Building a vibrant employee community takes time and commitment from leaders, managers, and subject matter experts. To keep everyone aligned and informed, organizations need simple, trustworthy ways to share accurate information and grow collective knowledge.
As AI and human collaboration continue to transform the way we work, it’s more important than ever to foster engagement, deliver reliable communication, and scale knowledge sharing across teams.
That’s why we’re excited to introduce agents in Viva Engage communities - purpose-built AI designed to help communities thrive.
Launching in Public Preview today, Microsoft 365 Copilot can give every Engage community its own agent, grounded in the conversations and content that matter most to your community. It’s designed to provide time-savings, facilitate trusted knowledge sharing, and make expertise readily available in organizations so that communities can thrive with less effort. Read on to discover how an AI-powered community expert can foster community engagement and growth.
Your intelligent, collaborative community expert
Proactive answer generation
Agents in communities will proactively identify unanswered questions and use deep reasoning to draft responses, accelerating community connection and knowledge sharing. If the community admin chooses to require review before posting, agent suggestions will be ready in a queue so admins and experts can efficiently review, edit, and approve responses to meet the community's needs.
The agent monitors for open questions, helping communities stay responsive and get members the information they need. By proactively answering questions to support employee connection and knowledge, the agent helps overcome the challenge of starting on a blank page, so your community never stalls waiting for a response.
Grounded on community conversations and SharePoint
By default, agents in communities are grounded in your community’s conversations and the associated SharePoint site. You can also specify additional SharePoint sites for even richer knowledge that the agent can source from, such as adding dedicated knowledge libraries maintained by the community. The agent uses advanced AI models, including GPT-5, to provide answers that are relevant and contextual.
Expert verification and cited references in answers
Every answer includes citations to its sources and can be verified by community experts, building trust and transparency for your community. When a community expert approves an answer, it’s automatically marked “Verified,” so members know they’re getting trusted information. Answers posted directly by the agent can also be verified by experts at any time.
Notifications in the flow of work
When answers are ready for review, the agent notifies admins and experts in Microsoft Teams so they can review, edit, and approve answers without leaving their workflow.
Transparent sources with the agent hovercard
Every member can see the agent’s grounding sources and skills through the hovercard, making it easy to understand how answers are generated and what the agent can do.
Getting started with an agent in your community
Agent set up and configuration
Community admins can easily add an agent to a Viva Engage community and connect to relevant knowledge, including SharePoint sites. The agent is now ready to assist the community with its unique information and context. The agent will also automatically take on the name of the community it serves. For example, if your Engage community is named “Product Sales Support” the agent will be automatically named “Product Sales Support agent”.
In the agent settings, the community admin can choose to keep the admins and experts in the loop with the optional review toggle, so answers are always aligned with your community’s standards. The community admin can activate, pause, or remove the agent at any time. All members in the community can see the agent activation status, capabilities, and connected knowledge sources on the agent hovercard. To ensure privacy, the agent will only share information in answers that all community members have access to.
Availability and licensing
Now in Public Preview, AI-powered agents are available in Engage communities for users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. Community members without a Microsoft 365 Copilot license will be able to view agent interactions with other licensed members. Admins can opt into Public Preview in the Engage Admin Center. Learn more on how IT Administrators can opt in by following instructions in this article.
Looking ahead: What’s next
As we approach General Availability, stay tuned for exciting upcoming features and improvements with AI-powered communities in Engage. While we’re starting here, our vision is to expand to additional community scenarios over time. Additionally, Copilot is now generally available in Engage for users with Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses, bringing even more AI-powered assistance to your employee communities and communications.
Microsoft
