Microsoft 365 Copilot Blog

10 MIN READ

Introducing new agents in Microsoft 365

Microsoft

Nov 19, 2024

As AI continues to evolve, it is transforming the way we work by enabling seamless human and AI collaboration and automating business processes. With Microsoft 365 Copilot, users have a personal AI assistant that is deeply grounded in your data and integrated into your Microsoft apps. Now, we’re augmenting Copilot’s capabilities with specialized expertise and automation through new agents, designed to unlock every user’s full potential.

Today at Microsoft Ignite, we’re introducing the preview of new agents in Microsoft 365. These agents supercharge Copilot – adding specialized skills and knowledge while automating specific tasks. These out-of-the-box agents take on unique roles, working alongside or on behalf of a team or organization to handle both simple, mundane tasks to more complex, multi-step business processes. These agents in Microsoft 365 will drive the next level of business value for every organization. 

Scaling knowledge with agents

Consuming the vast amount of organizational information to get answers and meaningful insights can be overwhelming and time-consuming. And the amount of organizational data keeps growing with two billion files being added to SharePoint and OneDrive and two million new SharePoint sites being created every day.

Today, we’re introducing new agents in SharePoint, where employees can use and create scoped agents grounded in their SharePoint data, instantly getting real-time information and insights from the site. For example, new hires could use an agent grounded in relevant guidance and onboarding materials to quickly get up to speed. And every SharePoint site includes a ready-made agent tailored to the site's content, to assist users instantly. These agents provide immediate answers without the need for any customization or extensive searching. For specific projects or tasks, any SharePoint user can also create a customized agent with a couple of clicks, based on specific files, folders, or sites that they choose.

Employees can easily share these agents with others via email or Teams, @ mentioning the agent in a chat like they would a teammate. They can also customize the agent in Copilot Studio to further automate workflows and leverage additional data sources beyond SharePoint. As a project or site evolves, the agents stay current with the latest information that they are grounded on – responses are continually up to date, based on the content sources at that time.

The pre-built agent is displayed at the top of the list, alongside other approved and user-created agents in SharePoint, ready to be used in SharePoint.

Whether employees use the ready-made agent or create their own, agents in SharePoint makes it easier to get the information and insights they need, for more informed decision-making, better collaboration, and streamlined business processes.

This new agent is generally available to start trying out today and is included in a Microsoft 365 Copilot license or if your tenant is licensed for Microsoft Copilot Studio consumption billing, it will soon be available to users as a pay-as-you-go meter. To learn more on the announcement of agents in SharePoint, please check out the blog.

Collaborating with humans and agents

Meetings and chats are the backbone of collaboration – yet managing meetings is cumbersome and costly, and tracking multiple group chats can be overwhelming with important information getting easily buried. And it’s expensive to hire a dedicated resource to ensure that meetings are run efficiently.

Real-time notes have been enabled in a meeting and can be viewed in the meeting notes pane.

Today we’re introducing the new Facilitator agent – now you and your team have a shared agent that works within Teams meetings and chats for more effective collaboration.

Starting today for Teams meetings, the Facilitator starts taking real-time notes during your meetings, allowing everyone to co-author and collaborate seamlessly. This frees everyone up to focus and engage deeply in meetings, while also helping drive alignment before the meeting ends.

Here’s how it works:

To enable real-time notes in meetings, users can toggle AI-generated notes on when setting up the meeting in the Teams calendar or toggle it on during the meeting through Notes.
When real-time notes are enabled, a notification appears in the meeting chat to inform everyone. Note, this also turns on transcription for the meeting and users are notified as well. To disable real-time notes, users can simply toggle off the notes at any time.
To access the real-time notes, users click on Notes, which opens the pane and everyone can see live notes being generated every few minutes as the conversation happens. The notes are organized by topics and follow-up tasks.
As real-time notetaking happens, users are able to co-author within the canvas (e.g., editing inline or assigning a task to a user). The notes also show the attribution to whether it is AI-generated or a user editing the content.
After the meeting has ended, users can access the notes within the Recap tab of the meeting. The notes are stored in the OneDrive of the user who enabled the real-time notes.
The meetings notes are contextual to the meeting transcript, helping to ensure that the notes are relevant and accurately reflect the key topics discussed and follow-up items from the meeting.

Front of room home screen displayed in a Microsoft Teams Room to enable real-time notetaking in an ad-hoc meeting.

And as real-time notetaking works for scheduled meetings for virtual participants, we’re expanding the experience to Microsoft Teams Rooms. Starting in early 2025, users will be able to invite a Microsoft Teams Room to a meeting so everyone in the room can see real-time notes happening, as well as for ad-hoc meetings, so as people want to meet in the office, they can join a room and enable real-time notetaking to capture their discussion.

While we are starting with real-time notetaking today, we know there are additional tasks that the Facilitator can take on to make meetings more effective. Eventually the Facilitator will manage the meeting from end-to-end – from managing the agenda to taking notes, moderating discussions, and managing and completing action items.

AI-generated notes have been enabled in a group chat and show an up-to-date summary of the chat conversation.

Starting today for Teams chat, the Facilitator creates and maintains an up-to-date summary of important information as the conversation happens, including key decisions, actions items, and open questions to resolve. This helps groups focus on what matters, drive faster alignment, and resolve open issues efficiently.

Here’s how it works:

AI-generated notes are automatically enabled when creating a new chat. For existing chats, users can toggle it on within the Notes icon.
When the notes are enabled, a notification appears in the group chat to inform everyone. To disable the notes, users can simply toggle off the notes at any time.
To access the notes, users can click on the Notes icon in the top right corner of the chat, which opens a pane showing a summary of the chat thread that is organized by topics with corresponding decisions made, action items, and unanswered questions.
As the chat conversation progresses, the notes are continuously updated.

These new agentic capabilities for the Facilitator in meetings and chats are starting to roll out today in public preview for customers worldwide and are available on desktop (Windows/Mac), web, and iOS/Android (consumption only).

To access the public preview of the new Facilitator agent, customers are required to have a Microsoft 365 Copilot license.

Bridging communication with people and agents

Communicating in a universal way where everyone instantly comprehends what’s being said is challenging – often requiring interpretation services for global meetings. Hiring an interpreter for a variety of meetings is a significant expense that can add up quickly.

Today we’re introducing the new Interpreter agent – this will allow each user to enable real-time speech-to-speech interpretation in Teams meetings so they can speak and listen in the language of their choice, instantly overcoming language barriers. Users will also be able to have the Interpreter simulate their voice for a more inclusive experience. The Interpreter will start with supporting nine languages including Chinese (Mandarin), English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), and Spanish.

This new agent will be coming in public preview in early 2025 and will require a Microsoft 365 Copilot license to access the preview.

Streamlining project and task management with agents

Managing projects can be challenging – often requiring hiring a project manager to stay on top of and complete tasks, which can be an unmanageable expense for multiple and ongoing projects. And there’s always an endless list of tasks to complete as a part of the work, making it hard to track every task, let alone get the work done.

Today, we’re introducing the new Project Manager agent, which automates project management, handling everything from plan creation to executing tasks for you and the team. Whether it’s a long-running or a short-term project, the Project Manager can automatically create a new plan from scratch or use a pre-configured template by simply inputting the goals. Once the plan is in place in Planner, the Project Manager oversees the entire project, including the assignment of tasks, progress tracking, reminders and notifications, and status reporting. The Project Manager can also complete tasks, including content creation. Let’s take a closer look at how it works.

Access the Project Manager agent directly within the Planner app in Teams. When you open the app, you can create a new AI-enabled plan with the Project Manager either from scratch or using a pre-configured template, such as a research report or competitive analysis.

Once a user sets up the plan, it can be named, added to pinned plans, and have additional users added using Microsoft 365 groups. Any member of your organization can be added to a Microsoft 365 group as a member. Once the plan is created, a user enters a goal (the more specific, the better), and they can also add any relevant files as additional resources for the Project Manager to pull from as it builds out the plan and relevant tasks. Note, the Project Manager is not able to access any data outside of these files, meaning it does not search the user’s graph for additional context.

Once ‘generate tasks’ has been clicked, the Project Manager begins creating a list of tasks to be completed that are all tied to achieving the plan’s goal. These tasks can be assigned to the Project Manager to complete or any other member of the plan. Once the tasks have been assigned to the Project Manager, the agent immediately gets the task underway, and the progress can be tracked in the board view.

At any point that a task requires more input, the task moves to the “Needs your input” column and notifies the team members to update so the agent can continue completing the task. Once the tasks are done, the Project Manager moves them to the “Completed with Project Manager” column.

The team can review the tasks and the output of content that the Project Manager has completed. This content is easily editable and users can add feedback via comments, such as asking the Project Manager to condense the content, put it in a table format, rewrite in a narrative form, and more.

Further, for teams that prefer to see their brainstorming and ideation visually, users can access Microsoft Whiteboard within Planner. Users can use sticky notes on Whiteboard to jot down ideas and tasks, and once the session is complete, these sticky notes can be converted into tasks and are updated within the plan by the Project Manager. This conversion process takes the text from each sticky note and creates a corresponding task with the same text as the task title. This feature is particularly useful for teams that rely on visual collaboration and need a seamless way to transition from ideation to execution.

The Project Manager is backed by a set of agents that perform specialized functions in the background. The Project Manager in Microsoft Planner orchestrates these multiple agents, ensuring tasks are completed efficiently allowing users to accomplish their goals.

These new agentic capabilities for the Project manager agent are starting to roll out today in public preview for customers in North America and will continue through the first half of 2025 for other regions. These capabilities are available in the Planner app via Teams desktop and Teams web.

To access the public preview of the new Project Manager agent, customers are required to have a Microsoft 365 Copilot license.

Empowering employee self-service with agents

Finding relevant company policy and HR and IT support can be challenging and frustrating, resulting in wasted time completing simple tasks and resolving open questions.

Today we’re introducing the new Employee Self-Service Agent in Copilot Business Chat, which enables employees to get real-time answers and take action on key HR and IT topics such as logging PTO hours or opening an IT helpdesk ticket. This agent is connected to company knowledge sources and systems, ensuring employees get the right information while also helping organizations improve service delivery processes and reduce administrative costs.  

From Business Chat, users can access benefits and payroll information, initiate a leave of absence, request a new laptop from IT, and get assistance with Microsoft 365 products and services, all in one place. The agent is customizable in Copilot Studio, where admins can utilize various tools and data sources, including pre-configured topics, workflows, authoritative knowledge sources like SharePoint, and Microsoft-built connectors to HR and IT systems like Workday, SAP, and ServiceNow, as well as a library of tailored responses to sensitive topics. This creates a single, reliable starting point for employees to resolve their most common queries.

This new agent is available in private preview and requires a Microsoft 365 Copilot license to access the preview. To learn more about the Employee Self-Service Agent, please read the announcement blog and request to be a part of private preview here.

Looking ahead 

We know our customers face persistent challenges such as organizational inefficiencies, rising costs, and a pressing need to innovate. With new agents in Microsoft 365, organizations will experience first-hand new ways to address these challenges. Agents will not only free up employees to focus on high value tasks but also provide additional resource capacity – unlocking new levels of creativity, improving decision-making, and driving faster innovation, ultimately leading to employees gaining new skills and driving business growth.  

We’re just getting started on our journey to demonstrate how agents are driving collaborative AI efforts and business process automation in this transformative era. In the coming months, we’ll continue to preview more agent capabilities in Microsoft 365 to help our customers reinvent how work gets done.  

Be sure to check out these sessions at Ignite this week to see these agents in action: