How Microsoft 365 Backup works and how to set it up
Protect your Microsoft 365 data and stay in control with Microsoft 365 Backup — whether managing email, documents, or sites across Exchange, OneDrive, and SharePoint. Define exactly what you want to back up and restore precisely what you need to with speeds reaching 2TB per hour at scale. With flexible policies, dynamic rules, and recovery points up to 365 days back, you can stay resilient and ready. In this introduction, I'll show you how to minimize disruption and keep your organization moving forward even in the event of a disaster with Microsoft 365 Backup. Fine-tune what gets backed up. Back up by user, site, group, or file type — to meet your exact needs. Get started with Microsoft 365 Backup. Restore data in-place or to a new location. Compare versions before committing. Take a look at Microsoft 365 Backup. Restore content from months ago. Use fast weekly snapshots — even when the issue went unnoticed for weeks. Start here with Microsoft 365 Backup. QUICK LINKS: 00:00 — Automate recovery process 00:37 — How to use Microsoft 365 Backup 01:49 — Compare with migration-based solutions 02:30 — How to set it up 03:33 — Exchange policy for email backup 05:00 — View and manage backups 05:24 — Recover from a restore point 07:45 — Restore from OneDrive & SharePoint 08:33 — Bulk restore 09:41 — Wrap up Link References Check out https://aka.ms/M365Backup Additional backup and restore considerations at https://aka.ms/M365BackupNotes Unfamiliar with Microsoft Mechanics? As Microsoft’s official video series for IT, you can watch and share valuable content and demos of current and upcoming tech from the people who build it at Microsoft. Subscribe to our YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MicrosoftMechanicsSeries Talk with other IT Pros, join us on the Microsoft Tech Community: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-mechanics-blog/bg-p/MicrosoftMechanicsBlog Watch or listen from anywhere, subscribe to our podcast: https://microsoftmechanics.libsyn.com/podcast Keep getting this insider knowledge, join us on social: Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MSFTMechanics Share knowledge on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/microsoft-mechanics/ Enjoy us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/msftmechanics/ Loosen up with us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@msftmechanics Video Transcript: -If something bad happens, like someone accidentally does a bulk file deletion or files are corrupted by a malicious user or ransomware, the first question is, can we recover from our backup? And the second question is, how long until we’re back online? Now to help you automate a targeted recovery process, Microsoft 365 Backup has a self-service solution that helps you scope the data that you want to recover. Your data remains inside your Microsoft 365 trust boundary, providing bulk restore recovery speeds of up to 2 terabytes per hour at scale. -Now, you might be wondering, do I even need to back up Microsoft 365 data? Let’s look at where it makes sense. So, first, if there’s a natural disaster, Microsoft 365 already natively offers high availability and disaster recovery with built-in service resiliency. That said, if you experience a data breach or maybe unexpected data corruption from a processor person on your end, or because of ransomware, your Microsoft support options depend on the workload in Microsoft 365. For example, for SharePoint, if you do nothing additional at all, when you contact Microsoft Support, if the event happened up to 14 days prior, Microsoft will recover OneDrive and SharePoint to a previous state within that timeframe. That said, if you want to get more specific on what gets restored or want to go back further than 14 days to recover your data, this is where the Microsoft 365 Backup service comes in. It’s self-service by design for SharePoint Exchange and OneDrive, giving more targeted control to scope exactly what you need to restore for up to 365 days. We’ll be adding more Microsoft 365 Backup coverage to other Microsoft 365 workloads over time. -Let’s compare this with migration solutions that you may be familiar with. These solutions work by moving your data and transforming it to store it into their service. Then, for recovery, the backup has to be restored back to its original form, then migrated back to your Microsoft 365 tenant, adding significant recovery time. Instead, Microsoft 365 Backup takes incremental snapshots of your data. The data stays in your Microsoft 365 service boundary in its native encrypted form. So, when you need to recover your data, the recovery process is accelerated. Microsoft 365 Backup is a consumption-based service with billing based on the amount of data protected. -Next, let’s walk through the setup steps and controls to manage backups and restore them. Starting with setting up a billing plan, where in advance, you’ll need to have an Azure subscription as well as a defined resource group. So, from the Microsoft 365 admin center under Setup, you’ll activate pay-as-you-go services and select Get started. Here, I’ll choose my Azure subscription and the resource group, and the region. Note that this region here is only used for billing. Your data will remain in the location that it’s currently in. Now, still on this page from the Settings tab, in the Storage location, you’ll choose Backup. Then, turn it on and save to confirm. -Now, with the service running, the rest of the steps will be performed from the Microsoft 365 Backup page in the admin center. So, here, I can configure backup policies to initiate automated backup processes. I have navigated within settings to Microsoft 365 Backup. From there, each workload, SharePoint, Exchange, and OneDrive, can have its own individual policies. So, I’m going to walk through an Exchange policy for email backup, but all three follow similar steps. After hitting Set up policy, the overview page displays policy attributes like the backup frequency. In this case, it’s every 10 minutes. The backup retention up to one year. -Now, the backup frequency does not impact your costs. Here, I can choose the selection method. The options are to upload a CSV file with mailboxes. Now, for SharePoint policies, this would be sites, and for OneDrive, we’d target user accounts. You can also use a dynamic rule, which allows the mailboxes in scope to dynamically update as group membership changes. Or you can define specific filters where you can select up to three distribution lists or security groups, or both. Now, these are the same filters for OneDrive policies. And for SharePoint, you can use filters for site names, URL contains values, or site last modified dates. The final option is then to select mailboxes individually, where you can manually select the mailboxes that you want to back up. In my case, I’ll choose the dynamic rule and use distribution lists, and I’ll select Project Falcon and Northwind Traders. -Now, I just need to review, and from there, I can create the policy. The policy will typically be active within an hour of creation, depending on the size of your group, and you can edit policy attributes at any time. So, now with the policy created, let’s move on to the process of viewing and managing backups. I’m back on the Microsoft 365 Backup page, and now I have active policy set up for each workload. And as mentioned, I can make required edits and changes to these policies from here. For example, you can pause backups or add, or remove sites from the SharePoint policy. -So, at this point, all of our services are running automated backups. Now, let’s assume that something happened to our Exchange mailboxes that were backed up and we want to recover from our restore point. Now, to simulate that, I’m logged in as Adele. I’m deleting email from the last month and even removing those from the Deleted items folder. One thing to note is that a restore from Exchange will only impact items that were modified, hard-deleted, or purged during the recovery window. So, let’s recover those deleted emails. So, I can start that for Exchange by hitting Restore mailboxes. -Now, for the choose selection method option, there is an option to upload a CSV list of mailboxes or select them individually. I’ll choose that one. And then, I’ll search for Adele and there she is. Now, I’ll add her mailbox and hit Next. Then, in content scope, I can select all emails including notes, contacts, calendars, and tasks, or I can choose a specific timeframe as well as apply filters, as you can see here. I’m going to keep the default of all items. Then, I can choose a time before the event happened to restore too. From there, I’ll be presented with available restore points. Email restore points are created every 10 minutes from when the policy’s active for up to 365 days. And I’ll choose this one for April 4th at 8:40 AM. -Then, for the destination of restored items, I have two primary options. I can replace mailbox items with backups, or the current version of the items will be overwritten by the items recovered from the restore point. Or I can create new mailbox items from backups within the user’s mailbox, which will be named Recovered Items, with the year, month, day, and time. I’ll keep replace mailbox items. Note that only effective items as mentioned will be overwritten. Any items received after the restore point or unmodified items will not be reverted and will also not get copied over if you decide to create a new folder. Once I confirm and commit to the file restore, from there, I can track progress from the Restoration tasks tab in the Microsoft 365 Backup page and see how things are going. So, I’m going to fast forward a little in time. And just to prove it, I’m back in Adele’s mailbox, and you can see that all of the emails that I deleted before have returned. That’s Exchange. -And there are also a few differences when restoring from OneDrive and SharePoint worth pointing out. Now, I’ll start with SharePoint. Here, I can upload a CSV file of site addresses or select them individually. I’ll do that. Now, I can select exactly which sites I want. There we go. Then, in Search for backups, you’ll see that things are a little different compared to Exchange. And again, I need to choose a date closest to the restore event, as well as a time of day. And for the previous two weeks, there are standard restore points captured every 10 minutes. And for a small-scale restore where you want to prioritize speed over the exact restore time, the prioritized backup options shown here will be faster and is recommended. These faster restore points are taken roughly every 24 hours. -One other thing to note here, if you’re doing a bulk restore, for example, to thousands of sites, then the fast restore points are not relevant. If you want to restore beyond two weeks, because these are weekly snapshots, if I choose the most recent date, where I know that my content is safe, the tool will automatically select the closest restore point captured prior to my selected time. And these weekly restore points are also fast restore points too. The other options are similar to what I showed in Exchange, where you can use in-place Restore or also create new sites. Note that content restored to a new location will apply and address suffix of R, followed by the restore number in a numeric sequence for each restore, starting with R0, as you can see with this site’s URL. In this case, you can copy restored items manually from the restored location to the prior location as needed, and in-place restore will mean users recent edits made to sites, files, and metadata since the time of the restore point will be lost. You can find additional backup and restore considerations at aka.ms/M365BackupNotes. -As you saw today, Microsoft 365 Backup doesn’t just let you self-manage your backups, it helps you recover faster. To find out more, checkout aka.ms/M365Backup. And keep watching Mechanics for the latest tech updates, subscribe to our channel, and thanks for watching.Microsoft 365 Copilot Power User Tips
Take control of your workday — summarize long emails instantly, turn meeting transcripts into actionable plans, and build strategic documents in seconds using your own data with Microsoft 365 Copilot. Instead of chasing down context, ask natural prompts and get clear, detailed results complete with tone-matched writing, visual recaps, and real-time collaboration. Get up to speed on complex email threads, transform insights from missed meetings into next steps, and pull relevant content from across your calendar, inbox, and docs — all without switching tools or losing momentum. Mary Pasch, Microsoft 365 Principal PM, shows how whether you’re refining a plan in Word, responding in Outlook, or catching up in Teams, Copilot works behind the scenes to help you move faster and focus on what matters. Cut through inbox clutter. Microsoft 365 Copilot in Outlook condenses long email chains into key takeaways. See how to save time with Copilot. Build strategy docs in minutes. Researcher agent asks smart questions and connects the dots. See how to use AI with chain-of-thought reasoning in Microsoft 365 Copilot. From teammate input to polished copy. Prompt Microsoft 365 Copilot to incorporate key meeting info into a shared document. See how it works. Watch our video here. QUICK LINKS: 00:00 — How to put Copilot to work for you 01:09 — Use Copilot in Outlook to summarize email threads 01:57 — Use chain-of-thought reasoning with Researcher 03:55 — Reference your content & meeting recap 05:29 — Use Copilot in Word to build on existing content 06:56 — Use Copilot in Microsoft Teams when late to a meeting 07:52 — Wrap up Link References Check out the free Copilot Academy at https://aka.ms/copilotacademy Unfamiliar with Microsoft Mechanics? As Microsoft’s official video series for IT, you can watch and share valuable content and demos of current and upcoming tech from the people who build it at Microsoft. Subscribe to our YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MicrosoftMechanicsSeries Talk with other IT Pros, join us on the Microsoft Tech Community: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-mechanics-blog/bg-p/MicrosoftMechanicsBlog Watch or listen from anywhere, subscribe to our podcast: https://microsoftmechanics.libsyn.com/podcast Keep getting this insider knowledge, join us on social: Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MSFTMechanics Share knowledge on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/microsoft-mechanics/ Enjoy us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/msftmechanics/ Loosen up with us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@msftmechanics Video Transcript: -If you have Microsoft 365 Copilot in your organization today, I’m going to walk you through the top five power user tips, and the lesser known ways in which you can really put Copilot to work for you, saving you time. We’ll go beyond the rich Microsoft 365 Copilot chat experience that’s available to every Microsoft 365 user, where you might be uploading information to inform generated responses. And I’ll focus on what you can do with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, which lights up experiences within your familiar Office apps, automatically connecting your work data in Microsoft 365 to help you in context as you work. I’m going to start in Outlook, because who doesn’t need help with their inbox? You might already be using Microsoft 365 Copilot in Outlook to help write and quickly respond to emails, or to get help rewriting your existing drafts with auto rewrite, or by using your own detailed instructions to get it just right. -And if you haven’t already tried Copilot in Outlook, prompt suggestions for the things you can do in Outlook are built in for you to get started. These are all time-savers that are core to the experience, but have you ever tried using Microsoft 365 Copilot to help you get up to speed on a long email thread? Well, here, I’ve been added to an email thread, and I don’t necessarily have all the context. As I scroll this super long email with multiple people, there’s too much to take in, and it would take a lot of effort for me to parse it, and this is where Copilot in Outlook can help. By clicking on Summary by Copilot, the entire email thread is processed, and I’m left with a quick summary of the main points from the thread, including key actions specific to me. It’s boiled down about 10 pages of emails into these four bullets. It looks like my team needs my help researching a potential fit for new outdoor and adventure goods with our current electronics products, and I have less than a week to pull everything together. This normally would be a time-consuming effort, but this brings me to my second power user tip. I can now use AI with chain-of-thought reasoning to gather information and work with me to create a new product strategy doc. -From the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, I’ll use a new agent called Researcher. I’ll ask Researcher to develop a product strategy to enter a new market for outdoor and adventure goods. After I enter my prompt, Researcher goes to work. You can see that as part of its first response, it’s paused, and this time, it’s asking me clarifying questions about both the scope and format of what I want it to write. So I’ll respond with key details to answer both of its questions, then it uses my response to move forward. It takes my prompts, understands the task, and starts to build a plan that it’ll use to author a detailed report, and I can follow along. It’s reasoning over information that I have permission to access from internal locations. As it works, I can take a look at its reasoning process in real time. It tells me what it’s doing. It’s identifying our existing business lines, clarifying our product categories, analyzing the potential fit for outdoor products, looking for relevant meetings that I’ve been invited to to analyze the transcripts, and even researches industry trends from the web. What I love about this agent is that it’s actually doing the research to create what I need. -So let’s jump ahead to that final result. On the right, you can see that it’s delivered a thorough response with a fully-documented product strategy in line with what I’d expect from an expert. Starting with an analysis of my existing business, it’s also analyzed the outdoor and adventure gear sector. Then it’s built insights based on our existing business, and how it intersects with outdoor products. It’s added strategic positioning, and a detailed go-to-market plan. So I’ve saved a ton of time, and now, I have a solid, well-researched draft that I can build on with my team. -Next, because my team uses Word to build out these types of plans, I brought everything over to a new doc, and in Word, there are two power user tips for building on existing content using Copilot that I’ll show you. First, you can pull up Copilot on any blank line using the Copilot icon or the Alt + I keyboard shortcut. Beyond what’s here, I know that my team just brainstormed ideas about in-store experiences during a Teams meeting, and I want to use those details directly from the meeting recap to add that to our plan. -With Copilot, I can do that by using the Reference Your Content button. In the Meetings tab, I’ll locate the meeting I want, this one, for location planning, which uses the same Copilot-generated content for meeting recaps in Teams. I’ll pause a second before I complete this prompt in Word to show you the meeting recap first, and give you some context on that meeting. For any transcribed meeting, I can find the recap by going back to the original meeting invite from my calendar, then clicking on the Recap tab. These are AI-generated, and capture what was discussed in meetings that you were in, meetings you were late to, or meetings that you were invited to but couldn’t attend. For example, I missed this meeting, and without anyone taking notes, from AI notes, I can see they discussed placing outdoor products in our retail stores and creating connected outdoor display in our store. There are five cities listed here in Washington and Oregon to launch them. -If I go to the Mentions tab, you can see that I was even mentioned 33 minutes into the meeting. So with that context, I’m going to go back to Word and finish writing my prompt. I’ll ask Copilot to add a paragraph for creating in-store displays discussed in the meeting, with a few additional instructions, and it’s taken the details from the meeting and adding it to our plan. And you can see those five store locations that we saw before in the meeting recap, and in seconds, we’ve transformed the actions from a spoken Teams meeting to add to our written plan. It didn’t just insert the paragraph to the rest of the doc, it’s actually matched the tone and altitude of the rest of our plan, so it doesn’t feel out of place. -And now, everyone’s working together on this document. I can see Adele and Daichi are here. In fact, as I scroll down, there’s also a comment from Daichi to add details about our outdoor products that we’re already working on to release later this year. For this power user tip, I’ll open Copilot, and use a forward slash and start typing. Then choose the email from Daichi, and complete my prompt to add those details. Now, we have details about the outdoors electronics we’ll be launching soon to complete our plan. -And by the way, if I need more inspiration from Copilot in Word, I can use Copilot from the ribbon, and then use the Add menu in Copilot in Word to ask an agent, add an image, and view prompts from the prompt gallery with lots of great options here. This is also available across other Microsoft 365 apps with prompt tips specific to each app. That said, let me show you our next power tip, which is something that’s super powerful. If you’re ever late to a meeting, and join the meeting after it started, you can use Copilot to catch up on what you missed, even shared visual content that was presented during the meeting. -Here, I’m joining a brainstorming meeting, and you can see that I’ve missed the first seven and a half minutes, but that’s okay. I can ask Copilot to bring me up to speed by asking what I missed, and Copilot tells me exactly what was covered before I joined. Next, I can also ask if there were any visuals shared, and not only does it provide a summary of the content that I missed on screen, including embedded text, but it also shares still images of the shared content themselves. This one is an important prototype of the in-store campsite display, highlighting our product lineup. I can even zoom in for a closer look at the image. And because I’m caught up with everything I missed, I don’t need to ask my team to back up and repeat what they’ve already presented. -As you saw with the power user tips I shared today, whenever you use Microsoft 365 Copilot inside your apps, your work data is automatically delivered into the experience. There’s no need to upload or paste work content into your prompts. This also means that your work information retains its protections. For more things to try, check out the free Copilot Academy at aka.ms/copilotacademy. And keep watching Mechanics for the latest updates from Microsoft, and thanks for watching.Introducing Copilot in the Microsoft 365 admin centers
Streamline daily admin tasks with AI-powered insights, natural language queries, and automation using Copilot in Microsoft 365 admin centers. Quickly recap key updates, monitor service health, and track important changes — all in one place. No more digging through multiple pages — just ask Copilot for the answers you need, grounded in real-time data from your tenant. From finding users and managing licenses to generating visual insights and automating tasks with PowerShell, use Copilot to simplify complex admin workflows and save valuable time. For Copilot in the admin center to light up, all you need is one active Microsoft 365 Copilot license for any user in your tenant and from the Microsoft 365 admin center, you can get started right away. Jeremy Chapman, Director of Microsoft 365, demonstrates how to leverage Copilot for proactive guidance, whether in the Microsoft 365 admin center or directly within Copilot Chat. Save time with Copilot. Type Recap to instantly see critical admin updates and actions in one view. Check it out in the Microsoft 365 admin center. Stay on top of changes. Copilot summarizes new features & updates from the Message Center, so you never miss an important rollout. Get started. Instant visual insights. Ask Copilot how many Copilot licenses are left and see a breakdown, no manual reports needed. Watch it here. Watch our video here. QUICK LINKS: 00:00 — Copilot in Microsoft 365 admin centers 00:42 — Use Copilot for change management 02:13 — Stay ahead of upcoming changes 03:31 — User and licensing queries 04:21 — Generate Visual Insights for Licensing and Usage 04:50 — Author PowerShell scripts for bulk operations 06:07 — Copilot Chat using Microsoft 365 Admin agent 07:37 — Copilot coming soon to other admin centers 07:51— Wrap up Link References For more information, check out https://aka.ms/CopilotinMAC Start using Copilot in the Microsoft 365 admin center at https://admin.microsoft.com Unfamiliar with Microsoft Mechanics? As Microsoft’s official video series for IT, you can watch and share valuable content and demos of current and upcoming tech from the people who build it at Microsoft. Subscribe to our YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MicrosoftMechanicsSeries Talk with other IT Pros, join us on the Microsoft Tech Community: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-mechanics-blog/bg-p/MicrosoftMechanicsBlog Watch or listen from anywhere, subscribe to our podcast: https://microsoftmechanics.libsyn.com/podcast Keep getting this insider knowledge, join us on social: Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MSFTMechanics Share knowledge on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/microsoft-mechanics/ Enjoy us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/msftmechanics/ Loosen up with us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@msftmechanics Video Transcript: -If you’re a Microsoft 365 admin, you can now take advantage of Copilot and generative AI to perform tasks across different Microsoft 365 services. In the next few minutes, in fact, I’ll show you how you can interact with it using natural language, get contextual guidance, and find proactive suggestions for common admin tasks. For the experience to light up, all you need is one active Microsoft 365 Copilot license for any user in your tenant. And from the admin center, you can get started right away. That said, before we get started, in case you’re wondering, Copilot Microsoft 365 admin centers does not make configuration changes autonomously on your behalf. As I’ll show you, it’s designed to save you time and many of the things that you do every day as an admin or business owner. -And I’ll start by showing you an example of how you can use it for change management. I’m in the Microsoft 365 admin center, and now Copilot can help you keep track of new capabilities rolling out, as well as changes that you need to action as an admin. In fact, you can use the starter prompt recap, and I’ll add the latest admin info, and you’ll see that Copilot is generating an up-to-date view of important information and key insights across service health, message center, and Microsoft 365 Copilot usage insights. This summary is personalized to you based on your specific admin role, highlighting the parts of the admin center that you use most, and your real-time individual tenant information. So this saves you time looking for information and insights that are typically spread across multiple locations in the Microsoft 365 admin center. And you can click on the see details controls to expand each area, and find out more, as well as where you can go to take any corresponding actions. For example, with these now expanded, I can see my tenant service health status, and a summary of active incidents, issues and advisories. In this case, I have one issue and three total advisories across Microsoft 365 suite, Microsoft Purview, and others. -From here I can even use these as deep links to click into my active issue for the updated attack simulations, and training URL endpoint, in this case, to find out more. Copilot can also help you stay ahead of upcoming changes, along with the items that you need to take care of from the message center. For example, back in my recap, I can see details highlighting three new features, and also three feature updates. So for this new feature, I can see details about Copilot in Edge, new contextual features to find out more about its capabilities and rollout details. I can also use the view in buttons for deep links directly into service health or the message center, like you’re seeing here with all my recent unread messages. -So as we saw, Copilot helps you stay on top of issues with its suggested prompt starters, like recap, and, of course, you can author your own prompts too, and they’ll also be grounded on data from your individual tenant. In this case, I’ll type in “Summarize my announcements for Outlook,” and Copilot generates a full summary with feature updates from the past week for Outlook. For example, here’s a new capability rolling out for the Microsoft 365 app, getting updated to be the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, and corresponding changes to the Outlook apps for iOS and Android. This change will allow more people to experience Copilot chat from their mobile apps. And now you have all the details you need to prepare for the update. -Next, let me show you how Copilot can help you with common admin tasks, like user and licensing queries using natural language. So I’ll prompt Copilot to find users in the marketing department with a Copilot license, and submit. Now, behind the scenes, it’s combining a directory attribute, the marketing department, with a licensing attribute for Copilot, what would’ve previously required advanced filtering or PowerShell. And it finds three people that match the query. And if it’s a larger group of people, you can use the CSV file option to export a list that you might use for a broader email campaign or with PowerShell scripting. -To be clear, everything that you’ve just seen is running under the permissions context of the admin using Copilot, so it can only find information that the individual account specifically has access to. Now, another area where Copilot can help is with generating visualizations for bulk insights into things like usage and licensing. For example, you might want to see how many Copilot licenses in your tenant have been acquired, and how many are available to assign. So for that, I can prompt Copilot, “How many Copilot licenses do I have available to assign?” And it generates an inline bar chart with details about Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, and Sales Copilot licenses available to assign. -And since this is Mechanics, let me show you an early look at a more advanced admin scenario to help author PowerShell scripts for bulk operations. Now, this is useful where performing specific tasks in the admin center at scale might be too manual or in cases where the control is not available in the admin center. For example, as part of my Microsoft 365 Copilot rollout, if I want to enable restricted SharePoint search using a list of allowed sites, which is only possible using PowerShell, I can prompt Copilot with “How do I get the SharePoint online PowerShell module, then enable restricted SharePoint search using a CSV file with a allowed sites using PowerShell?” And Copilot will use the Microsoft 365 admin documentation and PowerShell reference guides so that I can save time by not having to look that information up myself. And notice that everything is formatted so I can easily parse what the commands are doing, and I just need to change the placeholder values for the URL and file path, and I can run what’s presented. -Okay, and just to prove that it will work, let’s test it out. So these are the cmdlets that we just saw from Copilot with updated placeholders. So I’ll go ahead and run it. You’ll see there are no errors. Now, I’ll get the status of the feature. It’s enabled. Then get the list of allowed sites, and there they are. Next, let me show you another early look for performing these tasks in Copilot Chat using a Microsoft 365 admin agent. If your day-to-day Microsoft 365 account is the same account that you use for admin tasks, and you don’t use a separate admin-only account, you’ll be able to access these admin experiences from Copilot Chat. I’m in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. I just need to type the @ symbol to pull up a list of available agents or I could directly type @Microsoft365Admin. -And from here I can run the same admin recap we saw earlier by typing “recap important info for me” as my prompt. You’ll see that it surfaces the same information that we saw before in the admin center. In fact, when I expand the details under service health, there’s our attack simulation’s URL endpoint update. The view in buttons also link me directly to the Microsoft 365 admin center. And because it’s an agent, you’ll also be able to access the Microsoft 365 admin agent from other app endpoints, like you’re seeing here with Microsoft Word. I can get the same information with my recap from before, and once it completes, I can use that right from Word, for example, if I wanted to write a change management report. Now, it’s worth pointing out that whereas everything I showed from the admin center does not require a Microsoft 365 Copilot license for your admin account, to use the Microsoft 365 admin agent, your admin account would need one. Finally, Copilot in admin center’s experiences will extend to other surface areas, as we presented in November, including the admin centers for Microsoft Teams, as well as SharePoint online, and more details for those are coming soon. -So those are just a few examples of how Copilot can help you as an admin save time with your day-to-day work, and give you proactive suggestions for different admin tasks. Again, all you need is just one active Microsoft 365 Copilot license in your tenant, and you can get started right away. To find out more, check out aka.ms/CopilotinMAC, and start using it today in the Microsoft 365 admin center at admin.microsoft.com. Keep watching Microsoft Mechanics for the latest tech updates. Subscribe to our channel and thanks for watching.One-click AI agents in SharePoint and Teams — focused on files you select (Microsoft 365 Copilot)
Streamline your workflow and enhance team collaboration with one-click AI agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot. Automate responses, generate detailed documents, and maintain up-to-date content without moving files outside Microsoft 365. Agents utilize your existing content to provide accurate and efficient outputs, saving you time and ensuring consistency. Integrate them into Microsoft Teams to facilitate real-time information sharing and collaboration. CJ Tan, Microsoft SharePoint and OneDrive GPM, shares the steps to get started building custom AI agents. Create AI agents in one click to handle projects and tasks. Ensure important questions are answered — even while you’re away. See it here. Save time with agents in SharePoint. Scoped to only select SharePoint files for your specific business needs. See how you can create AI agents in one click. Use and share agents in SharePoint in Teams chats. @mention your agent, get instant responses and precise information for team discussions. See it here. Watch our video here. QUICK LINKS: 00:00 — Create specialist agents in one click 00:42 — How to create an agent 02:12 — Data security & version control 02:39 — Customize your agent 04:14 — Access and permissions 05:39 — Test it out 06:23 — Use agents in Teams 07:50 — Agent files 08:25 — Wrap up Link References For more ideas and details for building your own agents, check out https://aka.ms/SharePointAgentsAdoption Unfamiliar with Microsoft Mechanics? As Microsoft’s official video series for IT, you can watch and share valuable content and demos of current and upcoming tech from the people who build it at Microsoft. Subscribe to our YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/c/MicrosoftMechanicsSeries Talk with other IT Pros, join us on the Microsoft Tech Community:https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-mechanics-blog/bg-p/MicrosoftMechanicsBlog Watch or listen from anywhere, subscribe to our podcast:https://microsoftmechanics.libsyn.com/podcast Keep getting this insider knowledge, join us on social: Follow us on Twitter:https://twitter.com/MSFTMechanics Share knowledge on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/company/microsoft-mechanics/ Enjoy us on Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/msftmechanics/ Loosen up with us on TikTok:https://www.tiktok.com/@msftmechanics Video Transcript: -Did you know that if you have Microsoft 365 Copilot, you can create specialist agents in just one click to help you and your team with your specified topics and tasks? For example, imagine if you are working in a different time zone to the rest of your team, so you often wake up to a bunch of their unanswered messages at the start of your day. Now, while you are asleep or away, your agent, grounded in the knowledge you give it, can answer specific questions from your team on your behalf, freeing you up. In fact, all you need to build your agent is your content in SharePoint and an idea for where an agent can help you in the course of your day. Let me show you how easy it is to create one. My team writes product specifications for Contoso Energy’s solar panel arrays. In SharePoint, all I have to do is select the folders or individual files that I want this agent to focus on. -Here, I have files that have already been uploaded. You can also upload new files, where SharePoint will index those files for you in a few moments. I’ll select all of these product specifications. On top of the screen, you can see the create an agent control. I’ll click that. And with just one click, the agent is ready and grounded with all my selected files. And I can try it right from here. So, I’ll prompt it with compare each solar panel array with details on the home range in square feet for the two types of materials offered. Add the average home square footage per array size and price ranges for each. And it gives me all the details across the files that I added as grounding information. So it’s generated a response by panel array type and home square footage. And I can let my agent reason over that information, too. For example, if I’m new to the team and am looking for a product recommendation based on the size of a house. I’ll use my customer has a 2900 square foot home and wants the most efficient solar panel type and the right size solar panel array. What do you recommend? And here, it recommends a specific panel array based on the home size and tells me what panel type is most efficient with more detail. So, let’s rewind what we saw because I want to point out a few things. -First, unlike other options you may have tried, you don’t have to move your files outside of Microsoft 365. You don’t need to worry about version control. Your files are always up-to-date as you and your team continue to edit them. And your agent is always working with the latest information. And all of your data security protections, such as file labels and encryption, remain in place to help prevent data loss. Now, let me walk through another example of this, and this time I’ll customize the agent to show you the options. Let’s say that you spend a lot of time building written project plans. Each has a similar structure and tone, but details will change based on each project-related tasks and other aspects. Wouldn’t it be great to use your existing files as baseline templates, and then just point to a small set of details to author new project plans? Let me show you how that would work. So I’m looking at another SharePoint site for project planning. There are two folders here. This one contains all the recent completed project plans, like you saw before. -Now, I’ll show you what’s in the other folder. It contains project intake forms. I’ll also open up one of these intake forms. And you’ll see that it just lists key details and differentiators for one specific project. So, this time I’m just going to select the Completed Installation Project Plans folder as the baseline knowledge for my agent. Then I just need to click Create an agent. And if I wanted to, I could start using it right away by hitting Try it. But in this case, I want to add a few more details to make it easy for anyone on my team to start using it, so I’m going to choose Edit. Here, I can choose to rename. I’ll do that. There’s an option to brand it with a different icon image, but I’ll skip that for now, and give it a more detailed description here. In the Sources tab, I can see that my SharePoint folder is already selected, and I can choose to add another SharePoint site or more libraries, folders, or files. I can select here up to 20 sources. Importantly, agents do not grant access to your selected content. Which means that for anyone using the agent, they will only get responses based on the files and locations that they already have access to. In my case, I’m going to keep what’s on the Sources tab. -Now, I’ll move to the Behavior tab. Here, I can add a message to help others understand how best to use this agent. And below that, I can add starter prompts. These are recommendations that you can make for anyone to quickly get value from what your agent can do. I’m going to add one here for creating a new project plan based on the defined knowledge from our folder of completed project plans. It also has an instruction to reference a specific project intake form using the paperclip or forward slash. I can add two more starter prompts, but in this case, I’ll remove the other two by deleting the text. That way my agent is focused on this one task. Below that are the instructions for the agent. Here, it’s best to be very specific about your expectations for what it should do. I’m going to paste in a command to output content very close to our completed project plans. I can test it from here, but I’ll hit Save instead, so I can use it full screen from our SharePoint site. So now the agent is ready and discoverable for anyone with access and permissions to this SharePoint site. -Let’s try it out. This agent file is my new agent, and I’ll open it. And I’m going to use the starter prompt that I configured earlier. I’ll use this paperclip button to attach the project intake form that I just opened with the new details and submit my prompt. And you’ll see the output as it’s getting generated is following the structure of the completed project document and adding the details from the project intake form that I referenced in my prompt. Now I have a completed project plan like I wanted. Again, I didn’t need to move files from their original location, and everything remained within my compliance boundary in Microsoft 365. -From here, I can copy the output and put it into Word or an email and make any additional edits. And something else I want to show you is how you will be able to use this agent in the context of Microsoft Teams. I’m going to use Share and Copy link to add this to my clipboard. Now, I’ll move over to Microsoft Teams in a group chat. Note that this also works in meeting chats. So I’ll paste in the link and send it to the group. There it is. I’ll confirm that I want to add it to this chat. And from there, I can just @mention my agent to work with it like a team member in this chat. -This time, instead of asking it to generate a project plan, I’ll prompt it for details about the completed project plans in the knowledge source folder. I’ll prompt the agent with which project plans have been created for locations in Sunnyvale? And I can see that four of them are completed for that location. Now, I’ll prompt it, how many weeks does it take to run the full project for an A400 solar panel array? And it gives me a detailed breakdown of the project phases. Others in this chat can ask follow-up questions, like you’re seeing now, whether smaller homes take less time. And there is another detailed response. So, we can use this information for future projects and customer inquiries. Of course, that is just one example, and you can use the same approach to help develop other types of documents and collaborate with your team. And by the way, your context documents don’t need to be as structured or complete. They can even reference notes or meeting transcripts for similar outputs. -Now, let’s dig into the .agent files that you might have noticed earlier in our SharePoint document library. You can use these files and click on them to open your agents. And the files themselves contain everything that you configured in your agent. Here’s the agent file I built before and this is the schema. And you’ll see the starter prompts here, the agent name, the description that was added, and the instructions, and below that are the selected grounding data sources. Additionally, these files use the same labeling and policy protections as other files stored in SharePoint and OneDrive, too. -So, that was an overview of the approaches you can use for building agents. As you saw, all you need to bring to this experience is your content and an idea for where your agent can help you in the course of your day. Beyond building your own agents, each SharePoint site will include a built-in agent focused on the content on the site, so you can get started right away. For more ideas and details for building your own agents, check out aka.ms/SharePointAgentsAdoption to see what’s possible. And be sure to subscribe to Microsoft Mechanics, and thanks for watching.
