TL;DR: Installing Power CAT is a multi-step process involving admin role setup, enabling the PCF framework, installing the Creator Kit as a dependency, and then finally the kit itself. Budget an hour or two and follow these steps in order.
Before you touch anything, you need to make sure you have System Administrator rights on the environment you’re installing into (usually your default environment).
Step 1: Grant yourself System Administrator
- Log in at admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com
- Navigate to Manage > Environments > your install environment > Membership (top nav)
- Add yourself as System Administrator
Once that’s done, verify it worked:
- Go to Settings > Users + Permissions > Security Roles
- Scroll to System Administrator > three dots > Members
- Confirm your account is in the list
Don’t skip the verification. It’s a five second check that saves you debugging access issues later.
Step 2: Enable the Power Apps Component Framework for Canvas Apps
- Sign in at powerapps.microsoft.com
- Settings gear (top right) > Admin Center
- Manage > Environments > your install environment
- Settings (toolbar) > Product > Features
- Find “Power Apps component framework for canvas apps” and toggle it on
- While you’re in here, also enable “Power Apps Code Apps” as it’s a separate requirement
- Save
Step 3: Install the Creator Kit
Power CAT depends on the Creator Kit, so this goes in first.
Head to the Creator Kit on AppSource, hit Get It Now, select your environment, and install.
If that fails for any reason, you can import it manually:
- Log in to make.powerapps.com
- Solutions > your install environment > Import solution
- Download the zip from https://aka.ms/creatorkitdownload and select it
- Click install and give it about five minutes
Step 4: Install Power CAT
Now for the main event.
- Download the managed zip from the March 2026 release on GitHub
- Back in make.powerapps.com, go to Solutions > your install environment > Import Solution
- Select the
CopilotStudioKit_[date]_managed.zipfile and hit Next - You’ll get a list of services requiring authentication. Provide credentials for anything showing a red exclamation mark
- There’s a quirk here: if the Next button at the bottom isn’t clickable, hit the back arrow at the top and then Next again. It unsticks it
- Leave everything on the following page as default and click Next
- Let it run. This can take up to an hour
Step 5: Post-installation connection references
Once it’s installed, you need to wire up the connection references or nothing will work properly.
- Go to make.powerapps.com > Solutions > Default solution
- Expand Objects in the left menu > Connection References
- Select “Copilot Studio Kit – Dataverse” and make sure all required fields are populated with a valid connection
- Save
- Go back and repeat this for each connection reference in the list: Dataverse, Microsoft Teams, Groups, Users, Outlook, Power Platform, SharePoint, and Standard Approvals
Running the app
- make.powerapps.com > Apps
- Find Copilot Studio Kit and hit Play
- It’ll open in a new window and take a few minutes on the first load
- Accept the permissions prompt when it appears
- Bookmark it
A note on what you can see
What’s visible inside Power CAT is scoped to whatever account your connection references are authenticated as. If you want visibility across all environments, make sure that account has the System Administrator role in each environment where your bots live.
For further reading, the GitHub repo has the full documentation.