Microsoft is working on two new Copilot Studio certifications, and they target very different audiences. In this video, I break down the public info available today, so you can understand what’s coming and how to prepare.
✅ Copilot Studio Agent Maker (AB-610): Built for makers, business users, and IT pros creating low-code agents in Copilot Studio.
✅ Copilot Studio Agent Developer (AB-620): Built for developers and advanced makers building enterprise-grade agent solutions, including integrations and advanced capabilities.
I walk through what Microsoft has shared so far, including the target audience and the skills measured for each exam!
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Video Summary
- Two new Copilot Studio certifications are coming: AB‑610 Agent Maker and AB‑620 Agent Developer. They’re not live yet, but Microsoft is far enough along that we’ll likely see them in the next 2–3 months.
- Agent Maker (AB‑610) targets business users, subject‑matter experts, and low‑code builders who want to create agents using Copilot Studio’s full experience. Expect skills around flows, topics, grounding with data, and best practices — though some items (like autonomous agents and parent/child orchestration) feel a bit advanced for “makers.”
- Agent Developer (AB‑620) is for professional developers and advanced makers building enterprise-grade solutions. It dives into Microsoft Foundry, MCP, custom connectors, API integrations, Fabric data, computer use, multi‑agent systems, and advanced ALM — the real “pro dev” track.
- Key difference between the two: the Maker exam sticks to common data sources (SharePoint, OneDrive, websites, Dataverse), while the Developer exam jumps into enterprise systems like SAP, ServiceNow, Azure AI Search, and cross‑platform model integrations. Developer skills also require GenAI knowledge, integration patterns, and ALM.
- Timeline looks soon: Microsoft has already started recruiting item writers, with alpha reviews slated for early February 2026 — a strong sign the exams are close to release. In the meantime, you can already earn Copilot Studio Applied Skills today.
For more information, read the transcript blog below, or watch the video above!
Transcript
It’s no secret that 2026 will be all about AI agents, and with Copilot Studio being the primary tool for building AI in 2026, many people are asking: Is there a certification for it? Well, I have good news for you because soon the answer will be yes. And if you care about staying relevant and showcasing your agent‑making skills, this video is for you. Microsoft recently made public that they are working on not one but two different certifications for Copilot Studio, and they are for different audiences. The first one is a Copilot Studio Agent Maker certification, and the second one is a Copilot Studio Agent Developer certification. Now, those are not fully announced yet, so they’re not in beta, you cannot take them today, and a few things might still change, but as you’ll see throughout the video, we are really far along. So, in this video, we’re going to cover everything you need to know about them: the skills measured, the detailed target audience, and really everything you need to know to start getting ready for them.
Let’s get started by covering the Copilot Studio Agent Maker certification, which should be exam number AB‑610. Now, I have to say, just from the name of it, I’m really a big fan of it because this reminds me of the Power Platform App Maker certifications. For those of you who remember—rest in peace, exam number PL‑100—I still miss you, and I think it should have never been cancelled, but it’s great to see Microsoft focusing on makers again.
Let’s start by covering the target audience. Microsoft says this certification is targeted towards makers who build low‑code custom agents with the full experience of Copilot Studio. They typically work as a subject matter expert, business user, and even an IT professional focused on creating agentic AI solutions for organizations. Again, this seems to be aimed at your makers and not at consultants or developers who really build those solutions all day long.
Now, as a candidate for this certification, Microsoft says that you need to be able to understand agent requirements, create and define agents, create agent flows, test and validate agents, implement agent best practices, and integrate agents with data, and, of course, build instructions. Now, a few highlights in here: Create agent flows, so we will need some Microsoft Power Automate knowledge, and it’s really important when you create a solution, so I’m happy to see that in there. And we also have, you know, implement best practices, which is really, really vague for an exam, but we’ll cover more details in just a minute.
And now, as an agent maker, you need to be able to create agents or experiences that are conversational and autonomous, they are grounded with data, perform actions, and connect to Microsoft 365 Copilot. I will say that this so far makes sense. The only thing that I’m a bit surprised about is the autonomous agents part. I feel like a maker would not really create an autonomous agent, especially with the recent security breaches that we have seen around that. So I really see that autonomous part more towards a developer or functional consultant role, as Microsoft puts it, not an agent maker, but that’s what Microsoft has there so far.
If we look at the names of the official skills measured so far, Microsoft has split the certification into three main buckets: Create a Copilot Studio agent, use topics and tools in Copilot Studio, and deploy and monitor agents. But I told you we’re pretty far along; we can even go deeper into detail. So, to do that, I opened up my browser over here, and I’m getting this information because Microsoft and the amazing Liberty Munson put out a blueprinting survey opportunity. And this is all public information. This is where Microsoft gets the community’s opinion on what the most important things are that should be covered in the exam, the weighting for each one of them, and so on.
But the really cool thing about when we get those is that we can extract a lot of information. We covered a lot of it here already in the slides, but a few things that I want to add before we go into the skills measured: You see here they have “you collaborate with,” and then you have the M365 admin, Power Platform admin, Copilot admin, Copilot Studio Agent Developer—the other certification we’ll talk about in a few minutes—Copilot Studio admin, Agentic AI Business Solutions Architect, which is exam number AB‑100 (this just went out of beta today as I’m recording this, so let’s say start of January for those of you watching it later), and Copilot Studio Architect.
Now, why I’m saying this is interesting is because, you know, this is already a certification, this is a certification, this is a certification. Are we going to get certifications for the rest of them? I would love a Power Platform admin certification. I think that would be awesome. A Copilot admin certification—that would be amazing. So maybe those are roles that Microsoft defined, and we might get certifications for them in the future. I would absolutely love that.
But for now, let’s go back to our Agent Maker certification. What I want you to focus on here now is really the side on the left. So the way that we have it split, we have our big skill measured—the one that has the percentage—create agents in Copilot Studio. Then we have sub‑skills: design Copilot Studio agents, create an agent, and configure agent capabilities. And for each one of them, Microsoft goes really deep into the details.
So, for design Copilot Studio agents, you need to be able to recommend Copilot Studio agent components, design autonomous agents, differentiate the types of agents, including declarative, managed, and custom, and design parent‑child agent orchestration in Copilot Studio. Now I’ll be honest: For some of the,m I really agree with those, but I feel like makers creating parent‑child agent orchestration or autonomous agents—for me, that goes beyond the agent maker role and goes more into that consultant or developer role, but that’s just my opinion on it.
Then let’s go over to create an agent. You need to be able to create an agent using a template, create and configure an agent manually, create a declarative agent, and enhance an agent created from the light experience. Now, this is really funny because Microsoft renamed the agent builder to Copilot Studio Light, which is what is referenced here in September/October 2025, but they already renamed it from that. You know, Copilot—Microsoft marketing can’t even keep up with their own renames. It’s now called the agent builder experience in Microsoft 365 Copilot. Wow, what a name. I’m sure by the time the exam is live, this will get updated, but it’s still funny to see.
Then, for our final pillar, we have configured agent capabilities: Modify agent purpose and instruction—this makes sense. Configure knowledge sources, including uploaded data, SharePoint, OneDrive, websites, and Dataverse. Now I’ll pause here a second because right now it seems that this certification is only focused on your most common data sources: uploaded data, SharePoint, OneDrive, public websites, and Dataverse. This will be really important when we talk about the developer certification soon and the differences with that one.
But let’s move on. Add suggested prompts, configure agents to work autonomously, configure generative AI settings, and configure an agent to use child agents. Now look, I think most of this is awesome except the autonomous and configure agent to use child agents. I think for me that’s beyond the agent maker’s scope. And by the way, if you agree with me or disagree, please let me know in the comments below. And if you find videos like this useful and you want to keep up with Microsoft credentials, make sure you like the video and subscribe to the channel so you’re the first to know about them.
Okay, let’s move over to the next page now, over here and let’s take a look at the next skills: use topics and tools in Copilot Studio. Well, first of all, create and manage topics. Here, the sub‑skill: evaluate and update system topics—really important. Create custom topics, add business logic to topics, so your conditions, things like that. Add agent flows to topics, configure agent responses, and add tools to topics. So not only agent flows, but you might want to call a prompt in the AI builder as an example.
Configure advanced agent responses with custom prompts—well, this is the one that I just mentioned, but you really need to know all the different tools. I’m surprised they don’t have—okay, here it is: add tools to an agent, add agent flows to an agent, add connectors to an agent, which is the one that I was finding missing. Create and add custom prompts to an agent. So, honestly, a bit more of a repetition here. I guess you add them directly in the topic, while this, you add them at the agent level, and this can of course be very different, whether you have orchestration on or off, which I’m sure will be a big part of the exam.
But now, create and monitor agent flows. So may include, but is not limited to: create an agent flow, configure actions and connectors, monitor agent flows, and describe input and output parameters. So this is a lot of Power Automate, let’s be honest. And we all know that the real advantage of an agent over a chatbot is that agents are able to do things. How can they do things? Using Power Automate agent flows. So being proficient in Power Automate will be really important for this certification, as well as the few connectors that we have in agent flows that we do not have in Power Automate, like the advanced approvals, for example. I’m sure it will be a big part of this exam.
Now, moving on to the last one: deploy and monitor agents. So: deploy to Microsoft channels and the demo website. This is really interesting because to deploy it to the demo website, you actually need to have an anonymous agent, which, in my opinion, goes beyond the role of this certification. It’s not what a maker should do. Makers create agents for M365 Copilot chat and Teams, things like that, not necessarily the public one for the demo website.
But anyway, manage connections, share an agent, and identify different channel deployment requirements, including authentication. So a lot of stuff to know, a lot of it makes sense. I’m not sure that deploying to non‑Microsoft channels should be there, but it’s in there right now. Now, monitoring agents: evaluate agent performance and configure agent savings. I love that they put the agent savings in there. It’s just a small feature. Basically, for every time the agent answers a question, you can put a dollar amount, and at the end of the month, you have a nice big number to show to your boss on how much your company saved. It’s something Microsoft is really pushing, so I’m not surprised they added it in the exam, but it’s such a small feature.
Finally, manage Copilot Studio agents to environments: create a solution, export and import agents by using solutions, and add existing agents to a solution. Now, I’ll be honest: for me, I don’t think I’m saying that that is important. Don’t get me wrong—I think consultants should know that, developers should know that—but I’m not sure that your average agent maker creates stuff that gets deployed into solutions or that needs ALM and things like that. So I’m not sure how much agent makers need to know that or have access to creating solutions and things like that. For me, this is a bit beyond what an agent maker should know and goes more into that consultant or developer role, but Microsoft has it in here for now. So I would like to have this at the “design” or “describe” verb instead of “create, export, and manage,” but this is what Microsoft has for now.
So please again, let me know what you think about this certification. So far, the Agent Maker—other than a few things—I really love it. But with the Agent Maker covered, it’s time to switch over to the Copilot Studio Agent Developer certification, which should be exam number AB‑620. This certification is targeted towards professional developers and advanced makers who build, extend, and integrate custom agents for enterprise‑grade solutions. They typically work as IT application developers, consultants, or ISV partners focused on creating scalable AI solutions for organizations or customers. So, as you can see, this is really that next‑level certification for developers that all they do is build agents all day long—that is their day job.
As a candidate for this certification, you’re able to integrate agents with Microsoft Foundry. So we’re going even beyond Copilot Studio—we’re talking Microsoft Foundry here, which is interesting. You’re also able to integrate agents with model context protocol servers or MCP, integrate agents with custom connectors, integrate agents with APIs, integrate agents with Microsoft Fabric, automate tasks with computer use, and integrate agents with connectors. So wow, as you can see, we’re talking custom connectors, we’re talking computer use in Copilot Studio, we’re really taking our knowledge to the next level.
As a Copilot Studio Agent Developer, you’re also in charge of creating multi‑agent solutions. Again, this is where I think that a multi‑agent solution should fit, not in the maker one. You need to be able to create agents with enterprise knowledge sources like ServiceNow, SAP, and more. And this is where I was saying before that remember, the Agent Maker seemed to only focus on SharePoint, OneDrive, public websites, Dataverse, things like that, where the developer—we’re talking third‑party tools. So again, we’re taking our knowledge to the next level.
You also create advanced agent topics and tools, computer use agents, and agents that perform advanced actions via APIs. So, for me, this fits perfectly with the Copilot Studio Agent Developer role. If we go to the skills measured and we talk again about what the three buckets for this one are as well: we have plan and configure agent solutions, integrate and extend Copilot Studio agents, as well as test and manage agents.
So let’s go back in the browser and check out the detailed list for this exam as well. So here we’re back on a very similar page, but for a blueprinting survey for the Agent Developer certification. A few things—again, we covered a lot of this already. A few things that I want to show you: new role here, Microsoft Foundry Administrator, which is interesting—and a few things you should be familiar with: Power Fx, Dataverse, Power Platform environments and components, Microsoft Foundry, adaptive cards—all things that for me make sense as a Copilot Studio dev.
Now, for the prerequisites we have—wow, look at this—this is so much more advanced: intermediate knowledge of generative AI concepts such as models, orchestration, retrieval‑augmented generation, model context protocol, agent‑to‑agent protocol, and more. So as you can see, you really need to have that GenAI concept knowledge, not only Copilot Studio. Prompt engineering experience, of course, experience with REST APIs and integration patterns,and familiarity with core Microsoft cloud platforms.
This is the first time that we see that exam number for the Copilot Studio Agent Maker—Copilot Studio Agent Maker AB‑610 knowledge and skills. Now, this is really important that they put this inside the prerequisites because I do wonder: Will Microsoft make the Copilot Studio Agent Maker a prerequisite for the Agent Developer, or do they just put it here as a recommendation, like “Hey, make sure you have the Agent Maker skills before you go to become a dev”? Or will they make it official, where you actually need to pass the Agent Maker before you can get the Developer certification? So that will remain to be seen.
So let’s go and now take a look at the details here. Plan and configure agent solutions: the sub‑skills inside: plan an agent solution, create and monitor agent flows, configure topics—and those are the three. Now may include but is not limited to: plan integrations—I’ll zoom in even a bit more—plan integration with enterprise systems, plan identity strategy, plan channels and deployment, plan responsible AI strategy, evaluate security and governance considerations—really important—plan reusable agent components, and design agents for internal and external audiences. You see, this is really at the “plan and design” verb, but a lot of important stuff is in here.
Now, create an agent for creating and monitoring agent flows: create an agent flow, create a human‑in‑the‑loop agent flow. Now, not sure how I feel about this name, but that’s how Microsoft names them. Things such as the advanced approvals—they are in the human‑in‑the‑loop connector category, so you need to know those. Configure actions and connectors, monitor agent flows, describe input and output parameters, and implement error handling in agent flows.
For me, I’ll be honest, I feel like the Agent Maker one and Developer one should be the same because even a maker needs to know how to implement error handling. So they only added a few extra things in here, but yeah, I feel like, you know, error handling could have been in the Agent Maker as well.
Now configure topics: add agent flows to a topic, configure agent response formatting, add tools to a topic, configure agent advanced responses with custom prompts, configure agent responses with custom knowledge sources—so again, we’re going beyond those built‑in knowledge sources; we’re going to custom knowledge sources for this certification. Configure advanced agent responses with API and send HTTP requests, configure the generative answers node, configure adaptive cards, and manage variables. We didn’t have managed variables in the previous certification, the Agent Maker, but I definitely think you need to know how to do it now.
Okay, let’s move over to the next page. Next, we haveto integrate and extend Copilot Studio agents: connect to enterprise knowledge sources, connect to Copilot connectors—which by the way is the new name for Graph connectors—connect to Power Platform connectors, and connect to Azure AI Search. Again, we’re moving beyond just M365; we’re moving to systems outside the Microsoft ecosystem.
Even add tools to an agent, configure and monitor computer use for an agent, configure model context protocol tools, add a tool using an existing custom connector, and add REST APIs to an agent. So again, I think those are all awesome. Configure multi‑agent collaboration from Copilot Studio—this is where it gets interesting. Design multi‑agent solutions in Copilot Studio and integrate a Microsoft Foundry agent. I’m surprised that for this certification we’re going to custom agents in Microsoft Foundry. I do think it’s important; I do wonder if it’s different roles, but having that knowledge and knowing when to pick Foundry versus Copilot Studio—definitely important.
Integrate an existing Copilot Studio agent, integrate to Microsoft Fabric data agent—so really interesting. You need to have some Fabric knowledge as well. Create a multi‑agent solution by using the agent‑to‑agent protocol. So this is why they said before you need to know that protocol—you need to know what it is and how to use it.
Now, integrate agents with Azure: configure generative answers using Azure AI Search with Microsoft Foundry—again, this is very useful for your knowledge outside of Microsoft 365. Configure custom prompts to use the Microsoft Foundry model catalogue—so what if you want to use Groq, for example? What if you want to use something outside OpenAI or Anthropic? You have to go to the Foundry. So this is interesting. And monitor agents with Application Insights—really interesting. I love it.
Finally, for test and manage agents, you need to evaluate agent performance, you need to be able to create a test set, choose an evaluation method, and review test results. So this is something that Microsoft announced at the Power Platform Community Conference 2025, so I love that this is in here. I would have loved to see some of them in the Maker exam as well, but I love that it’s in the certification—definitely important.
And implement application lifecycle management for Copilot Studio agents—again, very important for developers. Create a solution, add existing agents to a solution, create and use environment variables, and implement and extend Power Platform pipelines. Remember when I said for the Maker one, they shouldn’t have to deal with solutions other than maybe be aware of them, but they shouldn’t handle them? This is where, for me at least, this topic should be, because developers manage solutions—makers do not.
But this is it for the skills measured inside the Copilot Studio Developer exam. Now with the details covered, I really want to hear from you in the comments below. What do you think about those two new certifications? Do you think they are interesting for what people need today, or do you think Copilot Studio is still marketing‑focused and most enterprises are not using it yet? And if you care about them, what do you think about the skills covered? I shared with you my opinion; I want to hear back from you.
But my personal take is that I love the Copilot Studio Agent Maker. I’m going to take that one. But since I’m not a dev, I don’t think I’ll go for the Copilot Studio Agent Developer. I feel like, you know, I can do about 80% of it, but there’s definitely a 20% which I never touched. But never say never.
Some of you are probably really excited, and you’re wondering when those are coming out. Honestly, I think it’s sooner rather than later, because just a few hours before recording this video, there was a LinkedIn post from a vendor which talked about the exams and was already recruiting to write the questions. And from what I see in that post, it seems that the review for at least the alpha version of the questions will be done on February 2nd, 2026.
So, of course, there’s a lot of work going on between the alpha version and the actual exam going live—you know, there’s a lot of work in there—but Microsoft is so far along. I’m like 95% sure those exams will go live. Well, less sure, but still pretty sure we’ll see them in the next two or three months. Maybe Microsoft Build—I don’t think we have the dates for that yet; it’s usually May—but I would really like to see them, you know, in March, April timeframe.
But I even have some even more great news for you, because if you want to get a Copilot Studio credential today, Microsoft Copilot Studio Applied Skills are available today. So you don’t have to wait. And on the screen right now, you actually have a link to one of my Pluralsight courses, which covers how to get started creating a Copilot Studio agent, as well as a video where you can learn more about the APL, the “Create a Microsoft Copilot Studio Agent.” I hope I’ll see you in that video, and I’m looking forward to reading your comments on those two new certifications.
