Since launching in June 2025, People Skills has become foundational within Microsoft 365—powering Copilot, a new generation of Copilot agents, and experiences across M365 that help employees and leaders make better decisions about work, learning, and talent. People Skills is core to Work IQ, bringing skills intelligence into the fabric of how people work, collaborate, and grow—for everyone in the organization.
Today, we are announcing an expansion of People Skills in three key ways:
- To more users: AI-powered skill inferencing is now available to Microsoft 365 E3 and E5 license holders, extending skills coverage to the majority of organizations' workforces.
- To more surfaces: Beyond Microsoft 365 Copilot, skills data is now integrated into a new set of Copilot agents—including the Learning agent and Workforce Insights agent—and will soon appear on the Teams profile card, one of the most visited surfaces in the M365 ecosystem.
- Flexible and simplified admin controls: Admins can now enable People Skills for specific users or groups and also import custom skills libraries directly from local files in addition to SharePoint-hosted files.
What People Skills is – and why it matters
Traditional skills systems rely on employees to manually update profiles, leading to incomplete and outdated data that can miss real employee capabilities. People Skills solves this with AI continuously inferring skills from everyday work activity across Microsoft 365, analyzing signals from documents, emails, meetings, and job context to build skills profiles mapped to an organization’s approved taxonomy. For eligible licensed users, these profiles stay automatically up to date as work changes, without ongoing manual input - early adopters report around 80%+ accuracy when validating their AI-inferred skills. For details on People Skills capabilities, see our People Skills adoption site.
People Skills also has strong admin- and user-level privacy and visibility controls to support flexible rollout, compliance alignment, and comprehensive user options for skill visibility and AI-inferred skill preferences. For details on data and privacy controls, see Manage Privacy and Sharing controls in People Skills.
People Skills Updates
Expanded AI-Powered Inferencing for E3/E5 Users
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Admins can now expand AI-powered skill inferencing to users with Microsoft 365 Enterprise E3 and E5 licenses. Previously, this was available only to Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Viva licensed users. Enabling inferencing for E3 and E5 users improves skills coverage across the organization—resulting in richer workforce analytics for leaders and more robust results in people-based queries in Microsoft 365 Copilot and related agents. Admins can turn on AI-powered skill inferencing for E3/E5 users in the Microsoft 365 admin center.
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People Skills in Teams Profile Card (Coming Soon in March 2026)
People skills will soon appear directly on the Microsoft 365 profile card in Teams – one of the most visited surfaces in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. This will help employees discover colleagues’ skills, strengthen collaboration, and manage their own skills profile right within the flow of work.
People Skills in Learning agent (Frontier)
Recently announced at Ignite 2025, the new Learning agent guides employees along their skill development journey with personalized learning recommendations, curated learning paths, and interactive AI-powered role-play exercises from LinkedIn Learning. Learning agent uses skills data to suggest personalized learning content to users. Learn More: Agents in Microsoft 365 Adoption site.
People Skills in Workforce Insights Agent (Frontier)
Also announced at Ignite 2025, the new Workforce Insights Agent gives leaders a real-time view of their organization's skills distribution—helping identify strengths, gaps, and opportunities for workforce development. The agent provides actionable organizational insights through preloaded prompts that give a clear view of team structure, level mix, and skills distribution to help inform workforce planning decisions. Learn More: Agents in Microsoft 365 Adoption site.
Note
Skills Agent users in Frontier have helped shape how skills experiences work in Copilot—and we're now bringing these capabilities into M365 Copilot and dedicated agents so more users can benefit. As part of this transition, the Skills Agent will be removed from the agent store for new installations on March 16, 2026, and retired at the end of March 2026. All existing skills capabilities continue to be supported through M365 Copilot and the new Learning and Workforce Insights agents. If your organization is currently using the Skills agent, we recommend beginning your transition now.
People Skills in Skills Landscape Report
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The Skills Landscape PowerBI Report in Viva Insights is now generally available. The report integrates People Skills data to give analysts and business leaders visibility into the specific skills being used across their organization—supporting more informed decisions on workforce planning, talent management, and skilling initiatives.
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Improved skill ordering
Users can now reorder skills on their profile card, choosing which skills appear first. This makes it easier to highlight the most relevant expertise and manage how colleagues see your skills profile across Microsoft 365. We've also improved how inferred skills are ranked on user profiles, making it easier for employees to review and confirm the most relevant skills first.
New People Skills User Experiences Control
Admins can now control the rollout of People Skills user experiences to target specific groups before enabling broadly across the organization – giving organizations the flexibility to pilot with targeted groups—validating value, gathering feedback, and refining configuration—before broader deployment.
The new People Skills user experiences control allows admins to enable or disable the full People Skills experience for specific users, groups, or the entire tenant. This includes the ability to scope the rollout to a pilot group while keeping the experience disabled for other users. For details on configuring this control, see Overview of People Skills User Experiences control.
Local Custom File Upload
Admins can now upload custom skills libraries directly from local devices, rather than requiring SharePoint-hosted files. This provides more flexibility for organizations that maintain skills taxonomies in local files or want a simpler import process without configuring SharePoint hosting. For details on importing custom skills libraries, see Manage your skills library in People Skills.
How Organizations Are Using People Skills data
Since GA, People Skills has seen strong adoption across thousands of enterprise customers. The scenarios resonating most strongly with early customers include:
- AI-inferred skills in the flow of work: Accurate, automatically refreshed skills surface directly in Copilot and across Microsoft 365—so people can make skills-based connections in their daily workflows.
- Data-driven workforce planning: Leaders identify capability gaps and make informed hiring, upskilling, and organizational design decisions grounded in real skills signal rather than assumptions.
- Finding people for projects and networking: Employees and team leaders quickly identify colleagues with the right experience for project staffing, knowledge sharing, or ad-hoc questions—without relying on tribal knowledge or outdated directories.
- Skills-based learning recommendations: Employees discover learning content aligned to their actual skills, powered by their inferred skills profile rather than generic content libraries.
Get Started with People Skills today
To deploy People Skills in your tenant, see Set up People Skills on Microsoft Learn.
For adoption resources, include video demos of our agents and capabilities, and deployment guides, visit the People Skills Adoption site.
Microsoft