You want to give your Copilot Studio agent the ability to look up product inventory by calling your company's existing REST API. The API has a published OpenAPI 3.0 specification file. What is the most direct method to add this API capability to your agent?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation and Infographic
Copilot Studio can consume an OpenAPI spec like a sommelier reads a wine list — it understands every operation, parameter, and response format automatically. The 'Add an action > REST API' path lets you paste or upload the spec and the agent wire up calls without rebuilding anything from scratch.
Full explanation below image
Full Explanation
Copilot Studio has built-in support for consuming REST APIs described by OpenAPI (Swagger) specifications. When you select 'Add an action' and choose the REST API option, you can provide the spec URL or upload the JSON/YAML file. Copilot Studio parses the spec and surfaces each operation as an invocable action within the agent, complete with parameter mapping and response handling.
Option A (Power Automate cloud flow) works but adds unnecessary indirection — a flow wrapping an API call when you can call the API directly. The direct REST API import is simpler and more maintainable.
Option C (manual HTTP Request nodes in topics) is error-prone, verbose, and does not scale to multi-endpoint APIs. The OpenAPI import handles all endpoints at once.
Option D (APIM + knowledge source) misunderstands the architecture — knowledge sources are for retrieval-augmented generation (documents, SharePoint, websites), not for executing transactional API calls.
Key exam point: OpenAPI import into Copilot Studio = 'Add an action' > REST API. This is the direct, supported path. The spec must be OpenAPI 2.0 or 3.0. Authentication for the API (API key, OAuth) is configured during the import wizard, not separately. After import, each operation appears as a selectable action in the topic authoring canvas.