How we built a Copilot agent that closes out installation jobs

Finished on site. Still open in the office.

When an engineer finishes a solar, battery or heat pump install, the kit works but the job isn’t closed. The serial numbers are in photos on their phone. The commissioning form is in the van or somewhere in the job folder. Certificates turn up by email over the following days.

Then the office types the same details again and again. It checks the permissions already in place, then completes the registrations and notifications still due. A qualifying G98 installation can be notified to the network operator after installation, while a G99 installation needs the network operator’s approval beforehand.

The checklist records the deadline that applies to each item: the MCS registration, the building regulations notification, the warranty registrations and the customer’s handover pack. For an eligible heat pump funded by the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, it also tracks the voucher redemption once the MCS certificate is available.

The typing isn’t all of it. The office also has to work out what is missing and chase it. A job can look finished on the schedule while its paperwork waits for one serial number.

It works where the team already works.

We built the agent in Copilot Studio, inside the installer’s own Microsoft 365. It starts from the SharePoint folder each job already has. When the engineer uploads the plate photos and the commissioning form, the agent reads them once and fills in one job record, with a link from every value back to the photo or page it came from.

Power Automate runs the steps around it. Questions to engineers go out by Outlook, the approval happens in Teams, and the finished files go back into the job folder. The team kept using Outlook, Teams and SharePoint, and we trained them on the new steps.

The agent only has access to the job folders, the mailbox and the actions it needs. Being inside Microsoft 365 doesn’t mean it can see everything in Microsoft 365.

The photo and the form disagree. So it asks.

Take a battery whose serial plate says 40917 while the commissioning form says 40971.

Copying either number into every certificate and warranty would spread the mistake. So the agent marks that one detail as open, puts both readings side by side and carries on with the rest of the job.

It sends the engineer a short email asking which number is right. The reply lands on the same job, the record updates, and the office can see what changed and who confirmed it.

We built the checks around the firm’s own close-out list. A form that is there but unsigned, or a photo too blurred to read, counts as missing.

A person approves the paperwork before anything is submitted.

Once every detail is checked, the agent fills the firm’s own templates: a sheet for each portal, with the details in the order the portal asks for them, and a draft of the customer’s handover pack with the warranties and manuals.

A named person in the office approves the portal entries and the customer paperwork in Teams, with everything attached. They approve it or send it back with a note. If a detail changes after approval, it comes back for another look.

A person submits each entry using the prepared details. That person is authorised to submit for the firm, and records each reference number on the job. Once the issued certificates and references are added, the handover pack is sent to the customer.

1. Prepare. Fill each portal sheet and the handover pack from the checked record.
2. Approve. One named person approves the portal entries and customer paperwork in Teams, or sends them back with a note.
3. Submit and record. An authorised person submits each entry and saves the reference number to the job.

Every open job shows what it is waiting for.

The office can see each job’s status: waiting for details from site, ready for approval, approved, submitted and waiting for reference numbers, or complete. A job is complete once its references are recorded and the customer’s handover pack has been sent. Each open item shows who it is with and when they were last asked.

Reminders follow the firm’s own deadlines, set once by the office rather than guessed by the AI. Requests for missing certificates go to the person responsible for obtaining them. A technical question goes to someone who can answer it.

If an email fails to send or a file won’t open, the item stays open and says why. Drafted, approved and sent are three different things, and the office can always tell which one a pack is.

Tested on finished jobs before it touched new ones.

We started with the firm’s close-out checklist, its templates and a batch of jobs the office had already closed. We included the awkward ones on purpose: a blurred plate, two serials that disagree, a missing signature, an email sent twice, a certificate replaced after approval.

The office compared what the agent prepared with what they had actually sent. We checked that each person can only see and do what their role allows, and that a failed step can be run again without sending anything twice.

Then we trained the engineers and the office, agreed who owns changes to the checklist, and stayed on hand while it settled in.