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Microsoft 365 Copilot Blog
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Ignite 2024: SharePoint agents now in general availability

AdamHarmetz's avatar
AdamHarmetz
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Nov 19, 2024

Expertise unlocked for every user

Today at Microsoft Ignite, we introduced agents in Microsoft 365 to drive the next level of business value for organizations. These agents are ready to use, each with specialized skills and knowledge to support unique roles. They work alongside or on behalf of a person, team, or organization to handle simple tasks and more complex, business processes.  

As part of agents in Microsoft 365, we’re excited to announce the general availability of SharePoint agents today, enabling users to turn SharePoint sites and documents into scoped agents that are subject matter experts for your business needs. These agents empower everyone to quickly surface insights, scale expertise, and make informed decisions. SharePoint agents will begin rolling out this week with expected completion by the end of this calendar year.   

SharePoint agents put your content to work  

Employees create a vast amount of digital content. Every day two billion files are added to SharePoint and OneDrive, and two million new SharePoint sites are created. This expansive amount of knowledge is key to your organization’s success but it’s often hard for employees to find, absorb, and act efficiently with all this information. AI is a critical tool to unlock your organizational content to enable productivity and better business decisions.  

SharePoint agents offer a powerful capability for everyone to define agents as specifically as needed. These agents are designed to empower site owners and users to quickly access valuable information and insights for their projects and tasks. Agents created in SharePoint are like subject matter experts for you and team members, helping to streamline workflows and enhance productivity. 

Common scenarios for creating and using agents 

To better understand how you might use these agents in your organization, whether for yourself or with coworkers, consider a few real-world examples from our private preview customers: 

 

Accelerate customer support: Eaton, a global intelligent power management company in electrical, aerospace, and vehicle production, created SharePoint agents for process documentation and knowledge sharing. These agents significantly aided both IT and engineering teams by simplifying information retrieval and enhancing efficiency. Notably, engineering teams benefited from improved knowledge sharing and quicker responses to customer queries. The simple creation process allowed these agents to streamline workflows effectively using only SharePoint content. 

 

Other scenarios: 

Onboard new team members: New hires can face an overwhelming learning curve as they navigate new processes and tools. A team lead can create an onboarding agent as a welcoming and knowledgeable point of contact to help new team members ramp up efficiently,  providing access to the most current information and the source files. Empower new hires to tackle projects mid-stream with the resources they need to feel confident. 

Product support: A field incident report agent based on the latest product documentation can serve as a 24/7 first line of triage for handling issues while also formulating a roadmap for product innovation to better meet customer needs. Beyond Q&A, this agent can offer trend analysis, root cause analysis, escalation categorization, and more to engineering and product support teams – bringing a holistic view of field escalations and the strategies needed to optimize customer experiences. 

Budget planning: A universal truth in business is that time is one of the most valuable commodities. Enter the budget planning agent used by a finance team, built on the team site and equipped with  budget policies, past budget reports, and key forecast documentation. This agent provides recommendations and prioritizations for the upcoming planning cycle, and reduces time intensive analysis and costly margins of error so the team can focus on strategic financial planning.  

 

Our private preview customers focused on identifying their most valuable SharePoint content and determining where SharePoint agents can maximize the content value to support their organization’s key goals and outcomes. We’re looking forward to hearing how you will use agents SharePoint as this capability enters general availability.  

Easy to use and create 

Every SharePoint site includes an agent scoped for the site’s content, ready to assist you instantly. These ready-made agents are an easy starting point to get answers without combing through the site or digging around with search—they can be used immediately without any customization. 

On a SharePoint site, you can find the site agent from the Copilot icon on the right side of the ribbon at the top. This agent’s name defaults to the same as the site name, and will be at the top of the “Approved for this site” list. 

Figure 1: Default agent scoped to a SharePoint site

For specific projects or tasks, any SharePoint user can create a customized agent based on the relevant files, folders, or sites, with just one click. 

You can create SharePoint agents from these three entry points: 

  • The Copilot icon in the top ribbon (just like how you access the ready-made agent), click “Create an agent” from the drop-down menu. 
  • Your document library, choose files and click “Create an agent” from the top menu. 
  • The Home tab on the left side of the screen, click the “+ New” drop-down menu and select “Agent.” 
Figure 2: Select files in the document library, then click "Create an agent"

Find all the agents that you work with, including those that others shared with you, from the Copilot icon in the top ribbon. You can also find the custom-created agents listed alongside other files located in your document library, or search for them like you would other files. 

Initially, these agents support file formats such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Loop, PDF, HTML, and more (see FAQ for file type support). Coming soon metadata, lists, meeting recordings, video transcripts, and video files will also be supported.  

If your project or site progresses or pivots, the agents will stay in lockstep with your content, always working with the latest information. Your agent is automatically updated as you edit the files it is grounded on, or as you add or delete additional source content to the selected folders or sites. 

Share and collaborate in Teams 

Agents can easily be shared via email or within Teams chats, allowing teams to work with the same accurate and relevant information. Not only are coworkers able to use the agent that you shared, but @mentioning the agent in a group chat setting gives the team a subject matter expert ready to assist and facilitate collaboration.  

 

Figure 3: An agent being @Mentioned in a Microsoft Teams chat

Built on security you trust to protect your data and limit oversharing 

Powered by the same AI technology as Microsoft 365 Copilot, these agents operate within the secure boundaries of Microsoft 365, maintaining high standards of data privacy and security. This means you don’t need to take the extra step of moving your files outside of Microsoft 365, and all your data security protections, such as retention and sensitivity labels, remain in place to help prevent data loss. 

SharePoint agents adhere to existing SharePoint user permissions and aforementioned labels to ensure data is protected and help prevent the oversharing of sensitive information. Users still only have access to the files they are authorized to view or edit. This agent does not broadly share the files you selected whenever you share the agent with others in your organization. Learn more about how Microsoft 365 Copilot addresses oversharing with enhanced content governance capabilities.  

Here’s a situation where you can maintain data security when not everyone has access to the agent and the content it’s grounded on: 

A group of employees are in a Teams chat and an agent is added to support the project. A leader with access to sensitive information asks the agent a question, but some chat members do not have the necessary permissions to the source information. The leader is prompted to review and approve the agent’s response for sharing with people who do not have access. Those without access to the content will be notified that the agent is waiting for permission to share. When the leader elects to share the response, those who don’t have access to the source files will only see the response and not the files it is grounded on.  

 

Figure 4: The agent will notify the one who shared the agent if some of the users in the chat do not have access to the knowledge sources in the responseFigure 5: The agent recognizes the different permission levels in the chat and provides a prompt to update or maintain permission settings

SharePoint site owners will be able to manage agents in the following ways: 

  • Approve the ready-made agents for the site  
  • Choose a default agent for the site 
  • Feature other user-created agents in the drop-down menu from the Copilot icon in the top ribbon, so they are visible to site members 

Only people who create and have edit permissions to the site will be able to create and edit customized agents. This leverages the same permission model already working in SharePoint, so that users who are closest to the knowledge on the site can create agents that improve their daily work. Regular editors can create their own agents, but only site owners can set the agent for their site, as well as other agents featured for everyone else. 

Manage SharePoint agents just like files—because they are 

Agents created using SharePoint data are file-based, with a “.agent” file extension format. They are stored within the same site or folder where they were created. Since they are files, you can manage them just like you manage other files. You can copy, move, delete, or archive them.  

 

Figure 6: The agent is stored in the Document library and can be managed like other files

Take your agents farther with Copilot Studio 

With Microsoft Copilot Studio integration, currently in private preview, you can customize these agents further, such as with third-party sources, actions, and automation workflows. You can then publish the agent to the Teams app catalog.  

Figure 7: Microsoft Copilot Studio web page

Included in Microsoft 365 Copilot license with option for a pay-as-you-go meter coming soon 

We are thrilled to include SharePoint agents as a key feature within the Microsoft 365 Copilot license. As of today, you can create, use, and share agents as part of your Microsoft 365 Copilot license.  

Alternatively, if your tenant is licensed for Microsoft Copilot Studio consumption billing, SharePoint agents will soon be available to users as a pay-as-you-go meter. 

Coming soon, through the Microsoft 365 admin center, admins will also be able to manage consumption billing for SharePoint agents. 

Promotional offer: Enable every employee to experience SharePoint agents

Agents are a relatively new AI innovation, so from January 6, 2025, through June 30, 2025, we’re offering a promotion for qualifying organizations to experience SharePoint agents. Organizations with at least 50 Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses will receive 10,000 queries each month for non-Microsoft 365 Copilot license holders to use, create, share and interact with SharePoint agents. We hope that this promotional offer helps enhance knowledge sharing and teamwork and provide key learnings from your early adopters. 

 
Learn more about this promotional offer. Admins can learn more about managing their trial access.

*Note: The start date of the promotion has been changed from December 1, when the promotion was originally announced, to January 6, in order to provide sufficient notice to admins.

Continuing to improve 

We’re continuing to evolve this powerful, yet simple SharePoint capability and to innovate based on your feedback.  

Here’s a look at our product roadmap releases planned for the coming months: 

  • Edit and share the ready-made SharePoint agents
  • Include OneDrive files in your customized SharePoint agents
  • Create your own customized agents in OneDrive 
  • Create agents for your SharePoint hub sites 
  • Copilot Studio integration for advanced customizations (currently in private preview) 

Get started with SharePoint agents today 

Ready to implement SharePoint agents in your organization? Check out our SharePoint agents adoption page to find training videos, a communications kit, support articles, quick start guides, and more. 

For additional resources, please visit:  

Microsoft Ignite 2024 sessions you may be interested in: 

Activities in the new year: 

  • Thursday January 9, 2025: Join SharePoint agents engineers, designers, and product managers to learn more about the product with our Ask Me Anything event. Register now.   
  • Tuesday January 14, 2025: We will sit down with our Private Preview participants during the Intrazone podcast to get a deeper look at the business use cases for SharePoint agents. What worked, what we learned, and how can we move forward with some best practices for using SharePoint agents. 
  • Wednesday January 29, 2025: SharePoint: From concept to creation to impact + Live AMA. Check the Microsoft Tech Community Events page for details.  

 BONUS | See SharePoint agents 'in action' as shown during the Microsoft Ignite 2024 session, "Reimagine content management with SharePoint agents" (BRK279. Watch now:

Updated Dec 18, 2024
Version 9.0

7 Comments

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  • Sonnt-dna's avatar
    Sonnt-dna
    Copper Contributor
    Apr 26, 2025

    Hi, 
    I have a question about SharePoint Agent indexing.
    When SharePoint Agent indexes documents stored in a SharePoint library, does it also analyze and rank on file-level metadata—such as tags, categories, author, content type, creation date, business unit, or other custom columns—in addition to the document’s main content? If so, how is that metadata used during indexing and query processing, and what best practices can we follow to enrich or tune those fields to boost search relevance and performance?

    Thanks,
    Sonnt

  • grant_jenkins's avatar
    grant_jenkins
    Steel Contributor
    Mar 26, 2025

    AdamHarmetz- you said you wanted some feedback - here you go:


    We really want to use SharePoint agents as they offer some great insights into our documents, etc. However, there are far too many issues currently as listed below. Note that we’ve been asking for points 1-4 since the early days of the private preview (and not just us asking). There were some early sessions from Microsoft that said these controls would be in place, but nothing yet.

    1. We need the ability to disable across the tenant and only make them available for a select few people for testing purposes. We have only been able to do this by Microsoft implementing a backend configuration on their end which is not ideal but the only option for now. There should be a disable option for any large/new features rolling out by Microsoft (we are fighting to get Site themes disabled as it goes completely against our corporate brand strategy, but no option at the moment).
    2. For our existing Copilot users - Microsoft said we can disable access to SharePoint agents via the Copilot license - however, that will not only affect the SharePoint agents, but also anything related to Copilot and SharePoint – so not an option.
    3. We need the ability to only enable on select SharePoint sites. If we were to enable SharePoint agents now, they would be on every single SharePoint site in our tenant (we currently have well over 100k sites) – not an option.
    4. We need the ability to control who can create agents on the site. It should be owners, and only users the owners provide permission to. Currently, it’s the owners plus every single person that has Edit rights which in some cases could be 1000+ users across a single site. This is not an option for us as we would require anyone building agents to have some level of training first – and it is not viable with the current implementation.
    5. If an owner approves an agent, it automatically moves the file from its original location to Site Assets > Copilots > Approved. This keeps the existing permissions on the agent file if it had unique permissions but will change the permissions if it was originally inheriting from the library – which can be an issue if the original library has unique permissions. In addition, it removes any metadata we might have had in the original library where it was located. It also means users may now be going into our Site Assets library which is not ideal.
    6. Once an agent has been approved the only way to un-approve it is to move it out of the Approved folder it was moved to when you approved it. This one took me a while to figure out – I was expecting there to be an un-approve option like how I approved it. This isn't great UX.
    7. If a user creates an agent or moves it into Site Assets > Copilots > Approved, it is automatically approved (even if you’re not an owner). This confirms that approved just means it lives in the Approved folder – which is a major design flaw. I tested this theory by moving one of my previously approved agents back into the library where it was created, and it was now set as not approved. And I moved an unapproved agent using a test user that wasn’t an owner, and it auto-approved the agent – which is not great to say the least.
    8. If you edit an agent that is approved, it’s still approved (doesn’t move into an un-approved state).
    9. There is no way to hide the Agent link under the New menu – It looks like you can remove it (untick it to not show) but it just adds it back in there regardless.
    10. As soon as anyone creates an agent it shows up under Recent in the Copilot menu even if it’s just for testing, not finished, etc. There is no way for an owner to remove it from here or prevent it from showing until you are ready for users to start using it. Similar to Recommended agents – this is not something the owner has any control over that I can see.
    11. Pay as you go is way too overarching – there is no way to scope this across sites, agents, anything. And there is no way to track or get analysis on usage costs per agent, etc. Can only see by user and that’s across everything.
    12. Also, the Pay as you go cost is not viable. Microsoft have kept saying $0.01 per message, but what they didn’t tell you is that each question/answer is an interaction and consists of 32 messages – so the cost for every question/answer is $0.32 (x32 more than what was mentioned).
    13. There isn’t a straightforward way to see what an agent is using as its source. Remember, it starts at the site or library/list level, but can be extended to other sites libraries, etc. And if anyone with Edit rights is creating them, how do you govern this?
    14. There is added complexity with a SharePoint Agent that has been extended with Copilot Studio – as it’s now managed within the Power Platform governance model, so you have a quasi-SharePoint agent that's a Copilot Studio agent.
    15. If you extend the agent with Copilot Studio, even users with a Copilot License are charged per transaction (they weren’t charged before). I'm fairly certain this is the case, but happy to be corrected.
    16. There is no way to edit the default Site agent that is automatically provisioned on every single site. There will be cases where you only want to target certain parts of the site.

     

    Apologies for the extensive list of feedback but hoping this can help to improve the current implementation and allow us to roll it out in our tenant. Also, hopefully useful for others looking at SharePoint Agents.

  • MSSAA's avatar
    MSSAA
    Copper Contributor
    Feb 10, 2025

    SharePoint agents on GCC?

    Can information on when the agents will make it to the Gov cloud be added to this blog post or is that being tracked on another posting?

  • koolwebdezign's avatar
    koolwebdezign
    Copper Contributor
    Jan 28, 2025

    Does anyone have any knowledge about when Copilot Agents in SharePoint will roll out to EDU customers? Our organization is a fully licensed Copilot Studio licensee, and we have 50+ licenses to Copilot for Microsoft 365. Copilot Agents for SharePoint has not gone live for our general user audience. I have used PowerShell to check the value of Get-SPOCopilotPromoOptInStatus and I have found that it is 'true'.

  • o365buddy1's avatar
    o365buddy1
    Copper Contributor
    Nov 22, 2024

    whenever launching any feature we should launch disable option as well 


    How to disable it ?

    • KarenRio's avatar
      KarenRio
      Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
      Nov 20, 2024

      Hi Krishchaidevi - Currently agents in SharePoint can be scoped or grounded to the following file types: 

      • Office documents: DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX, XLSX
      • New Microsoft 365 formats: FLUID, LOOP
      • Universal formats: PDF, TXT, RTF
      • Web files: ASPX, HTM, HTML
      • OpenDocument formats: ODT, ODP

      As of now, you can’t add pages from the Site Pages library as source for an agent. 

      Frequently asked questions about Copilot in SharePoint - Microsoft Support

      On 1/9 we are having an Ask Me Anything event with the PM's and engineers for agents in SharePoint. This is a great time to go deeper on these questions and our product roadmap. Hope you can make it. https://aka.ms/SharePoint/agents/AMAevent 

      Let us know if you have any other questions. Thanks!