Automating Monthly Reports for Management with Power Platform and Copilot Studio  

Recurring reports are essential in organizations but can be repetitive and time-consuming. I recently developed a solution that automates the creation of a monthly summary report using Power Automate, AI Builder, and Copilot Studio. The goal was to deliver a consistent, high-quality summary to the management team—without the manual overhead. 

Here’s the scenario: each week, the field experts contribute updates to an Excel file stored on SharePoint. At the end of the month, a summary is needed to highlight key developments, challenges, and next steps. This summary is shared with the management team to keep them informed and aligned. 

How to Build a Power Automate Flow for Monthly Report Generation

To automate this, I built a Power Automate flow that:

• Retrieves the last four weeks of updates from the Excel file
• Feeds them to the AI Builder – Run a Prompt action for summarization
• Delivers the generated summary directly to the report owner via Teams

See the image below to understand how the flow retrieves data, runs a summarization prompt, and posts the result automatically.

To make the solution more adaptable, I stored the AI prompt as an environment variable. This allows the prompt to be updated without modifying the flow. I also created a Copilot Agent using Copilot Studio that enables users to:

• View the current prompt
• Test a new prompt and update the environment variable
• Re-run the report flow
• Update the environment variable with a revised prompt

 As shown below, the agent can update prompts, check defaults, or generate a new report with just one click.

Users can also test new AI prompts directly within the assistant. In the example below, the user chooses to input a refined prompt to guide the summarization more precisely.

This gives users full control over how the AI summarizes content without needing to touch the backend logic.

Best Practices for Writing AI Prompts for Automated Reports

The quality of the AI output depends heavily on how the prompt is written. Here are a few tips that helped us get the best results:

• Be clear and specific: Tell the AI exactly what you want. For example:
  
  “Summarize the following four weekly updates into a 150-word paragraph suitable for a monthly report to management. Focus on key achievements, challenges, and next steps. Use a professional and concise tone.”
  
  

• Avoid vague instructions: Prompts like “summarize this” can lead to inconsistent or overly generic results.
• Use structure when needed: If you want bullet points or a specific format, include that in the prompt.
• Test and iterate: Experiment with different phrasings and see what works best for your audience.
  
  
  

Start Automating Your Reports Today

It’s a small but impactful automation that demonstrates the power of combining Power Platform with Copilot Studio. I hope you enjoyed reading and that this inspires you to try out your own ideas using low-code tools and AI!  If you're looking for tailored guidance or want to explore similar solutions for your team, feel free to contact us for more insights or support.