Copilot Studio Autonomous Agents: Resolving 'Waiting for User' with tools - When Creating Records and Replying to Emails

Introduction

When working with Copilot Studio autonomous agents, you may encounter a situation where actions remain incomplete with the message “Waiting for user,” and there’s no clear way to proceed. I faced this issue while building an agent to create an incident in ServiceNow when an email is received, and then reply to the sender with the incident number. Although the scenario seems straightforward, the flow would stall and neither create the incident nor send the reply email.

In my setup, the autonomous agent used the ‘Create Record’ (ServiceNow connector) and ‘Reply to Email’ tools (new name for actions) within its instructions.

Autonomous Agent when email arrives

Initial Tool Settings

The configuration for the Create Record tool looked correct:

Create Record

However, after triggering the agent, the process would get stuck at “Waiting for user” and not proceed to create the incident or send the reply.

Waiting for user

Solution: Update Tool Settings to Use Generative AI

The fix was to change the tool settings for both actions to “Write the response with generative AI”:

  • Create Record: Set to Write the response with generative AI

    Change the tool setting to Write with generative AI

After updating the Create Record tool, the flow then paused at the Reply to Email step with the same “Waiting for user” message.

  • Reply to Email: Also set to Write the response with generative AI

    Reply Email

Testing the Solution

After updating both tool settings, I tested the flow by sending an email:

Test sending an email

The agent successfully created the incident and sent a reply email with the incident number:

Incident created

Alternative Approach

For each trigger added to the autonomous agent, a power automate flow (can be updated to agent flow) is created. You can add the Create Record and Send Email actions directly to the agent flow using Power Automate for more control.

Power Automate flow

Conclusion

If your Copilot Studio autonomous agent is stuck on “Waiting for user” when using actions like Create Record or Reply to Email, update the tool settings to “Write the response with generative AI.” This enables the agent to proceed automatically without manual intervention, streamlining your automation scenarios.