Agent 365 Blog articles

Make any agent enterprise-ready with the Agent 365 SDK

aaronbjork — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 19:19:00 GMT

One of the biggest barriers to enterprise adoption is the lack of centralized controls. Before deploying an agent broadly, organizations need clear answers: What is this agent allowed to do? What data can it access? How is it monitored? And how do we step in when something goes wrong?

Today, developers often piece together identity, runtime protection, and observability using a mix of point solutions and open-source tools. The result is fragmented policy management, disconnected monitoring, and operational overhead that’s difficult to scale within existing IT and security systems. What enterprises need instead is a unified control plane that brings these capabilities together.

Introducing the Agent 365 SDK

On May 1, Microsoft announced the general availability of Agent 365, the control plane for enterprises to observe, govern, and secure agents at scale. Agents built on the Microsoft AI platform (Agent Builder, Copilot Studio, and Microsoft Foundry) get Agent 365 capabilities automatically, with zero additional developer effort.

For agents built on external platforms or open-source frameworks, the Agent 365 SDK provides the path in. The SDK enables enterprise-grade observability, governance, and security, while the Agent 365 CLI provisions the agent identity and registers the agent in Agent 365 from day one.

For example, a back-office agent built on Microsoft Foundry and a customer-facing agent built with the OpenAI Agents SDK can both be managed through Agent 365, using the same identity model, observability signals, and policy engine, no matter which platform or framework on which the agent runs.

What you get with the Agent 365 SDK

Observability

A unified agent registry. Every agent registered through the SDK appears in a unified Agent 365 registry, giving admins visibility into ownership, usage, connected tools and knowledge sources, and assigned permissions. Additional signals also help surface unmanaged local agents in the same control plane.
Security Operations Center (SOC) visibility in Microsoft Defender. Security Operations Center teams can use Microsoft Defender telemetry to hunt across agent activity, identify vulnerabilities, and investigate potential risks across the entire agent fleet

Governance

Agent lifecycle management. Apply rules-based policies to automatically expire inactive agents, flag ownerless agents, and block risky ones.
Onboarding and agent governance. Deploy agents to specific users or groups only after permissions, policies, and reviews are complete. Block, unblock, or remove agents on demand to control availability.
Policy templates. Group existing policies from Entra, Purview, Defender, and SharePoint into reusable templates that apply automatically during agent approval or onboarding.
Tool controls for agents. View, allow, or block tools across the tenant so agents only use approved tools, enforcing consistent governance without per-agent configuration.

Security

Agent identity in Entra.  The SDK generates an agent identity in Entra so the agent can be managed, and policies and role assignments can be applied to it the same way they are applied to users. Learn more in our Entra Agent ID developer blog post.
Access control.  Agents can be secured by Entra Conditional Access and Identity Protection for runtime protections as agent behavior evolves.
Threat detection in Defender.  Agent activity surfaces in Microsoft Defender alongside the rest of the estate, with alerts wired into the same incident pipeline the SOC already runs on.
Threat blocking tool invocation.  When you register tools with Agent 365, calls to and responses from those tools are protected by Defender’s runtime protection, blocking high-risk tool calls and actions before they execute.

How companies are putting it to work

Many software companies have already integrated the Agent 365 SDK into the agents they build, spanning three primary categories. The first is AI-native software vendors building customer-facing agents, such as Genspark, Zensai, Egnyte, and Zendesk. The second includes agent platforms and “agent factories” where customers build and run their own agents, including Kore.ai, Kasisto, and n8n. And the third is enterprises developing custom internal agents for their own employees and business processes.

All three groups integrate with the Agent 365 SDK for the same reason: when these agents are deployed into an enterprise, organizations can immediately observe, govern, and secure them in Agent 365 with no additional work required for the core capabilities. More advanced scenarios such as data security and compliance can then be added through Microsoft Purview APIs when required.

Two examples of what this looks like in practice

Kore.ai is an enterprise platform for building and managing AI agents and assistants. Raj Koneru the CEO of Kore.ai had this to say about Agent 365:

"Enterprises can easily build AI agents today but scaling them with trust and governance is where most initiatives stall. With Kore.ai deeply integrated into Microsoft Agent 365, identity, security, and governance are built in from the start, empowering enterprises to move from pilots to AI at scale with confidence." — Raj Koneru, Chief Executive Officer, Kore.ai

Zensai is an AI-native software development company that ships its Human Success Agent to enterprise customers. Emma Taylor, Culture & Organizational Development Manager at Phoenix Software Solutions, one of Zensai’s customers, on what Agent 365 makes possible:

"Zensai has given us a clear view of how our people and programs are performing, helping us track the metrics that matter. The depth of reporting across the Human Success Platform has been a game changer for our team. We're particularly excited about the Human Success Agent, with Agent 365 delivering the governance and observability our administrators need to confidently manage AI in the enterprise responsibly while surfacing the data and insights that drive better decisions across our business." — Emma Taylor, Culture & Organizational Development Manager, Phoenix Software Solutions

The takeaway is direct: integrate once with Agent 365 SDK, and every customer who deploys your agent can easily enable enterprise-grade controls.

Get started today

The Agent 365 SDK is available now. If your agent is already running, you can onboard it in three steps.

Install the SDK in your agent project using Python, TypeScript, or .NET.
Register the agent with the Agent 365 CLI to provision its identity and automatically onboard it into Agent 365.
Wrap your agent entry point with the SDK to stream activity and telemetry into the Agent 365 control plane.

For data security visibility and controls, you can integrate Microsoft Purview APIs to enable capabilities such as prompt-based Data Loss Prevention (DLP), Data Security Posture Management, Insider Risk Management, and core compliance features including eDiscovery, Communication Compliance, Audit, and Data Lifecycle Management. Learn more in our Purview developer blog post.

Get started with Agent 365 development

Keep learning

Microsoft is actively shaping the Agent 365 SDK based on what builders are asking for. A few places to go deeper and see the SDK in action:

Watch OD840: The Microsoft Build on demand developer session that goes deeper on Agent 365 SDK and the design decisions behind it.
Watch BRK251: Build secure and enterprise-ready agents with Agent 365. A hands-on breakout that walks through how Agent 365 SDK and Microsoft Purview APIs work together across the agent lifecycle, with practical examples for runtime visibility, identity-aware access, data protection, and policy-based governance. Available on Wed, Jun 3 11:30 AM - 12:15 PM PDT and on demand.
Browse the docs: For quick-starts, reference, and the layered toolkit guide.
Go deeper on Purview for agents: Start with the Purview developer blog for the story, then the Microsoft Purview developer documentation for the full reference.
Read more on Entra Agent ID: Start with the Entra Agent ID developer blog, then the Microsoft Entra Agent ID documentation for the full reference.

Shipping an agent that IT and security teams can actually approve doesn't have to mean piecing together multiple solutions. With the Agent 365 SDK, you can build enterprise-ready agents that organizations can deploy with confidence.

Co-Authored by Jeremiah Follis

Microsoft 365 E7 & Agent365: From Where You Are to Enterprise AI at Scale

umamasurkar28 — Fri, 15 May 2026 07:13:27 GMT

Introduction

As organizations move beyond AI experimentation and begin operationalizing agent-based AI workloads, a new set of challenges is emerging governance, visibility, and control.

Microsoft’s response to this shift is Microsoft 365 E7, introduced on May 1, 2026. It bundles:

Microsoft 365 E5
Microsoft 365 Copilot
Microsoft Entra Suite
Microsoft Agent 365

This represents Microsoft’s strategic direction toward a human-led, agent-operated enterprise.

However, a key pattern is emerging:

Many organizations deploy Agent 365 and assume governance is complete.

It isn’t.

Understanding Agent 365: Control Plane, Not Control Source

Agent 365 is not a standalone security solution, it is a control plane for AI agents.

It provides:

Agent registry and discovery
Blueprint governance and lifecycle control
Observability across agents
Aggregation of signals from Entra, Defender and Purview

Simple analogy

Agent 365 is like a dashboard in a car

It shows status
It aggregates signals
But it does not generate signals

Without identity, data and threat signals → governance visibility is incomplete.

The Key Gap: “Enabled” vs “Governed”

Agent 365 can be enabled standalone but governance requires:

Identity signals (Entra)
Threat signals (Defender)
Data risk signals (Purview)

This gap between “enablement” and “full governance” is where most deployments fall short.

Agent 365 Governance Maturity Heatmap

The following heatmap summarizes how governance capabilities evolve as you layer the Microsoft stack:

Capability	Agent 365 on E3	+ Defender Suite	+ Purview Suite	+ Entra Suite	E7 (Full)
Agent registry / inventory	✅ Full	✅	✅	✅	✅
Shadow agent discovery	✅ Full	✅	✅	✅	✅
Blueprint governance / kill-switch	✅ Full	✅	✅	✅	✅
First-party agent observability	✅ Full	✅	✅	✅	✅
Conditional Access for agents (P1)	✅ Already in BP/E3	✅	✅	✅	✅
ID Governance for agents (P1)	✅ Already in BP/E3	✅	✅	✅	✅
Risk-based CA / ID Protection (P2)	❌	✅	❌	✅	✅
MDA behavioral risk detection	❌	✅	❌	❌	✅
Risks column fully populated	⚠️ Entra only	⚠️ Entra + Defender	⚠️ Entra + Purview	⚠️ Entra + Network	✅ All signals
Purview DLP for agent interactions	⚠️ Basic only	⚠️ Basic only	✅ Full	⚠️ Basic only	✅ Full
DSPM for AI	❌	❌	✅	❌	✅
Shadow AI discovery (external tools)	❌	❌	❌	✅	✅
Security Copilot SCUs	❌	❌	❌	❌	✅ (via E5)

🔍 Interpretation of the Heatmap

Key insight:

Agent 365 on its own provides visibility and governance scaffolding, but true governance maturity emerges only when identity (Entra) threat (Defender), and data (Purview) signals are combined.

Microsoft 365 E7 is the only SKU that delivers all signals, identity, security, compliance and AI governance in a single integrated model.

What Works with Agent 365 Alone

On Business Premium or E3 + Agent 365, you still get meaningful capabilities:

Agent registry (full visibility)
Shadow agent discovery
Blueprint governance and kill-switch
Entra Agent ID (identity registration)
Conditional Access for agents (via Entra P1)
ID Governance (via Entra P1)
First-party agent observability

This provides a strong governance foundation, especially for early-stage adoption.

What’s Missing Without the Full Stack

Without Defender, Purview, and Entra Suite key capabilities are limited:

Risk-based Conditional Access (requires Entra P2)
Behavioral threat detection (Defender)
Data interaction governance (Purview DLP)
AI data security posture (DSPM for AI)
External shadow AI discovery (Entra Internet Access)

Result:

You can see agents exist but you cannot fully assess risk, behavior or data exposure.

What changes across layers:

Layer Added	What Improves
Defender	Threat detection, behavioral risk
Purview	Data protection, AI data governance
Entra Suite	Network + identity-level AI control
E7	Full integration across all layers

Licensing Model: Clarifying Agent 365

Agent 365 licensing is simple but often misunderstood:

Licensed per user (not per agent)
Covers all agents owned or managed by that user
Agents do not need individual licenses

This eliminates agent sprawl licensing concerns and anchors governance to the user identity.

Upgrade Math by Starting Point

This is where architecture meets commercial reality.

📍 Business Premium

Starting point: $22/user

Step	Add-on	Total
Step 1	Agent 365 ($15)	$37
Step 2	Defender + Purview Combo ($15)	$52
Step 3	Entra Suite ($12)	$64
Step 4	Copilot + Intune Suite	~$95

👉 Full E7 Parity: ~$95/user
👉 E7: $99/user

At this stage:

Minimal price difference
E7 adds Security Copilot + removes 300-user limit

✅ This is where consolidation becomes compelling.

📍 E3

Starting point: $39/user

Component	Cost
E3 Base	$39
Agent 365	$15
Defender Suite	$12
Purview Suite	$12
Entra Suite	$12
Intune Suite	$10
Copilot	$30
Total	$130/user

👉 E7: $99/user

💥 Delta: $31/user
💥 ~$74K/year extra for 200 users

✅Use Agent 365 for visibility if needed

✅Avoid building full add-on stack

✅Move to E5 or E7 early

📍 E5

Starting point: $60/user

Remaining gaps:

Copilot ($30)
Entra Suite ($12)
Agent 365 ($15)

👉 Total: $117/user
👉 E7: $99/user

💥 Savings: $18/user
💥 ~$108K/year for 500 users

✅ ~15% savings

✅ Simplified licensing

✅ This becomes a strong renewal conversation driver.

Architectural Perspective

AI governance requires layered architecture:

Layer	Function
Agent 365	Control plane
Entra	Identity + access
Defender	Threat detection
Purview	Data protection

Governance is not a feature, it is a system built on continuous signals across identity, security and data.

How to Position This in Customer Conversations

For Business Premium

Start with Agent 365
Add Defender + Purview for maximum value

For E3

Avoid incremental add-ons
Move to E5/E7

For E5

Position E7 as cost optimization + simplification

Final Thought

Agent 365 is a foundational capability but it is not a complete solution.

On its own, it gives you visibility and a governance layer. But enterprise AI governance is not just about seeing and managing agents it’s about understanding what they’re doing, what they’re accessing and whether they should be doing it at all.

A simple way to think about it:

Deploying Agent 365 alone is like setting up a badge system in your building you can track who is inside and control access.

But without the broader security stack, you still can’t:

Detect risky or unusual behavior
Protect sensitive data from overexposure
Enforce governance consistently across the environment

Bottom Line

Agent 365 provides the control plane
Security and compliance services provide the signals
Microsoft 365 E7 brings these together into a unified governance model

The Strategic Shift

Organizations are moving from:

AI as tools → isolated productivity gains
AI as systems → integrated workflows and automation
AI as governed ecosystems → secure, compliant, and scalable operations

Sustainable AI adoption is not defined by capability alone it is defined by how effectively that capability is governed at scale.

E7 is not just a licensing evolution it represents a shift to an integrated AI operating model, where governance is embedded by design, not added as an afterthought.

Agent365: The Identity-First Control Plane for Scalable AI Agents

umamasurkar28 — Fri, 15 May 2026 05:16:51 GMT

As organizations move from AI experimentation to enterprise-scale adoption, AI agents are increasingly becoming persistent actors within the digital environment accessing data, invoking APIs, and executing workflows autonomously.

This shift introduces a new governance challenge:
How do organizations ensure visibility, control and security as the number of agents scales across cloud, SaaS and endpoint environments?

Microsoft Agent365 addresses this challenge by introducing a control plane for AI agents, built on Microsoft Entra, that enables organizations to manage agents using the same identity-driven approach applied to users and applications.

Why Identity Becomes Foundational for Agent Governance

In traditional enterprise systems, identity platforms were designed to manage:

Human identities
Application identities
Service principals

With the introduction of Agent365, this model expands to include AI agents as first-class identities. Each agent is assigned a unique identity in Microsoft Entra, enabling consistent authentication, authorization, and lifecycle management.

This approach allows organizations to:

Apply policy-based access controls to agents
Enforce least privilege access models
Integrate agents into existing IAM and Zero Trust frameworks

As highlighted in recent partner perspectives, identity is evolving from a supporting capability to a centralized control plane for AI governance.

Managing Agent Sprawl with a Unified Control Plane

As AI agents proliferate across business units, organizations often face challenges such as:

Limited visibility into deployed agents
Inconsistent ownership and lifecycle management
Over-permissioned or unmanaged access to data
Increased operational and security risks

Agent365 addresses these challenges through a unified control plane that enables organizations to:

Discover and inventory agents across the environment
Apply governance policies consistently
Secure agent interactions and data access

This aligns with Microsoft’s broader approach to enable organizations to observe, govern, and secure AI workloads at scale.

Agents as Managed Identities in Microsoft Entra

One of the core innovations of Agent365 is the introduction of Entra Agent ID, which treats agents as managed identities within the directory.

This enables organizations to manage agents using familiar identity capabilities, including:

Conditional Access
Role-based and attribute-based access control (RBAC/ABAC)
Identity governance workflows (e.g., access reviews, lifecycle policies)
Audit and compliance monitoring

By aligning agent governance with identity, organizations can extend existing security controls without introducing separate governance silos.

Architecture Overview: Identity-Centric Control Plane

Agent365 integrates across Microsoft’s security and compliance ecosystem to provide a layered governance model:

Identity Layer (Control Plane Foundation)

Microsoft Entra ID for Agents
Identity governance and lifecycle controls
Conditional access enforcement

Governance Layer

Centralized agent registry (inventory of agents)
Ownership and accountability tracking
Policy enforcement across agent lifecycle

Security and Compliance Layer

Microsoft Defender for threat detection and behavior monitoring
Microsoft Purview for data protection and compliance
Integration with Zero Trust architecture

Observability Layer

Unified telemetry and dashboards
Monitoring of agent activities and interactions

Agent365 brings these capabilities together into a centralized experience within Microsoft 365, enabling consistent control across heterogeneous agent ecosystems.

Extending Zero Trust Principles to AI Agents

As agents operate autonomously and interact with multiple systems, extending Zero Trust principles becomes essential.

Agent365 allows organizations to apply:

Continuous verification of agent identity
Least privilege access enforcement
Real-time monitoring and anomaly detection

This ensures that agents operate within defined boundaries, reducing the risk of unintended actions or data exposure, while enabling secure scaling of AI adoption.

Key Capabilities Supporting Identity as the Control Plane

Agent365 enables identity-driven governance through a set of core capabilities:

Agent Registry
Provides a centralized inventory and visibility across all agents
Access Control
Enables policy-based and conditional access through Microsoft Entra
Lifecycle Management
Supports provisioning, updates, and decommissioning of agents
Security and Compliance Integration
Extends Defender and Purview capabilities to agent workflows
Cross-platform Support
Enables governance across Microsoft, open-source, and third-party agents

These capabilities help organizations manage agent ecosystems with the same rigor applied to workforce identities.

Key gaps Agent365 will surface

Shadow agents
More agents exist than you think built across Copilot Studio, Power Platform, or third-party tools… but never inventoried.
Ownerless agents
Agents continue running in production with no clear owner or accountability.
Over-permissioned access
Agents often inherit excessive privileges far beyond least-privilege intent.
No lifecycle governance
No expiry, no reviews, no retirement. Agents accumulate over time.
Untracked multi-agent workflows
Agent-to-agent interactions lack complete audit trails.
Data exposure via agents
Agents amplify existing oversharing risks across enterprise data.
Identity & access gaps
Traditional conditional access wasn’t designed for autonomous, non-human identities.

And in most enterprises, the true scale of these gaps is often underestimated.

Enabling Secure and Scalable Agentic AI

Organizations are increasingly recognizing that scaling AI is not just about deploying agents, but about ensuring control, visibility and compliance across their operations.

Agent365 provides a framework to:

Bring agents under a common governance model
Align AI operations with enterprise identity architecture
Reduce risks associated with unmanaged automation

By anchoring agents within Microsoft Entra, enterprises can leverage existing investments in identity, security and compliance to support AI at scale.

Conclusion

The transition to agentic AI introduces a new category of identity within the enterprise.

With Agent365, Microsoft establishes identity as the foundational control plane enabling organizations to manage AI agents as governed, auditable and secure entities.

As enterprises continue to adopt AI, this approach ensures that innovation can scale while maintaining the control, trust and compliance required in modern digital environments.

You Asked—We Answered: Inside the Agent 365 AMA

Nichole_Peterson — Wed, 13 May 2026 19:19:13 GMT

If you missed our live Agent 365 demo and 'Ask Microsoft Anything' AMA—or want to revisit the discussion—this replay is worth your time.

During the session, we walked through how Agent 365 brings visibility, security, and governance to the rapidly expanding world of AI agents—across both Microsoft and third-party ecosystems. But what made the session especially valuable was the live Q&A: a candid conversation with our experts tackling the real questions organizations are facing right now.

From licensing and identity models to monitoring third-party agents, managing “shadow AI,” defining risk, and understanding what governance actually looks like in practice—our panel answered it all, live.

Watch the replay to hear their responses and get clarity on how to confidently adopt and manage AI agents at scale.

Live AMA: Microsoft Agent 365 | Microsoft Community Hub

Questions about Agent 365 answered in the AMA

Community members submitted questions via live chat during our Q&A session. Our expert panel answered all of these questions live--watch the video to get their detailed responses!

How is Agent 365 licensed?
Microsoft language references three roles (or actions) which need an Agent 365 license. They are users that “interact with”, “manage”, or “sponsor” agents that use Agent 365 Premium capabilities. Can you expand on what defines those three user actions/roles?
I'm planning to build ai agents in Google ADK and want to know if it can be monitored using Agent 365?
Since Agent 365 allows bringing in both first-party and third-party agents, what's the identity and licensing model.
If an agent is not using an Entra Agent Identity, will it still appear in Agent 365 observability or governance?
So, could organizations use Agent 365 for central visibility, monitoring, and governance of agents, even if those agents don’t have their own identities?
Does that mean companies could avoid needing a per-user Agent 365 license for every employee interacting with the agent?
Is there a way of defining a "shadow AI" experience as non-shadowAI? If I want to authorize Claude CLI, how would I do that?
Agents from the Microsoft ecosystem (Copilot Studio, Foundry, SharePoint) and agents from the partner ecosystem will be automatically onboarded into Agent 365. However, today many of these agents execute as users, and some may continue to operate this way indefinitely. In other words, they may never receive their own Entra ID agent identity and may never run using an On-Behalf-Of (OBO) model. What observability, security and governance features of Agent 365 will be available for non-OBO agents?
What are the rules that define what a "risky" agent is?
If an agent is determined as "risky", then how are those signals captured?
When you are reviewing the Agent Risk Activities, is it a mandate to block the agent to review risk activities?
Do you lose autonomous agent usage without an Agent365 license?
What capabilities will be provided for Managed Service Providers (MSP's) to manage Agent 365 across multi-tenant, multi-customer environments?
I'm quite intrigued to know about the pricing structure of M365 agents leveraging MCP tools - is it per user, per agent, per tool invocation, or consumption-based?
Will MCP remote server (soon to be Public Preview) usage incur additional costs on top of Copilot licensing? Will it be bundled to M365 Copilot licensing or be standalone billable service?
Does Agent Rules need to executed manually whenever it’s required... or Agent Rules can be scheduled?
How big is the delta between monitoring agents and controlling agents? Is it 1:1, can any aspect you can monitor about the agent can also be controlled?
What resources are available to help my organization get started with Agent 365?

THANK YOU to all of our community members who participated in the AMA! And thank you to our host Samer_Baroudi, demoer and expert Paty Carlos, as well as our expert panel Irina_Nechaeva NetaH carolinestanford and our live chat responders alexpozin LouAdesida Nathalia_Borges Sophie_Ke CasandraMarrero and Leandro_Iwase!

Best regards,

Nichole

Top five: Agent 365 Resources

What’s New in Agent 365: May 2026

alexpozin — Wed, 20 May 2026 21:45:59 GMT

By Alex Pozin, Samer Baroudi

As we celebrate the general availability of Agent 365, we’re sharing a closer look at the core capabilities that help organizations adopt agents at scale, responsibly and with speed. Agent 365 is built on three core value pillars: observe, govern, and secure, designed to give IT and security teams clear visibility, consistent controls, and enterprise-grade protection across your entire agent fleet. In this series, we’ll highlight new Agent 365 features and enhancements now and over the months ahead. Let’s dive deep into all the things you can do today.

Observe: Monitor and manage agents in real time

Agent 365 overview dashboard

The Agent 365 overview dashboard is your starting point for Agent 365 in the Microsoft 365 admin center. With the overview dashboard you gain a clear, real-time view of your agents fleet by surfacing key metrics such as total registered agents, active users, growth trends, connected platforms, total runtime in hours, and emerging risk signals. At a glance, admins can understand the scale, adoption, and overall risk posture of their agent fleet, while recommended actions highlight where attention is needed most, such as reviewing pending agent requests, assigning owners to unclaimed agents, or addressing agents with exceptions (e.g. errors in conversation). Deeper analytics enable exploration of who is building agents, which platforms are gaining traction, how adoption is trending over time, and which agents are most heavily used, helping organizations move from basic visibility to informed, proactive governance as their agent ecosystem grows. As we continue to enrich the overview dashboard based on your needs, use this surface to quickly assess the scale, health, and risk posture of your agent environment, and take prioritized actions to stay in control as adoption grows.

An image showing the Agent 365 overview page with tile cards displaying key metrics, top actions and agent analytics.

Registry

As organizations scale their use of agents, having a single, authoritative system of record for agents becomes foundational to visibility, control, and trust. Agent 365 provides a centralized and unified registry that serves as the system of record for agents in the organization. Each agent¹, including those built by Microsoft, your organization, or ecosystem partners, is detailed with a complete record enriched with metadata like its name, description, publisher, platform, ownership, availability and deployment status, permissions from the Microsoft Graph, data and tools access, security and compliance details, certifications, usage activity, and more, giving IT and security teams a full view and eliminating blind spots.

An image displaying the Agent 365 registry, showing a list view of agents, tile cards for agent counts, and filter/search navigation elements.

Map

The agents map view provides a visual graph of the agent ecosystem, organizing agents by platform into clear clusters and surfacing agent counts so admins can quickly understand the scale and composition of their environment. As you zoom in, the map reveals individual agents and, for a selected agent, visualizes its connections to other agents, making dependencies and relationships explicit as agent usage grows across Microsoft and third-party platforms. Together, these views help IT and security teams move beyond static lists to spot patterns, understand how agents interact, and maintain visibility as their agent landscape becomes more complex.

An image showing the map view of all agents in the organization clustered by platform

Agent-level activity

Agent‑level activity metrics give admins operational visibility into how each agent is running and being used across the organization. Metrics such as usage sessions, engagement trends, and active users, help admins assess agent usage and validate adoption. Additionally, by correlating activity with users and policy signals, teams can quickly assess unusual behavior, exception alerts, or misconfigurations. Exportable activity data enables deeper analysis and reporting.

An image showing a fictitious agent named Zava Alerting agent selected in the registry and displaying agent activity details with metrics and charts for active users, sessions and agent responses.

Registry sync (Preview)

As agents are increasingly built and deployed across multiple platforms, organizations often lack a unified way to discover, inventory, and govern them. Registry sync enables AI admins to securely consent to and connect ecosystem partner agent platforms to Agent 365, bringing external agents and their metadata into the Agent 365 registry for a more unified view of your agent population. Where supported by the synced platform, you can also take agent-level governance actions directly from the Agent 365 registry, starting with agent deletion, to agents built on these platforms. The initial preview includes connections to AWS and Google Cloud, with additional partner platforms planned for future releases.

Note: Salesforce Agentforce and Databricks Genie are supported as of May 20th, 2026.

An image showing the registry sync detail view for the Amazon Bedrock connection showing options to sync, edit, and delete the connection, connection details, and a list of synced agents.

Shadow AI detection and blocking (Preview)

Local agents installed on company devices outside IT and security visibility is an emerging endpoint risk. These agents can read files, execute code, and act on a user’s behalf, enabling access to sensitive data or risky operations without touching managed cloud services. Agent 365 provides the control plane to register and manage approved agents across the environment.

A new Shadow AI page, enabled by Microsoft Defender and Microsoft Intune, helps identify local agent activity on Windows devices and apply endpoint controls. Initial support includes OpenClaw, with plans to expand to additional widely used agents over time. Admins get a centralized view of local agent usage and can take action to limit unsanctioned execution paths at the endpoint, helping reduce risk while supporting approved tools.

Detect — one view of local agents across the environment with Agent 365
Block — Intune policies that help stop unsanctioned agent execution at the endpoint
Protect at scale — guardrails expand with your estate as coverage extends beyond OpenClaw to GitHub Copilot CLI, Claude Code, and more.

These capabilities help reduce Shadow AI exposure and bring local agents into a governed, secure endpoint posture.

An image showing the new Shadow AI page in Agent 365 in the Microsoft 365 admin center, with a list of devices that OpenClaw agents are running on.

An image showing the new Shadow AI page of Agent 365 in the Microsoft 365 admin center, where Intune policies are being applied

Govern: Establish guardrails for agents and users

Agent-level lifecycle and governance actions

AI admins can install, publish, block, unblock, delete, assign new owner for agents - all directly from the Agent 365 registry. Centralized lifecycle and governance actions remove friction, reduce delays, and enable fast response as agents are created, shared, and retired.

An image showing the agent-level governance actions in the Agent 365 registry

Agent distribution and availability controls

Agent distribution and availability controls ensure the right agents reach the right users without overexposure or risk. You can install an agent and precisely control where it’s available across the organization, choosing to make it available to no users, all users, or specific users and groups. This foundational control is critical as it can help enable safe and intentional rollout of agents aligned to roles, readiness, and business need.

An image displaying the Zava Alerting agent selected in the registry showing installation and availability controls, making it available to only the Agent 365 AI admin and Security Admin user groups

Admin approval and publication flow for requested agents

The agent approval and publication flow gives admins a centralized control point to review agents before they reach users. Assess each requested agent’s capabilities, data access, permissions, and security and compliance posture in the Agent 365 registry, then choose to publish or reject it from a single workflow. This prevents agent sprawl, reduces over‑privileged access, and ensures agents are onboarded with the right governance across Copilot Studio, Microsoft Foundry, and expanding agent platforms.

An image displaying requested agents showing the fictitious Staffing Agent selected with options to either publish to store or reject submission

Agent management rules

To help scale governance as adoption grows, Agent 365 automates routine management jobs with rules that act when conditions are met such as expiring inactive agents or blocking agents flagged as risky. Initially, rules-based governance will include standard rules for auto-deployment of Microsoft-built agents as well as auto-reassignment of ownerless agents (starting with agents built with Agent Builder).

An image displaying agent management rules in Agent 365 settings displaying the standard rule for reassigning ownerless agents.

Policy templates

Policy templates address the challenge of applying consistent security, compliance, and access controls as agent adoption scales across the organization. By grouping existing policies from services like Microsoft Entra, Microsoft Purview, Microsoft Defender, and Microsoft SharePoint into reusable templates, admins can apply standardized settings and guardrails to agents during approval or onboarding. This ensures consistent governance without configuring individual policies per agent, and is distinct from rules based automation, which manages lifecycle actions after deployment.

An image displaying policy templates in Agent 365 settings showing a specific policy template detail view including policies from Microsoft Entra, Purview, Defender, and SharePoint

Tools management

Tools are the resources and services an agent uses to take action and get work done within approved boundaries; for example, an agent can use the Microsoft Teams MCP to schedule a meeting, summarize a conversation, and post updates back to a Teams channel for the group. As agents are built with more capabilities taking more actions across Microsoft 365 and beyond, unmanaged tools introduce security, compliance, and operational risk. Tools management in Agent 365 gives AI admins a centralized control point to view, allow, or block the tools agents can use, such as Microsoft MCP servers, across the tenant. By enforcing consistent, admin-approved tooling policies, organizations ensure agents operate only within approved boundaries and permissions, reducing risk without slowing innovation or requiring per-agent configuration.

An image displaying the Tools management pane in Agent 365 displaying a list view of MCP servers

Identity governance for agents

High-impact agents often rely on access to a wide range of organizational resources to perform their tasks, making it critical to manage permissions with precision and control. Microsoft Entra ID Governance for agents brings agents into the same identity governance model used for people. Access packages help define and manage agent permissions with appropriate scope and control, while sponsor lifecycle workflows ensure each agent identity has an assigned user responsible for overseeing access, maintaining accountability, and keeping access aligned with organizational policies over time. Together, these capabilities help organizations keep agent access visible, intentional, and manageable as agents evolve, enabling consistent governance and control at scale as agent adoption grows.

An image displaying ID Governance access package policy being applied to a policy template in Agent 365

Data Lifecycle Management for agents and interactions

As agents reason over and generate content, organizations need clear controls over how long agent interactions are retained and when they’re removed. Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management enables admins to define retention and deletion policies for human‑to‑agent and agent‑to‑human interactions, scoped by users, agents, or groups, with custom retention periods and post‑retention actions. By extending proven Purview controls to agent interactions, organizations can reduce data exposure and scale agent adoption with consistent, auditable data governance.

An image displaying a data lifecycle management retention policy in Microsoft Purview

Communication compliance for agents

As agents interact with people at scale, organizations need visibility and controls to detect unethical, inappropriate, or non-compliant behavior. Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance in Agent 365 enables you to define and apply policies to human-to-agent and agent-to-human interactions, enabling centralized detection, review, and investigation of risky behavior. By bringing AI interactions into existing compliance operations, organizations can promote responsible agent use, protect employees, and scale agent adoption with built-in oversight and accountability.

An image displaying a communication compliance policy in Microsoft Purview

eDiscovery for agent activity

Agents generate and act on organizational data, and legal and compliance teams need a way to preserve, search, and review agent activity with the same rigor as human communications. Purview eDiscovery lets organizations place agent interactions under legal hold, search agent‑to‑human and human‑to‑agent interactions across all agents, and review both agent outputs and the documents accessed during execution runtime, all within Microsoft Purview. This delivers a defensible, end‑to‑end discovery experience for agent activity using familiar legal and compliance workflows, enabling confident adoption while meeting regulatory and litigation obligations.

An image displaying an eDiscovery query in Microsoft Purview

Secure: Protect agents comprehensively

Risk flags in Agent 365 registry and overview

Agent 365 brings IT and Security teams together to create a connected experience for governing AI agents. Agent 365 surfaces agent‑level security and compliance risk flags, powered by first‑party signals from Microsoft Defender, Entra, and Purview, giving AI admins a unified view of risky agents directly in the Microsoft 365 admin center. From the Agent 365 overview or registry, admins can take actions like block agents or restrict access, and escalate to security teams to quickly responds and reduce risk. By bringing IT and Security signals together in a single management surface, Agent 365 enables stronger cross‑team collaboration, making agent management a shared responsibility where IT and Security teams work together to assess risk, take action, and govern agents securely and at scale.

An image displaying the security details for a fictitious Comms agent showing two risk flags identified by Microsoft Purview

Conditional Access for agents

Agents acting on behalf of users can introduce new access risks, especially when interacting with organizational resources. Microsoft Entra Conditional Access enforces dynamic, granular access policies for agents that operate independently, and extends existing user policies to agents acting on behalf of users. It applies the same Zero Trust principles to ensure agent actions are consistently evaluated based on real-time context and risk. This helps organizations reduce the risk of unauthorized or unsafe access by enforcing adaptive, risk-based access controls without introducing a new policy model. Note that Conditional Access for agents is generally available for delegated access agents (agents that act on behalf of the user) and is in public preview for own access agents (agents that operate with their own identity, not tied to a user session).

An image showing the creation of a new conditional access policy for agents in Microsoft Entra admin center

Identity protection for agents

Agents, whether they are acting on behalf of users or operate independently, can introduce new access risks when elevated agent risk, user risk or sign-in risk is present. Microsoft Entra ID Protection prevents compromise with dynamic evaluation of agent and user identity compromise risk. These risk signals can then be used by Conditional Access policies to block or constrain access to prevent compromise with risk-based Conditional access for agents that act independently and extending risk-based conditional access from users to agents for agents that work on behalf of users. Similar to Conditional Access, Identity protection for agents is generally available for delegated access agents (agents that act on behalf of the user) and is in Public preview for own access agents (agents that operate with their own identity, not tied to a user session).

An image displaying a Conditional Access policy for agents in the Microsoft Entra admin center

Secure Access Service Edge for agents

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) for agents extends identity-aware, network-level security controls to agent traffic. For Microsoft Copilot Studio agents and agents running on local endpoint devices with Global Secure Access client installed, it provides prompt injection protection, threat intelligence filtering, web and URL filtering, and network file filtering to help reduce exposure to malicious destinations and unsafe transfers. Together, these capabilities help organizations extend consistent network protections to agent traffic and support safer agent adoption at scale.

An image showing Global Secure Access for agents and traffic details in Microsoft Entra

Threat detection and blocking for agents (Preview)

Agent adoption brings new threats, such as prompt attacks and tool misuse. Microsoft Defender enables security teams to detect, block, and investigate agent threats in runtime. For example, when an agent abuses its permissions to an email MCP server, exhibiting suspicious behaviors that may cause security incidents, Microsoft Defender can block the email invocation to reduce the incident's impact and trigger incident alerts in the Defender portal for investigation and response. This capability enables security teams to effectively defend agents against the evolving AI threat landscape.

An image showing how a security team can detect, block, and investigate agent threats such as prompt attack and tool misuse in the Microsoft Defender portal

Threat hunting and investigation for agents (Preview)

Beyond threat detection and blocking, security teams can use the unified observability logs in Agent 365 for Advanced Hunting to proactively search for threats, vulnerabilities, and potential exposures in their organization's agentic environment. For example, security teams can identify risky configurations, such as agents with MCP tools using maker credentials. These permissions allow MCP tools to operate as the maker, potentially leading to privilege escalation and exposure. Security teams can run queries in Advanced Hunting to generate a list of agents that present this risk, then collaborate across teams to remediate these risks before they turn into incidents.

Security team can proactively identify vulnerabilities and exposure leveraging Advanced Hunting capabilities in Microsoft Defender

Agent security posture management (Preview)

As organizations deploy more agents, security teams need continuous insight into which agents are over‑privileged, misconfigured, or exposed to attack. Microsoft Defender provides agent security posture management by assessing the security posture of Foundry and Copilot Studio agents, identifying vulnerabilities such as excessive permissions and misconfigurations, and surfacing prioritized security recommendations, risk context, and attack path analysis to AI agents. This enables teams to focus remediation where risk is highest, reduce exposure early, and ensure agents are built, deployed, and operated securely across their lifecycle.

An image showing the fictitious agent Zava Assist in Microsoft Defender

Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) AI Observability for agents

Organizations lack clear visibility into how AI agents access and expose sensitive data, increasing the risk of oversharing and unintended data leakage. Microsoft Purview AI Observability in DSPM provides unified visibility into all agents operating across your environment, Microsoft and non‑Microsoft, and continuously assesses agent data risk posture. This enables security teams to identify sensitive data exposure early, make informed decisions, and proactively reduce risk before it becomes an incident.

An image showing AI observability within Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) in Microsoft Purview

Insider Risk Management for agents

As organizations scale AI agents, they lack visibility into whether agents are accessing, generating, or exposing sensitive data in risky ways. Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management for agents evaluated insider risk for agents by treating them as first‑class identities, enabling detection of risky agent behaviors such as anomalous data access or sensitive content in outputs. This allows security teams to intervene early and confidently scale AI agents while maintaining security, accountability, and compliance.

An image showing an alert spotting an agent attempt at sensitive file exfiltration within Microsoft Purview

Data loss prevention for agents

As agent adoption scales, confidential information can be unintentionally included in agent interactions, increasing the risk of data exposure across the organization. Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention (DLP) extends the same protections organizations use for people - such as to prevent data exfiltration and oversharing - to AI agents, for example by blocking an agent from emailing a confidential file to an external recipient.

Also, DLP controls for grounding data protect the data agents rely on to reason and respond to interactions. It leverages DLP and labeling policies directly to the data sources used for grounding, preventing agents from accessing or using sensitive content that shouldn’t inform AI decisions or outputs. This gives organizations confidence that advanced AI agents can be deployed without increasing data exposure or compliance risk, even as agents operate across multiple data systems.

An image displaying a conversation with fictitious agent Zava Procurement Agent showing a DLP-protected document cannot be summarized

Conclusion

As agents become a core part of everyday work, organizations need a way to extend the controls they already trust, from managing people, devices, apps, and data, to managing agents. With Agent 365, Microsoft brings agents into the same, familiar identity, security, and compliance frameworks customers already rely on today. These GA capabilities lay the foundation for scaling agent adoption with confidence, enabling organizations to unlock innovation and productivity while ensuring agents remain governed, secure, and aligned with your organization's needs.

Next steps:

Footnotes

Agent metadata available in the Agent 365 registry differs based on the agent’s source platform, as well as factors such as how the agent was built, integrated, and registered. As a result, some agents may expose richer or more standardized metadata, while others may only provide a subset of fields.

Ask questions: May 12 live Agent 365 AMA

Nichole_Peterson — Wed, 06 May 2026 18:14:17 GMT

Microsoft Agent 365--generally available May 1, 2026--is a control plane that empowers IT admins, Security Operations analysts, Identity and Network Security admins, and Data Security & Compliance admins to observe, govern, and secure all agents for their organization.

We’ll demonstrate how to get started and answer your questions about licensing and functionality in this live 'Ask Microsoft Anything' with product and engineering team experts!

How to Participate

Register for the Microsoft Tech Community using your email if you haven’t already. This allows you to post comments and ask questions.
Visit the event page now to add the AMA to your calendar, RSVP, and submit questions via the comment area.
Watch the session live or catch the recording on demand after the event.

Hope to see you there! Come ready to learn and ask our experts all of your burning questions!

Best regards,

Nichole

ICYMI: Microsoft Agent 365 AMA

Nichole_Peterson — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 21:02:40 GMT

Watch the video of the live AMA to see experts from the Microsoft Agent 365 team answer questions from viewers.

Recorded on March 18, 2026.

Huge thanks to our community for contributing such great questions, plus thank you to our host and expert panelists for a great AMA!

Still have questions? Check the additional resources below, or drop a comment on this post for us to answer.

Additional resources:

Get to know these Agent 365 community all-stars

Nichole_Peterson — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 17:23:39 GMT

With the announcement that Agent 365 will be generally available on May 1, 2026 and included in Microsoft 365 packages with and without Teams, many of our community members are eager to learn more about the new control plane for agents. Hopefully you've heard about the upcoming live AMA with the Agent 365 team on March 18, 2026; but meanwhile, we're highlighting a few folks who are creating helpful explainers of their own.

Rob Quickenden

RobQuickenden | Microsoft MVP Profile

Microsoft MVP Rob Quickenden explains Microsoft 365 E7 as a new top‑tier “AI Frontier Suite” designed to help organizations operationalize agentic AI across productivity, identity, and security, not just experiment with Copilot.

👉Read Rob’s blog post: Microsoft 365 E7 Explained – The new “AI Frontier Suite”

Simon Doy

SimonDoy | Microsoft MVP Profile

Simon walks through his hands-on experience building a first Microsoft Agent 365 agent, explaining core concepts like agent blueprints vs. instances, identity, governance, and how Agent 365 integrates with Microsoft Entra ID and Microsoft 365.

👉Read Simon’s blog post: Delving into Agent 365 – Configuring and Building My First Agent

Kunal Sethi

Kunal Sethi | Microsoft MVP Profile

Kunal Sethi is the author of one of the most comprehensive architecture‑level deep dives on Agent 365, covering governance, Entra integration, and enterprise design patterns.

👉 Read Kunal's LinkedIn post: Architecting AI Agents with Microsoft Agent 365: A Deep Dive

John Savill

JohnSavill | LinkedIn

Rising to popularity via John Savill’s Technical Training and his On-Board to Azure series, John’s videos and podcasts are excellent for learning about Microsoft solutions and architecture. Plus, his t-shirt collection is epic.

Watch this security-focused technical overview where John shows how Agent 365 addresses the challenges of rolling out agents:

Nathan Rose

nathanrose1979 | Microsoft MVP Profile

Nathan Rose kicked off the new year with a hands-on deep dive into Agent 365—what it is, how to enable it in your tenant, and how to use the Overview, Agents, Tools and Settings tabs to discover, govern, block, and deploy agents.

Steve Corey

stevecorey | Microsoft MVP Profile

In December, Steve Corey published a detailed video explaining how to use the Microsoft Agent 365 dashboard to view and manage your Copilot Agent landscape. It walks through the various screens, options, and settings in Agent 365.

Huge thanks to these awesome Agent 365 content creators. We can't wait to see what you'll do next!

Who else are you watching?

Are you creating Agent 365 content to help others learn? Or have a recommendation on someone we should follow? Please let me know in the comments!

More Agent 365 community resources

Deepen your knowledge and connections in the Agent 365 world with these upcoming and everyday opportunities.

Join the Agent 365 AMA on March 18, 2026 | RSVP

Learn more about the capabilities of Agent 365 in this live 'Ask Microsoft Anything' with product and engineering team experts! Get your questions answered about capabilities for agent observability, security, and governance, developer resources, and how to get started as you confidently scale agents in your organization.

Learn more about the Agent 365 AMA

Post in the Agent 365 Discussion Space | Tech Community

Want to meet more Agent 365 community members? Share your expertise or start a conversation in the new Agent 365 discussion space on Tech Community.

Join the conversation in Tech Community

Attend the Microsoft 365 Community Conference | website

Learn how to get the most out of Agent 365, AI agents, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and meet Agent 365 community members at the Microsoft 365 Community Conference, April 21-23, 2026 in Orlando, Florida, USA.

At the conference, Agent 365 will be featured in the Business Apps & Agents keynote by Charles Lamanna and the following sessions:

Best regards,

Nichole

P.S. ICYMI, here's the Agent 365 and Frontier Transformation news from Microsoft that dropped Monday, March 9, 2026:

Join the Agent 365 'Ask Microsoft Anything' session on March 18

Nichole_Peterson — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 22:46:28 GMT

Sign up and participate in the March 18 Agent 365 AMA

🌐 aka.ms/Agent365AMA

Meet the panel of Agent 365 experts

Irina Nechaeva General Manager	Kendra Springer Principal Group Product Manager	Pratap Ladhani Technical Customer Architect
Caroline Stanford Senior Director	Gad Epstein Principal Group Product Manager	Neta Haiby Partner Product Manager

We're looking forward to you joining the AMA and bringing your questions. See you March 18th!

Watch the AMA on March 18 (or later)

🌐 Live AMA: Microsoft Agent 365 | Microsoft Community Hub

Additional Agent 365 resources

Get the Frontier preview program for early access to Microsoft Agent 365.
Find your way with the Agent 365 overview dashboard in Microsoft 365 Admin Center.
Start a post or answer questions in A365 Discussion Space.
Learn more on Microsoft Agent 365 on Microsoft Learn.

Hello, world.

Nichole_Peterson — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 22:10:46 GMT

Hello and welcome to the new Agent 365 blog!

As AI agents become core contributors in modern organizations, having a trusted control plane is essential. So we hope you'll follow and share this blog as an ongoing resource. We'll regularly share product news, practical guidance, and accelerators to get the most from Agent 365.

🚀 Become an early contributor to the Agent 365 community:

1)       Follow the blog at aka.ms/A365blog

2)       Post and reply to topics at aka.ms/A365discussions

3)       Say hello! Introduce yourself in the comments section below.

For this first post, we’re sharing frequently asked questions and favorite resources for Agent 365.

What is Microsoft Agent 365?

Agent 365 is the control plane for AI agents. Whether your agents are built with Copilot Studio, Windows 365 for Agents, Microsoft Foundry, open-source frameworks, or third-party platforms, Agent 365 helps you observe, secure, and govern them.

Agent 365 extends your existing infrastructure to AI agents—adapting the tools and protections you use for employees to meet agent-specific needs. It unites familiar but tailored systems: Microsoft 365 apps optimized for agent productivity, Microsoft Admin Center for agent management, Windows 365 for Agents for a secure execution environment for computer‑using AI agents, and Defender, Entra, and Purview for agent security and governance.

⭐ Read the announcement of Agent 365 on the Microsoft 365 blog.

When was Agent 365 introduced by Microsoft?

Last year, we heard the IDC prediction that there will be 1.3 billion agents by 2028. With early adoption of agents, plus no-code and low-code platforms like Copilot Studio and Microsoft Foundry, the agent wave was happening—without IT management, security, or governance. To help organizations take control of agent sprawl, we introduced Microsoft Agent 365 at Microsoft Ignite on November 18, 2025. Agent 365 was detailed in an Innovation Session at the conference by Nirav Shah, CVP of Agent 365 with NetaH, monicaugwi and Mark Luquire of EY.

⭐ Watch the Innovation Session (45 min.)

How can I learn more about Microsoft Agent 365?

⌚ How much time do you have? ⌚

If you have 5 minutes...

Read the overview of Microsoft Agent 365 by our colleagues at Microsoft Learn. The article notes the benefits, prerequisites, and key scenarios for IT admins, security workers, agent developers, and business decision makers.

If you have 10 minutes...

Microsoft Mechanics host JeremyChapmanMSFT created a helpful explainer video that includes a product demo. It does a great job illustrating how Agent 365 helps your organization adopt autonomous agents at scale with confidence, security, and clarity across your business.

If you have 40 minutes...

Watch Nirav Shah and Shilpi_Sinha, Partner Director of Agent 365 deliver a 40-minute technical deep dive followed by Q&A from participants in the Copilot Acceleration Team's CAT AI webinar, "Everything you need to know about Microsoft Agent 365." Hosted by Vasavi Bhaviri Setty, Senior Program Manager.

Check out upcoming and past Microsoft CAT AI Webinars to help your organization adopt Microsoft Copilot and agents.

How do I get started with Agent 365?

Get the Frontier preview program for early access to Microsoft Agent 365. Frontier connects you directly with Microsoft’s latest AI innovations.

How to enable Agent 365 with the Frontier preview program

To start with Agent 365, sign into Microsoft 365 admin center > select Copilot > select Settings > under User access, select Copilot Frontier > choose the specific users, groups, or select all to grant access to the Frontier program. The tenant needs to have at least one license of Microsoft 365 Copilot to enable Microsoft Agent 365 in Frontier.

After you've granted users and groups access to the Copilot Frontier program, go to Agents from the left-pane inside the Microsoft 365 admin center to get started. You might be prompted to agree to the terms of service.

You’re in! 💪

⭐ Next, take a tour of your Agent 365 overview page and get started managing agents with guidance from the Agent 365 documentation hub from Microsoft Learn.

Where can I find development resources for Agent 365?

Getting started with Agent 365 traditionally requires moving through a series of setup steps—installing the Agent 365 CLI, preparing prerequisites, creating an agent blueprint, deploying code, and finally publishing through the Microsoft 365 admin center. Each phase introduces its own checks and decisions, which can make the process feel complex for new builders. The AI‑guided setup streamlines that experience by letting an AI coding agent—like GitHub Copilot in VS Code—handle the lifecycle on your behalf. Instead of jumping between docs and running commands manually, you simply provide a single instruction file, and the AI guides you interactively through the entire workflow.

⭐ Get AI-guided setup for the Agent 365 development lifecycle

➕ Learn more about Agent 365 for developers

Follow aka.ms/A365blog to stay up to date

Thanks for your interest in Agent 365. Feedback and hearing your needs are fuel for product improvements and plans for this blog. Let’s start the conversation in comments with a question: What’s the biggest challenge your organization faces with AI agents today?

🧠 Agent 365 Resources 🧠

Dig into the Agent 365 documentation on Microsoft Learn
Start a post or answer questions in A365 Discussion Space
Read the Agent 365 blog post from November 2025

Agent 365 Blog articles

Make any agent enterprise-ready with the Agent 365 SDK

Introducing the Agent 365 SDK

What you get with the Agent 365 SDK

How companies are putting it to work

Two examples of what this looks like in practice

Get started today

Keep learning

Microsoft 365 E7 & Agent365: From Where You Are to Enterprise AI at Scale

Introduction

Understanding Agent 365: Control Plane, Not Control Source

Simple analogy

The Key Gap: “Enabled” vs “Governed”

Agent 365 Governance Maturity Heatmap

🔍 Interpretation of the Heatmap

Key insight:

What Works with Agent 365 Alone

What’s Missing Without the Full Stack

Result:

What changes across layers:

Licensing Model: Clarifying Agent 365

Upgrade Math by Starting Point

📍 Business Premium

📍 E3

📍 E5

Architectural Perspective

How to Position This in Customer Conversations

For Business Premium

For E3

For E5

Final Thought

Bottom Line

The Strategic Shift

Agent365: The Identity-First Control Plane for Scalable AI Agents

Why Identity Becomes Foundational for Agent Governance

Managing Agent Sprawl with a Unified Control Plane

Agents as Managed Identities in Microsoft Entra

Architecture Overview: Identity-Centric Control Plane

Identity Layer (Control Plane Foundation)

Governance Layer

Security and Compliance Layer

Observability Layer

Extending Zero Trust Principles to AI Agents

Key Capabilities Supporting Identity as the Control Plane

Key gaps Agent365 will surface

Enabling Secure and Scalable Agentic AI

Conclusion

You Asked—We Answered: Inside the Agent 365 AMA

Questions about Agent 365 answered in the AMA

How is Agent 365 licensed?

Microsoft language references three roles (or actions) which need an Agent 365 license. They are users that “interact with”, “manage”, or “sponsor” agents that use Agent 365 Premium capabilities. Can you expand on what defines those three user actions/roles?

I'm planning to build ai agents in Google ADK and want to know if it can be monitored using Agent 365?

Since Agent 365 allows bringing in both first-party and third-party agents, what's the identity and licensing model.

If an agent is not using an Entra Agent Identity, will it still appear in Agent 365 observability or governance?

So, could organizations use Agent 365 for central visibility, monitoring, and governance of agents, even if those agents don’t have their own identities?

Does that mean companies could avoid needing a per-user Agent 365 license for every employee interacting with the agent?

Is there a way of defining a "shadow AI" experience as non-shadowAI? If I want to authorize Claude CLI, how would I do that?

What are the rules that define what a "risky" agent is?

If an agent is determined as "risky", then how are those signals captured?

When you are reviewing the Agent Risk Activities, is it a mandate to block the agent to review risk activities?

Do you lose autonomous agent usage without an Agent365 license?

What capabilities will be provided for Managed Service Providers (MSP's) to manage Agent 365 across multi-tenant, multi-customer environments?

I'm quite intrigued to know about the pricing structure of M365 agents leveraging MCP tools - is it per user, per agent, per tool invocation, or consumption-based?

Will MCP remote server (soon to be Public Preview) usage incur additional costs on top of Copilot licensing? Will it be bundled to M365 Copilot licensing or be standalone billable service?

Does Agent Rules need to executed manually whenever it’s required... or Agent Rules can be scheduled?

How big is the delta between monitoring agents and controlling agents? Is it 1:1, can any aspect you can monitor about the agent can also be controlled?

What resources are available to help my organization get started with Agent 365?

Top five: Agent 365 Resources

Overview, Plans and Pricing: https://aka.ms/Agent365

Technical Documentation: https://aka.ms/Agent365docs

Adoption Resources: https://aka.ms/Agent365getstarted

Product Blog: https://aka.ms/Agent365blog

Licensing FAQ: https://aka.ms/Agent365licensing

What’s New in Agent 365: May 2026

Observe: Monitor and manage agents in real time

Agent 365 overview dashboard

Registry

Map

Agent-level activity

Registry sync (Preview)