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Power Up Program - Microsoft Copilot Studio Exp...
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Actions - Fundamentals of Autonomous Agents

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Action fetaure mentioned in Fundamental of Autonomous Agent will behave similarly as MCP? to connect to external system and act based on the user input?
If yes, then what is difference between Action and MCP, why we need MCP in Copilot Studio if we have Actions.
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    Michael E. Gernaey Profile Picture
    50,275 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at
    Actions - Fundamentals of Autonomous Agents
     
    So to clarify, there are no actions any more, they are called Tools.
     
    Tools and MCP are in some ways the same and in others different.
     
    Imagine it like this.
     
    A Tool, is usually a singular thing that accesses an Action that is built into a connector, like Send an Email V2 is an action as part of the Outlook 365 connector.
     
    An MCP is a "middle-man" that can surface 1 to many back end API's, so you do not have 1 action (aka tool) per action, you have 1 MCP and you specify what back end API to execute, so that its cleaner because a single MCP can make dozens of API's available across many different back end services, Where a Single Tool is just 1 thing.
     
    So 1 MCP = many back end Services, that expose 1-Many API's
     
    1 Action (from a Tool) is a single thing. Imagine if you had 1543 API's... exposing all of those is horrible... NOw imagine an MCP that allows you to pick which ones, its much cleaner and in other ways could be safer based on security protocols, or just patterns of access.
     
    Thats the different.

    If these suggestions help resolve your issue, Please consider Marking the answer as such and also maybe a like.

    Thank you!
    Sincerely, Michael Gernaey

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