Announcing General Availability of the Employee Self-Service Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot

Introducing the Employee Self-Service Agent

Today, we're excited to announce that the Employee Self-Service Agent (ESS Agent) in Microsoft 365 Copilot is general available and starting to roll out today, transforming AI-powered employee service delivery for enterprise organizations. This week, during Microsoft Ignite - whether you’ll be onsite in San Francisco or catching the programming online - we hope you join us to learn more about the agent, the value proposition, and a look at the future roadmap.

Employees today often navigate a complex web of knowledge bases, apps, and systems for routine employee service delivery tasks, commonly for HR or IT support. This fragmentation can create unnecessary friction, slow down service delivery, and lead to an increase in support tickets, ultimately impacting productivity and employee satisfaction across the organization.

The Employee Self-Service Agent addresses these challenges with centralized, AI-powered service delivery within M365 Copilot, beginning with HR- and IT-focused scenarios. Rather than relying on one-size-fits-all solutions, as a custom agent configurable and extendable in Copilot Studio, Employee Self-Service enables you to create a tailored centralized experience in Copilot where employees can get trusted answers, complete key tasks, or get handed off to the right agent, all within the flow of work. For organizations, this means fewer support tickets, faster resolution times, and a more satisfied, productive workforce.

The agent leverages deep integration with the Microsoft Graph and connects to your core HR and IT systems (such as SAP SuccessFactors , ServiceNow and Workday) as well as knowledge bases like SharePoint, the Microsoft-built ServiceNow Copilot Connector, and M365 Self-Help. It also unlocks employee services-focused capabilities in Copilot – from specialized maker features in Copilot Studio to optimized employee experiences in Copilot.

HR and IT today, with more coming soon

Adoption of the Employee Self-Service Agent begins with HR and IT scenarios and can later be extended to additional business areas as needed. The agent offers a jump start to a broad range of high-impact employee use cases – including but not limited to:

• HR Support: Employees can check leave balances, update personal email, retrieve compensation and benefits data, or submit HR tickets- all in one place.
• IT Assistance: From device troubleshooting and replacement, to submitting support tickets and live agent escalation, IT help is just a prompt away.
• Manager Tools: Managers can review team data and service anniversaries, as well as update reportee information, directly through the agent.
• Agent handoffs: Connect Employee Self-Service Agent to any specialized Copilot agents, first- or third-party agents, so employees get a seamless experience inline and with context, without navigating to other tools or agents.
• [Future] More Verticals: Looking ahead, support for other verticals including Facilities—such as visitor registration, campus dining ordering, and maintenance requests—will be available as accelerators expand, increasing the agent’s value and breadth even further. In the meantime, you can enable these scenarios today via custom extensibility, just like Microsoft has done.

Why Employee Self-Service Agent

Beyond a traditional chatbot, the Employee Self-Service Agent is designed to work with and extend the value of your current systems and agents to be the centralized experience for all employee services needs.

• Expands on M365 Copilot: Microsoft 365 Copilot anchors personal productivity by enabling tasks like writing emails, creating reports, and prepping presentations with contextual insights. Employee Services Delivery needs specialized agentic experiences that unify HR and IT services, reflect brand identity, and provide trusted access to policy and systems of record. Employee Self-Service Agent extends AI-powered solutions across the enterprise, driving operational savings and ROI through reduced support tickets.
• Fully extensible and customizable: Employee Self-Service is a starting point – because it is built on the Copilot Studio foundation, makers and admins can fully extend and customize workflows beyond those included with the agent, to tailor the agent to organizational needs. This maximizes flexibility while giving a head start on common needs. Employee Self-Service Agent includes a growing library of Copilot Studio sample code and open-source extensibility code, available on GitHub. These resources provide templates and guidance for building custom workflows and connectors. If you can define the workflow, you can build it into the agent.
• Designed for Employee Service Delivery: Employee Self-Service Agent unlocks scenario-driven capabilities throughout the M365 Copilot ecosystem, including leveraging authoritative sources of information (important for the distinction of official policies, for example), customizable agent-level and per-message disclaimers, tunable inline handoffs to specialized agents, and more.
• Centralized Experience: Integrations with leading HRIS, HCM, and IT systems deliver one agent experience for your employee service delivery needs, starting with HR and IT scenarios—no more jumping between apps and agents. Employee Self-Service Agent enables the ability to provide generative knowledge responses, company-crafted & tailored answers, and direct task completion - from leave requests to troubleshooting IT issues. In some cases, other specialized agents may be the best place to direct employees – in ESS, those conversations with other agents can happen inline - with shared context.

Jumpstart org-wide employee service delivery with accelerator packs

While Employee Self-Service provides the flexibility for nearly unlimited extension and customization through Copilot Studio, it also includes a set of “accelerator packs” to help makers get started more quickly than building an agent from scratch.

These accelerators include Microsoft-built connectors, starter workflows, and inline agent handoff for common HR and IT scenarios—like leave management, updating employee profiles, troubleshooting Microsoft products, and creating or tracking support tickets. The ESS Agent’s integration with key HRIS, HCM, and IT partners is a game-changer for centralized enterprise employee services. Accelerator packs for SAP SuccessFactors, ServiceNow and Workday allow organizations to automate HR and IT processes, surface real-time data, and ensure a centralized support experience.  

These accelerators significantly reduce implementation time, enabling faster deployment and time to value. Advanced features such as inline action-taking, inline contextual handoffs to specialized agents for expanded scenarios, support for sensitive topics with custom disclaimers, and deep personalization based on employee role, geography, and company policies enables a responsive and compliant service experience – all without leaving Employee Self-Service, keeping the conversation and context intact.

Read more about the Employee Self-Service Agent accelerator packs and how to strategize your AI-centric employee service delivery roadmap.

Customer spotlight: Engie

Engie, a global energy leader focused on sustainability based out of France, serves customers in 30+ countries. Engie employes approximately 100,000 people, with employees who manage their work profile data, deal with IT issues, and look for corporate and role-related policies on a daily basis. This employee experience has been fragmented across multiple systems, making it cumbersome for employees to constantly switch between systems. Engie’s technology team has deployed and is testing the Employee Self-Service Agent to curate information across multiple HR and IT systems, bringing answers and actions from these systems into a single, secure M365 Copilot experience - built for scale and governance, honoring existing permission models.

Microsoft’s own journey adopting the Employee Self-Service Agent

Microsoft's own HR, IT, and facilities organizations have served as “customer zero” for the Employee Self-Service Agent, deploying the solution internally prior to general availability. By implementing the agent within Microsoft, across 200,000+ employees, we’ve been able to streamline employee services workflows, consolidate access to HR, IT, and campus services resources, and reduce ticket volumes while gathering real-world feedback to refine the agent’s features. This early adoption not only demonstrated the system’s scalability and ability to integrate with existing Microsoft and employee service delivery tools, but also provided valuable insights that helped shape today’s general availability product for broad scale enterprise use.

Early results show up to 31% fewer support tickets and a 25% increase in response accuracy, underscoring the Agent’s real-world impact. From a recent Microsoft Inside Track blog, we expect to see following outcomes going forward:

• 400,000 and 600,000 HR support ticket deflections when employees use Employee Self-Service
• 50,000 hours of employee time saved per year using Employee Self-Service for visitor registration at Microsoft buildings

Getting Started

Ready to transform employee experiences with AI? The Employee Self-Service Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot is now rolling out in phases. After Employee Self-Service is configured and enabled by IT admins in Copilot, employees can access the agent if they have a Copilot license or using Copilot Credits via Copilot Chat.

Visit the Employee Self-Service Agent Adoption page to get started, learn best practices for deployment, and connect with your Microsoft representative to bring the Employee Self-Service Agent to life in your organization.

Join us this week at Microsoft Ignite, November 18-21, 2025

Are you attending Microsoft Ignite in San Francisco or online this week? If you’ll be onsite in San Francsico, we’re ready to meet you and answer any questions during these exciting events. Three ways to connect:

• Get hands-on experience during either of our two lab sessions LAB562 or LAB562-R1: Jump start AI-powered HR and IT support with Employee Self-Service Agent

o   LAB562 | Tuesday, November 19, 1:00 - 2:15PM Pacific

o   Lab562-R1 | Wednesday, November 20, 11:45AM - 1:00PM Pacific

• Join us for an in-depth discussion at breakout session BRK286: Get HR and IT tasks done faster with the Employee Self-Service Agent

o   Thursday, November 20, 3:30-4:15PM Pacific

o   This session will be livestreamed and recorded

• Stop by the Employee Experiences booth in the Expert Meet Up expo to chat with our team and see the Employee Self-Service Agent in action.

With the Employee Self-Service Agent, your employees now have a smarter, faster way to get HR and IT tasks done, and your organization unlocks new levels of operational efficiency. The future of employee service delivery is here—centralized, secure, and ready to scale with you.