At its AI tour in London this morning, Microsoft announced that all Microsoft 365 Copilot customers will soon be able to create custom copilots with agent capabilities. These new agents launched in private preview earlier this year, and they'll be available in public preview in Microsoft Copilot Studio starting next month.
While Microsoft 365 Copilot already provides intelligent assistance in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams, Microsoft Copilot Studio allow organizations to add agents to the Microsoft 365 apps their employees already use. These agents are custom copilots created using natural language prompts or a graphical interface, and they can be configured to automate business processes.
"Think of agents as the new apps for an AI-powered world, explained Jared Spataro, Chief Marketing Officer, AI at Work at Microsoft. "Every organization will have a constellation of agents -- ranging from simple prompt-and-response to fully autonomous. They will work on behalf of an individual, team or function to execute and orchestrate businesses process. Copilot is how you'll interact with these agents, and they'll do everything from accelerating lead generation and processing sales orders to automating your supply chain."
With this new paradigm, Copilot is the personal assistant that any employee with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license can use, and it will be supported by various agents configured with Copilot connectors to access custom data sources. Organizations will also be able to create triggers to make these agents automatically react to certain events or signals.
Today, the company also announced the addition of 10 autonomous agents in Dynamics 365 to help sales, service, finance, and supply chain teams to operate more efficiently. One of these agents can optimize supply chains by tracking supplier performance, detecting delays, and more.
"Agents built in Copilot Studio include guardrails and controls established by maker-defined instructions, knowledge and actions," explained Spataro. "Once these agents are created, IT administrators can apply a comprehensive set of features to govern their use."
The public preview of agents in Copilot Studio will launch during Microsoft's Ignite 2024 conference on November 19-22. The session catalog for the conference is already available, and you can check it here.