If you’ve heard about SharePoint agents—or are just stumbling across them for the first time—you’re in the right place. In this blog, we’ll cover what SharePoint agents are, what they can do for your organization, their availability, and what you need to know about pricing and more.
What are SharePoint agents?
SharePoint agents act as natural language AI assistants, customized to specific tasks and subject areas, delivering trustworthy and accurate answers and insights to inform decisions. Every SharePoint site contains an agent built on its own content, or, with a single click, users can create and share a custom agent that only accesses the information they choose. Whether employees rely on these out-of-the-box agents or develop their own, they gain precise, pertinent responses that support effective decision-making.
Key benefits and use cases
SharePoint agents offer numerous benefits, including increased efficiency, improved accuracy, and enhanced collaboration. By automating routine tasks, these agents free up valuable time for employees to focus on more strategic initiatives. Additionally, they help ensure consistency and compliance by following predefined rules and workflows.
Common use cases for SharePoint agents include:
Streamlined employee onboarding: New hires often have dozens of questions about how to find documents or request access to teams. A SharePoint agent can answer these questions and guide them to the right information.
Internal help desk: Instead of emailing IT or HR for common queries like “How do I reset my password?” or “Where can I find the new expense policy?”, employees can ask the Agent and get immediate answers (or directions).
Budget planning: The SharePoint Agent can provide recommendations and prioritizations for the upcoming planning cycle, and reduces time intensive analysis and costly margins of error so the team can focus on strategic financial planning.
How SharePoint agents work
SharePoint agents operate by integrating with the SharePoint environment and utilizing its APIs and services. They can be configured to perform specific tasks based on triggers, such as changes to documents or user actions. These agents use predefined rules and workflows to carry out their tasks, ensuring that processes are executed consistently and accurately.
The agents can be managed and monitored through a central interface, allowing administrators to track their performance and make adjustments as needed. This centralized management helps ensure that the agents operate efficiently and effectively, minimizing the risk of errors and downtime.
Key features and capabilities of SharePoint agents
SharePoint agents come with a range of features and capabilities designed to enhance the functionality and efficiency of the SharePoint environment.
Built to protect your data and limit oversharing
Powered by the same AI technology as Microsoft 365 Copilot, these agents operate within the secure boundaries of Microsoft 365, maintaining high standards of data privacy and security. SharePoint agents adhere to existing SharePoint user permissions and aforementioned labels to ensure data is protected and help prevent the oversharing of sensitive information. Users still only have access to the files they are authorized to view or edit.
Management of SharePoint agents
SharePoint site owners will be able to manage agents in the following ways:
Approve the ready-made agents for the site
Choose a default agent for the site
Feature other user-created agents in the drop-down menu from the Copilot icon in the top ribbon, so they are visible to site members
Only people who create and have edit permissions to the site will be able to create and edit customized agents. This leverages the same permission model already working in SharePoint, so that users who are closest to the knowledge on the site can create agents that improve their daily work. Regular editors can create their own agents, but only site owners can set the agent for their site, as well as other agents featured for everyone else.
Customize SharePoint agents with Copilot Studio
With Microsoft Copilot Studio integration, you can customize these agents further with third-party sources, actions, and automation workflows. You can then publish the agent to the Teams app catalog.
Figure 1: Microsoft Copilot Studio web page
How to create SharePoint agents
On a SharePoint site, you can find the site agent from the Copilot icon on the right side of the ribbon at the top. This agent’s name defaults to the same as the site name, and will be at the top of the “Approved for this site” list.
Figure 2: Default agent scoped to a SharePoint site
For specific projects or tasks, any SharePoint user can create a customized agent based on the relevant files, folders, or sites, with just one click.
You can create SharePoint agents from these three entry points:
The Copilot icon in the top ribbon (just like how you access the ready-made agent), click “Create an agent” from the drop-down menu.
Your document library, choose files and click “Create an agent” from the top menu.
The Home tab on the left side of the screen, click the “+ New” drop-down menu and select “Agent.”
Availability and licensing
SharePoint agents began rolling out in late November 2024 and are expected to achieve 100% availability in January 2025. You can get access to SharePoint agents with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. Alternatively, if your tenant is licensed for Microsoft Copilot Studio consumption billing, SharePoint agents will soon be available to users as a pay-as-you-go meter.
Coming soon, through the Microsoft 365 admin center, admins will also be able to manage consumption billing for SharePoint agents.
Other FAQs
Who can create SharePoint agents? Anyone with edit permissions on a SharePoint site can create agents. This includes site owners, editors, members, or admins, depending on the permissions set within SharePoint.
What is the difference between an agent in SharePoint and an agent made with Microsoft Copilot Studio? SharePoint agents allow site editors to quickly define an agent tailored to their specific team or projects directly within SharePoint. In comparison, creating an agent in Copilot Studio enables you to use content from SharePoint or OneDrive as sources, as well as other sources.
What files are supported by SharePoint agents?
Currently, the following file types are supported:
Office documents: DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX, XLSX
New Microsoft 365 formats: FLUID, LOOP
Universal formats: PDF, TXT, RTF
Web files: ASPX, HTM, HTML
OpenDocument formats: ODT, ODP
Support for the following file formats is coming soon: • Images • Meeting recordings and other videos • OneNote notebooks
Future outlook: what’s next for SharePoint agents
The future of SharePoint Agents looks promising, with ongoing advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning expected to further enhance their capabilities. Future developments may include more sophisticated automation, improved integration with other enterprise systems, and enhanced analytics and reporting features.
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