Webchat Playground Tool in Copilot Studio Kit

The Copilot Studio Kit, developed by Microsoft’s Power CAT (Customer Advisory Team), includes the Webchat Playground tool that extends Microsoft Copilot Studio functionality. This utility enables customisation of the webchat interface for agents, providing value for developers, solution architects, and UI designers who need to customise chat experiences according to branding requirements, accessibility standards, and usability guidelines.

Tool Overview

As referenced in my previous article on the Copilot Studio Kit from August 2, 2025, this toolkit demonstrates Microsoft’s development of enterprise customisation options for AI solutions. The Webchat Playground specifically addresses the user interface component of an agent implementation.

The Webchat Playground offers a graphical interface for configuring the visual elements and behaviour of agent webchat environments. It eliminates the need for direct CSS or HTML editing through a structured UI for theme creation and modification. This reduces development time while maintaining consistency. The tool exports configurations in both JSON and HTML formats for seamless integration with existing web chat implementations.

Key Benefits

• No-code customisation: Visual editing of webchat appearance without writing CSS
• Instant feedback: Live preview shows changes in real-time
• Brand alignment: Customise colours, fonts, and UI elements to match organisational identity
• Accessibility focus: Built-in checks ensure interface meets accessibility standards
• Deployment ready: Export options provide production-ready code for implementation

The tool serves as a bridge between design requirements and technical implementation, allowing teams to create professional webchat interfaces without specialised frontend development expertise.

The tool strikes a balance between functionality and simplicity by offering sufficient customisation options without excessive complexity. This design makes it accessible to technical developers and business users who need to adjust their copilot’s presentation layer.

Key Capabilities of the Webchat Playground

The Webchat Playground tool offers a comprehensive suite of features designed to enhance the customisation experience for Copilot Studio webchat interfaces:

Visual Theme Editing with Live Preview

Users can see changes in real-time as they adjust visual elements, eliminating the guesswork typically associated with CSS modifications. This immediate feedback loop accelerates the design process, ensuring the final result aligns with expectations before deployment.

Flexible Export Options

• JSON Export: Provides a structured configuration file that can be seamlessly integrated with existing webchat implementations through the styleOptions parameter
• HTML Export: Generates production-ready HTML files with embedded styling that can be directly hosted on web servers without additional development

Accessibility Compliance Tools

The built-in accessibility checker evaluates contrast ratios, focus indicators, and other key accessibility parameters to ensure the chat interface meets WCAG guidelines. This proactive approach helps organisations maintain inclusive digital experiences for all users.

Theme Management System

Users can create, save, and manage multiple themes within the tool, facilitating the development of different branded experiences for various departments or clients within the same organisation.

Template Library

The playground includes predefined templates that serve as starting points, accelerating the customisation process and providing design inspiration for everyday use cases and industry-specific scenarios.

Feature Overview

1. User Interface Layout

The Webchat Playground’s interface is thoughtfully organised into three functional panes for efficient workflow:

Left Pane (Theme Selector):

• Displays a visual library of saved themes with colour swatches showing primary, secondary, and accent colours
• Provides quick visual recognition of available themes
• Includes controls for theme creation, selection, and management operations

Middle Pane (Live Preview):

• Renders a functioning webchat interface that updates dynamically as settings change
• Demonstrates user and bot interactions with the current styling applied
• Allows testing of different conversation scenarios to ensure the theme works across various message types

Right Pane (Configuration View):

• JSON View: Displays the complete style configuration as a structured JSON array with syntax highlighting for improved readability
• Code Snippet View: Provides a ready-to-use HTML implementation with the current theme embedded, complete with required dependencies and initialisation code

2. Comprehensive Theme Management

Creating Themes: Users can initiate new theme creation through the “+ Add a theme” button, which transforms the left pane into an intuitive editor organized into logical sections:

• General: Core settings including background colours, font families, and base spacing values
• Send Box: Controls customizing the message input area, send button, and related components
• Suggestion Box: Options for styling suggested responses and quick reply buttons
• Avatar: Settings for both bot and user avatars, including size, shape, and image options
• Bubble: Detailed customization of message bubbles, including colours, borders, spacing, and typography

Editing Workflow:

• Existing themes can be modified through the pencil icon, opening the full editor interface
• All changes reflect immediately in the preview pane for visual confirmation
• A comprehensive save system prevents accidental loss of customizations
• Version history allows reverting to previous iterations if needed

Theme Organization:

• Themes can categorized and tagged for easy filtering in larger organizations
• Export and import functionality enables sharing themes between team members
• Theme deletion is safeguarded with confirmation dialogues to prevent accidental removal

3. Advanced Export Capabilities

JSON Export Integration:

• The exported JSON configuration is optimized for direct integration with the Microsoft Webchat component
• Documentation references are included as comments within the Export
• The JSON structure follows the official styleOptions schema for compatibility with all webchat versions

HTML Export Features:

• Generates a self-contained HTML file with all necessary dependencies
• Includes proper initialization code with the custom theme applied
• Features responsive design considerations for multi-device compatibility
• Contains commented sections to guide further customization

4. Comprehensive Accessibility Checker

The integrated accessibility validation system:

• Evaluates colour contrast ratios against WCAG AA and AAA standards
• Verifies focus indicators for keyboard navigation
• Checks text sizing and spacing for readability
• Provides specific recommendations for improving accessibility compliance
• Generates a detailed report highlighting both successes and areas for improvement

5. Extensive Customization Parameters

The tool supports an impressive range of UI parameters for detailed control over the webchat experience:

Interaction Controls:

• Autoscroll Behaviour: Options for controlling when and how the chat window scrolls to new messages
• Upload Button Configuration: Visibility, styling, and file type restrictions
• Send Box Customisation: Button styling, placeholder text, and microphone integration
• Typing Animation: Custom animations and timing for the “typing” indicator

Visual Elements:

• Avatar Options: For both user and bot, including image source, fallback text, and positioning
• Bubble Styling: Comprehensive controls for message container appearance, including borders, shadows, and animations
• Font Selection: Complete typography control with web font integration options
• Padding and Spacing: Granular control of whitespace throughout the interface

Interactive Components:

• Emoji Set: Selection from multiple emoji style options or custom sets
• Spinner Animation: Loading indicator customization for various states
• Suggested Actions: Styling for suggestion chips, including hover and selected states
• Rich Media: Configuration options for cards, carousels, and embedded content

Additional Features:

• Timestamps: Format and styling options for message timestamps
• Read Receipts: Visual indicators for message delivery status
• Group Headers: Customization of conversation section dividers
• YouTube Embedding: Controls for video player appearance and behaviour within the chat

Why Use the Playground Over Manual Modifications

The Webchat Playground significantly simplifies the customization process compared to manual code editing, offering substantial advantages for teams of all technical levels. Modifying the webchat control manually requires extensive knowledge of CSS, HTML, and the underlying component structure — a technical barrier that can delay implementation and increase development costs. With the Playground’s intuitive visual interface, what would typically take hours of coding and debugging can be accomplished in minutes through simple point-and-click operations. The tool eliminates common pitfalls, such as syntax errors, cross-browser compatibility issues, and accessibility oversights, that frequently plague manual implementations. Perhaps most valuable is the immediate visual feedback loop, where changes appear instantly in the preview pane, eliminating the traditional cycle of edit-save-refresh-test that characterizes manual development. This streamlined approach democratizes web chat customization, enabling business stakeholders and designers to participate directly in the process without relying on developers, ultimately leading to the faster deployment of brand-aligned, accessible chat experiences.

For those interested in more advanced customization, the Webchat Playground can be further enhanced with manual adjustments. The exported JSON and HTML files serve as solid foundations that can be further refined by developers familiar with web technologies. This hybrid approach allows teams to leverage the efficiency of the Playground for initial setup while retaining the flexibility to implement unique features or complex behaviours through direct code modifications. For guidance on combining both approaches, refer to Microsoft’s documentation on
Manual customisation

Conclusion

The Webchat Playground represents a significant advancement in Microsoft’s commitment to making Copilot Studio implementations more adaptable and brand-aligned. By bridging the gap between design requirements and technical execution, this tool enables organizations to create professional, accessible, and visually cohesive chat experiences without extensive development resources.

For teams implementing Microsoft Copilot Studio, the Webchat Playground eliminates a common barrier to adoption: the challenge of customizing user interfaces to match organizational standards. The tool’s intuitive design and comprehensive feature set make it valuable across the implementation lifecycle — from initial prototyping to production deployment and ongoing refinement.

As conversational AI continues to become central to customer engagement strategies, utilities like the Webchat Playground will play an increasingly important role in ensuring these interactions feel authentic and consistent with broader digital experiences. Microsoft’s investment in this area demonstrates its understanding that successful AI implementation requires attention not just to the underlying intelligence, but also to the human-facing presentation layer that shapes user perception and adoption.