create a custom Copilot-powered chatbot that can hold natural conversations, collect key details, understand a user’s intent, and automatically send a personalized email with the correct product brochure attached.

It may sound complex, but with Microsoft Copilot Studio the process is surprisingly straightforward.

We’ll call this solution the Lead Catcher.

This interactive experience delivers immediate value to customers by sending a personalized email with a product-specific brochure, while also capturing contact information and buying signals that flow directly into Dynamics 365 Sales for follow-up.

For a deeper view into how these improvements align to a modern revenue engine, see our Smarter Systems Better Sales framework, which outlines the key system, process, and data foundations needed to support AI-driven sales engagement.

Lead Catcher: Designing the Workflow

To build the Lead Catcher, we’ll break the work into a few clear, repeatable steps that reflect how Copilot Studio, Power Automate, and Dynamics 365 Sales work together. These steps form the foundation for a guided, AI-supported customer experience that feels natural to the user and efficient for your sales team.

Here’s how those steps come together inside Copilot Studio and Dynamics 365 Sales to create a connected experience:

Step 1 — Copilot Studio: Create the Copilot

The first step is to create a new copilot inside Copilot Studio. This serves as the foundation for the customer experience. You’ll define the copilot’s purpose, select where it will be hosted (such as on a website or inside Microsoft Teams), and configure the basic settings that control how it greets users and begins the conversation.

This step establishes the “container” for everything that follows.

Step 2 — Topics: Build the Guided Conversation

Next, you’ll design the guided conversation using Topics. Topics allow Copilot Studio to understand what the user wants, ask follow-up questions, capture details like product preferences or contact information, and guide the user through a structured but natural dialogue.

This is where you map out the logic that helps the copilot understand intent and gather the right data before triggering any automation.

Step 3 — Power Automate: Trigger the Workflow

Once the copilot collects the required information, Power Automate handles the heavy lifting. Here, the captured data flows into an automated workflow that can create a lead in Dynamics 365 Sales, send an email, route a task, or update records.

This step connects the user conversation to your operational systems, eliminating manual data entry and ensuring fast, consistent follow-up.

Step 4 — Engage Customer: Confirm Next Steps

With the workflow triggered, the copilot closes the loop by confirming next steps with the customer. This could include sending a personalized email with the correct brochure attached, summarizing what was discussed, or providing a clear call-to-action.

This final step reinforces confidence, provides immediate value to the user, and ensures the sales team receives clean, actionable data inside Dynamics 365 Sales.

How Conversation Topics Work in Copilot Studio

Each block in this diagram represents a Topic within Copilot Studio; an individual part of the conversation where Copilot collects input, asks follow-up questions, or performs an action.

For the Lead Catcher, our conversation uses the following Topics:

• Greeting: Welcomes the user, sets expectations, and guides them into the conversation.

  
  

• Product Interest: Captures which product the customer is interested in, including style, size, and category.

  
  

• Buying Intent: Identifies whether the customer is ready to buy or simply exploring. This determines the follow-up path.

  
  

• CRM Workflow: Passes all captured details to Power Automate so a lead can be created and processed.

  
  

• Confirmation: Wraps up the interaction and confirms that the requested information has been sent.

Once your planning and work breakdown are complete (and once your licensing is in place) go to https://copilotstudio.microsoft.com and sign in.

After logging in, select + New copilot as shown below.

Now create Topics that match your planned conversation flow. Topics can start a conversation on their own, or they can be chained together to form a guided, modular experience.

In the Lead Catcher, each Topic flows naturally into the next. One Topic hands the user to the next topic until the full conversation is complete.

Using Entities to Capture Customer Input

In addition to Topics, Entities play an important role in Copilot Studio. Entities act as variables that store information the user provides during the conversation so it can be reused later in the workflow.

In the Lead Catcher, we use Entities to capture the customer’s preferred Product Type (Door, Gate, or Railing) and Product Style (Modern, Traditional, or Classical).

These values are passed to Power Automate and ultimately stored inside Dynamics 365 Sales. The screenshot below shows the definition for the ProductStyle entity.

The next screenshot illustrates how this Entity is used inside the Product Selection topic. When the user selects a product type or types a free-form description, the copilot recognizes the intent and maps it to the correct Entity value.

Note: With generative AI, Copilot Studio can interpret natural language in many forms—whether a user selects Door from a menu or types a full phrase like “I’m looking for a modern door.” Both inputs resolve to the same Entity value.

Adding Branching Logic for Personalized Responses

Once your Entities are defined, the next step is to add branching logic so the copilot can adapt the conversation based on what the customer selects.

Branching rules help Copilot Studio choose the right follow-up Topic for each product type, ensuring the dialogue feels natural, relevant, and personalized.

For example, if a customer indicates interest in a Door, the copilot routes them to the Door-specific Topic. If they select Gate or Railing, the conversation flows down those paths instead. Each branch can ask different follow-up questions, collect product-specific details, or prepare different content for the customer.

This approach keeps the experience simple for the user while ensuring your sales team receives clean, structured data. Instead of a single generic workflow, the system responds intelligently to the customer’s intent and guides them to the right outcome.

Connecting Copilot Studio to Power Automate

Once the copilot has guided the user through the conversation and captured all required details, the next step is to connect the process to Power Automate.

This is where the conversation transitions into real operational work—creating a lead, sending an email, or triggering any downstream automation your sales process requires.

Inside the CRM Workflow Topic, add a new node, choose Call an Action, and then select Create a flow.

This automatically launches Power Automate and builds a flow template that includes the Start and End nodes for your process.

By selecting the first node in the flow, you can see the variables being passed in from Copilot Studio—these include the Entity values you captured earlier, along with any other conversation details. These variables form the data foundation for whatever automation you choose to build next.

This is also where the power of the Microsoft ecosystem becomes clear. The handoff from Copilot Studio to Power Automate is seamless, consistent, and requires no custom integration work.

The copilot collects the data, Power Automate processes it, and Dynamics 365 Sales receives it creating a connected workflow with far less manual effort than traditional sales processes.

Creating a Lead and Sending Personalized Emails in Dynamics 365 Sales

Before we can deliver a personalized email or create a new Lead record, we need to take the data captured by the copilot and turn it into structured information that Dynamics 365 Sales can use.

This is where Power Automate completes the handoff—transforming the customer’s selections into clean, reliable data and automating the follow-up steps that would normally require manual effort from a sales rep.

Inside Power Automate, we use the Microsoft Dataverse connector to send data directly into Dynamics 365 Sales. Earlier in the conversation, the copilot captured the customer’s full name as a single value.

Dynamics, however, stores First Name and Last Name separately. The screenshot below shows how we use calculation nodes to split and clean this data before creating the Lead record.

Once the data is structured correctly, Power Automate creates a new Lead in Dynamics 365 Sales using all of the information captured by the copilot: product type, style preference, name, buying intent, and any additional details from the conversation.

Because this data is collected through guided prompts, it contains richer context than a traditional web form, giving your sales team a clearer picture of what the customer wants.

Power Automate then selects the correct email template based on the user’s product and style choices.

This allows the system to send a personalized email instantly, complete with the appropriate product brochure attached. Instead of receiving a generic follow-up, customers get information tailored to their exact preferences.

The screen above shows the newly created Lead—Mike Johnson—along with the personalized email and product-specific attachment generated by the workflow.

Why Copilot Studio + Dynamics 365 Sales Are Better Together

When Copilot Studio is paired with Power Automate and Dynamics 365 Sales, the result is a unified, AI-supported workflow that transforms how teams engage customers.

Copilot Studio handles the natural conversation and data capture, Power Automate orchestrates the real-time steps, and Dynamics 365 Sales converts those insights into actionable leads.

This combination streamlines processes that once required multiple disconnected tools. It reduces manual effort, improves data quality, and gives sellers a clearer picture of customer intent, all while providing buyers with faster, more personalized interactions.

Together, these Microsoft technologies help sales teams focus on what matters most: meaningful conversations and follow-up, not administrative work.

That’s the heart of AI Sales Engagement.

For a broader look at how these capabilities fit into the larger shift toward AI-assisted business systems, explore our article on the true potential of the AI revolution.

At Optrua, we help organizations design and optimize connected workflows like this by aligning CRM, AI, and automation into a system that scales with the business. If you’re exploring how to bring these capabilities into your Dynamics 365 Sales environment, our Optrua Care Plan offers a structured way to evolve your solution over time.

What will you build with Copilot Studio?

Frequently Asked Questions

How does Copilot Studio connect to Dynamics 365 Sales?

Copilot Studio passes customer input to Power Automate, which then maps that data into fields that Dynamics 365 Sales uses to create a new lead. This ensures the CRM receives clean, structured information that aligns with your sales process.

Do I need custom code to build a workflow like this?

No. Copilot Studio and Power Automate are designed for low-code automation. Most organizations can build guided conversations, routing logic, and CRM workflows using out-of-the-box tools without traditional development.

What types of data can a Copilot capture from a customer conversation?

Copilot Studio can capture structured inputs such as product selections, style preferences, buying intent, names, and email addresses. It can also interpret natural language responses and map them to predefined entities through AI-based intent recognition.

Can Power Automate personalize follow-up emails?

Yes. Power Automate can choose the correct template based on customer selections and send a personalized email with product-specific attachments. This provides customers with relevant information immediately after the conversation.

About the Author

Ryan Redmond is the founder and CEO of Optrua, where he leads CRM, AI, and Power Platform transformation projects for growing B2B organizations. With more than twenty years of experience designing sales systems and revenue processes, Ryan specializes in helping teams align technology, workflows, and data into a unified, scalable revenue engine.

His approach focuses on practical execution — using Dynamics 365 Sales, Dataverse, Copilot Studio, and Power Automate to streamline work, reduce friction, and give leaders the clarity they need to guide the business forward. Through the Optrua Care Plan, he supports organizations with ongoing optimization, AI readiness, and continuous system improvement.

Connect with Ryan on LinkedIn.