
What are Copilot Agents and How Are They Related to Microsoft 365 Copilot?
Introduction
Microsoft 365 Copilot is evolving quickly and we discuss the introduction of Agents. We discuss the challenges they aim to solve and how Microsoft 365 Copilot is transitioning from Copilots to Agents.
What are Copilot Agents?
Before we discuss what, Copilot Agents are, let’s put this into context and explain the ecosystem.
Microsoft 365 Copilot has a feature called BizChat, which allows your teams to use Generative AI over all the information in Microsoft 365. The combination of Generative AI and your data is known as grounding in your data.
A feature of BizChat, is the ability to extend the information that the Copilot can access using Plugins. Copilot Agents are the new name for Plugins, but they have been given more superpowers to solve our challenges with Plugins.
Firstly, Copilot Agents allow us to be much more specific about the information available to the Copilot’s Generative AI. What does that mean? Previously the plugins would be selected and used by Microsoft 365 Copilot as it saw fit. Therefore, if you were great at explaining when to use the Plugin then Microsoft 365 Copilot might choose your plugin. However, it might not.
Additionally, this experience means that Microsoft 365 Copilot may use data from the plugin and other data sources in Microsoft 365. The result was that sometimes it worked, and others did not.
However, this is where Copilot Agents come to save the day. With Copilot Agents, you provide the context and scope for reasoning, and this much more refined scope means that the results are better and more suitable to the situation that the Copilot Agent is intended for.
Another challenge was how do people discover these Copilot Agents, and how do they know how to use them. Now, you can @ mention an agent much like you would a person, targeting your question to an agent, which feels very intuitive and helps you get the right answer to your question.
In conclusion, Copilot Agents are the next wave of Copilot, built to deliver specific information for a particular role or service. For example, you might have a Sales Copilot Agent that helps your sales staff get answers to customer questions, register leads and opportunities, or update those opportunities in your CRM.
Copilot Agents are very similar to your phone’s apps, designed to be specific and intended for a particular use case or behaviour.
What Challenges Do They Solve?
Since the advent of mobile phones, we have become accustomed to Apps. However, Apps are designed for a specific purpose, and good Apps allow us to do something specific easily and well. Think of Agents as a similar concept; they allow your users to access information and perform actions around a specific purpose effectively and easily.
For example, at iThink 365, we wanted to be able to keep our sales teams up to date and in touch with the latest products and services. We wanted to give our salespeople a tool so that when they were with a customer and were being asked questions such as:
“We have a challenge with communicating with all our employees, can you help us?”
The salesperson can go to our Salesperson Agent and ask, “How can we help customers improve how they communicate with their employees?”
The following result pops out:
“This is Napoleon Copilot Agent. To help a customer communicate effectively with all their employees, whether they are in the office, working remotely, or on-site, we can leverage several solutions from iThink 365’s offerings.
One of the key solutions is the iThink 365 Microsoft 365 Intranet Accelerator. This tool provides a comprehensive platform to build an intranet using SharePoint Online. It fosters two-way communication, allowing the organisation to share updates, strategies, and visions while also gathering feedback and understanding how teams are working and feeling. The intranet can be accessed by the entire team, regardless of their location, via the SharePoint mobile app
Additionally, the iThink Connect Product Suite is designed to enhance employee engagement and connectivity. It integrates seamlessly with Microsoft platforms, providing easy access to vital information such as new starters, leave entitlements, upcoming birthdays, work anniversaries, and streamlined onboarding and offboarding management [2].
For more tailored solutions, the iThink365 Products & Services offer expert guidance and strategic partnerships to maximise the potential of Microsoft 365. This includes boosting productivity, enhancing collaboration, and tightening security, all of which are crucial for effective communication across different work environments [3]
Would you like more details on any specific solution or have any other questions?”

What Does the Experience Look Like, and How Do They Work?
Currently, the experience starts within BizChat the Microsoft Teams Copilot app as shown below.
To include the Agent and ask it for help you simplify @ mention the Agent in your chat message, just as you would start a conversation with a person. This @ mentioning is great as it helps the user understand who they are asking for help from.

Alternatively, you can use the right-hand pane to select an agent and switch the conversation to that agent. This has the benefit of showing users the types of prompts that they can use with the agent to get help.

Do You Have Any Examples?
We have already shown Salesperson Copilot. However, there are many other examples, including having Agents for Human Resources or Finance, which allow your employees to get the answers to their HR questions and book leave etc.
Customer services and IT support are other great examples of where an agent can help your teams to get answers to their questions and perform actions such as raising the support desk ticket if they cannot get the answer to their question.
Other ideas might be to support consultants in meetings. For example, we might have a requirements workshop being run by one of our
Microsoft 365 consultants and the agent can support that consultant to make sure that they have asked the right questions, or they have not missed anything they need to when running that requirements workshop.
Conclusion
We hope that this article has helped explain what Copilot Agents are and how they work within Microsoft 365 Copilot.
We explained the challenges that occurred with Microsoft 365 Copilot and plugins and how Agents help address those challenges.
If you would like to find out more and start your journey with Microsoft 365 Copilots, Custom Agents, or have an idea you want to discuss, please reach out.