What's new in Agent 365 - September 2026

Microsoft

Sep 30, 2026

Since launching Agent 365 in May 2026, nearly 50 million agents have been registered across tens of thousands of organizations. As agent adoption accelerates, IT and security teams are looking beyond simple visibility and governance to a new challenge: understanding which agents are delivering value, where resources are being spent, and how to optimize a growing agent estate at scale.

This month’s Agent 365 updates help address these challenges with new capabilities that connect AI workloads to business outcomes, provide more visibility and control across the agent estate, and centralize governance across agents, tools, and runtime environments. Together, these enhancements help organizations reduce blind spots, automate oversight, and scale AI investments with confidence.

Connect AI workloads to business value

As AI usage grows across agents, applications, and services, organizations need one place to manage consumption and align access with business needs. Cost management in Agent 365 delivers FinOps for AI capabilities to help organizations manage usage-based AI spend, set clear spending guardrails, track costs and connect usage to value. Cost management in Agent 365 is included with Microsoft cloud subscriptions. New innovations include:

Manage more usage-based billed workloads in one place

Cost management in Agent 365 expands beyond Copilot Cowork and WorkIQ and now supports Code and Copilot Managed Runtime. Support for agents built with Microsoft Copilot Studio is planned for October, with more AI workloads to follow, making Agent 365 the central home for managing usage-based billing.

Match model choice to business needs

When configuring a spending policy in cost management, admins can give different groups access to the models and effort levels that best fit their work. These policies also shape which models Auto can select in Cowork, allowing advanced models for high-impact projects and power users while offering more efficient options elsewhere. The capability is rolling out for Cowork, with additional workloads planned.

Connect consumption to Cowork value

The Consumption Dashboard in Insights connects Copilot Cowork usage with outcomes, showing trends across active users, credits, and tasks; organizing work by task category; and estimating Cowork-assisted value in time and dollars.

Leaders can compare value-generating tasks with the credits they consume to decide where to expand adoption, improve usage, or redirect investment.

Gain more visibility and control across the agent estate

As agent estates grow across platforms, IT needs a complete inventory and faster ways to identify where action is required. Agent 365 brings Microsoft-native and third-party agents into one registry, then helps administrators turn that visibility into action through intelligent discovery and automated governance. New innovations include:

Find the agents that need attention with AI mode

As registries grow, finding the right agents should not require building complex filters. Now in public preview, AI mode transforms the Agent 365 registry from a static browsing experience into an intelligent discovery experience. Administrators can use natural-language prompts to find, filter, and explore agents using contextual attributes - for example, to identify agents without owners, locate inactive agents, or surface agents that warrant closer review. This reduces time to insight and helps administrators turn registry data into practical governance workflows.

Drive consistency, efficiency, and scale for agent management with automated rules

Agent Management Rules, now available in public preview, give admins a powerful way to automate agent governance at scale. In the Microsoft 365 admin center, admins can create custom rules to automatically take actions such as blocking agents, rejecting publication requests, or applying policy templates when specified conditions are met. Rules can be based on a growing set of criteria, including ownership status, agent tags, Microsoft Entra Agent ID, publisher, risk signals, usage activity, and more. This helps organizations reduce manual administration, enforce governance consistently, and keep their agent inventory secure, compliant, and well managed as agent adoption grows.

Centralize governance across agents, tools and runtimes

As agents gain access to more tools, data, and services, organizations need consistent controls that extend across the full agent ecosystem. Agent 365 centralizes governance across agents, tools, and runtime environments, helping IT reduce fragmented oversight, enforce policy consistently, and protect enterprise resources as adoption grows. New innovations include:

Control MCP servers, plugins, skills, and connectors from one place

Now generally available, Tools management in Agent 365 expands the centralized governance experience beyond MCP servers to include plugins, skills, and connectors. Plugins provide reusable actions and integrations, skills add specialized AI capabilities and workflows, and connectors enable secure access to enterprise and third-party data and services.

From one management pane, administrators can discover connected tools, review key metadata and usage, and apply tenant-wide allow or block controls across MCP servers, plugins, skills, and connectors. This consistent framework reduces the need to manage tools across separate systems and helps keep agent access within approved organizational boundaries. Power Platform connectors governance is in progress.

Put custom MCP servers on an approval path

Organizations can also bring their own MCP servers under explicit IT oversight. In public preview in September 2026, developers can register custom MCP servers through the Agent 365 CLI and submit them for administrator review before agents are allowed to invoke them. In the Microsoft 365 admin center, administrators can inspect the server description, publisher, requestor, endpoint, and capabilities, then approve or reject the request.

This creates a clear path from extension to approval. Customers and partners can add the custom and third-party MCP servers their work requires, while IT maintains visibility and control across agents operating in the Microsoft 365 tenant.

Connect enterprise AI governance with runtime policy enforcement

Beginning September 30, the integration between Microsoft Agent 365 and Azure API Management will begin rolling out, connecting centralized AI governance with policy enforcement at runtime. AI assets onboarded to Azure API Management, including agents, tools, models, and MCP servers, can be automatically discovered in Agent 365, improving visibility while reducing manual onboarding. Administrators can centrally govern access through Agent 365, while Azure API Management applies authentication, routing, and runtime controls to help protect AI traffic and enterprise assets as agents take action.

Turn agent growth into business impact

Organizations are entering a new phase of AI adoption. Success is no longer measured by the number of agents deployed, but by how effectively those agents are tracked, managed, and connected to business outcomes.

The latest Agent 365 innovations help organizations understand AI value, gain deeper visibility into their growing agent estate, and apply governance at scale. Together, these capabilities enable IT and security teams to confidently transform agent growth into measurable business impact.