The agent adoption gap is real
Agents are quickly becoming a core part of enterprise AI strategy. The 2026 Work Trend Index shows 58% of employees are now producing work they couldn’t do a year ago, and AI is increasingly used for analysis, reasoning, and decision-making—not just tasks. While individual capability is accelerating, many organizations are struggling to keep up. The gap isn’t access to AI—it’s how work is designed around it.
In customer conversations, we consistently hear three blockers:
- Where do we start? The catalog of AI solutions is expanding faster than most organizations can evaluate.
- What can we trust? Without a curated channel, every new agent introduces security, compliance, and data governance work—slowing adoption.
- How do we drive adoption? Even a great agent delivers zero value if employees don’t discover it or embed it in daily workflows.
Find and use agents from the Agent Store
Agent Store is a curated hub in Microsoft 365 Copilot where users can discover, install, and use agents directly in the flow of work. It brings together agents built by Microsoft, trusted partners, and your own teams, making them accessible across Microsoft 365 surfaces including Teams, Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. It provides:
- One central place to find agents from Microsoft, trusted partners, and your own teams.
- Personalized discovery experience that surfaces relevant agents based on each user’s work context.
- Fully vetted third-party agents designed to help you adopt with confidence.
- IT-administered control and oversight on store catalog curation and management.
4 pathways to a curated store: start where you are
There isn’t a single path to populate your catalog. Most organizations use more than one approach based on their goals and business needs:
- Deploy pre-built agents from Microsoft and verified partners. This is the fastest route to get started with a new agent, with no development effort required.
- Build agents and distribute through Agent Store using Microsoft Copilot Studio for faster time to value, or the Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit and Agents SDK for pro-code development and deeper control.
- Bring your own agents. If you’ve already built on Microsoft Foundry, third-party AI platforms, or custom code, you can still onboard them through the Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit and SDK so they’re discoverable in the Agent Store.
- Integrate with the Microsoft Agent 365 SDK to add enterprise capabilities such as Entra-backed identity, governed Microsoft 365 data access, observability, and cross-surface notifications without a full rebuild.
New Agent Store whitepaper available
To help organizations move from AI experimentation to scaled adoption, the new Agent Store whitepaper is now available for download. If you’re responsible for agent adoption strategy, governance, and scaled deployment, the new guide walks through the “why,” the “what,” and the “how.” It includes:
- The business case for a curated, governed Agent Store.
- A walkthrough of the Agent Store user experience.
- Step-by-step IT deployment guidance for the four pathways.
- Getting-started recommendations to help you move from exploration to impact.
Get the guide
Download the Agent Store whitepaper
More resources:
- Documentation: Set up Agent Store in Microsoft 365 Copilot — Microsoft Learn
- Agent Store Partner Guide
- Administering and Governing Agents whitepaper
Microsoft