Smarter AI Workflows in Microsoft 365 Copilot has been announced on the roadmap: Tools, Source Control, and Agents

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Tool Selection in Copilot Chat: Making AI Features More Discoverable One of the most helpful updates in my opinion, is the introduction of the new “Tools” button in Copilot Chat. Users will soon see this button directly in the chat prompt box, offering quick access to a curated set of Copilot features such as Researcher, Analyst, Pages, and image generation.  This will hopefully help users with an easier path to the different tools at their disposal. The feature is turned on by default, with no admin configuration required. This feature is associated with Roadmap ID 497298 , and is expected to roll out in the last weeks of August. Source Control in Copilot Chat: Scoped Responses for Greater Relevance Another user-friendly enhancement coming up, is the ability to scope Copilot Chat responses to specific content sources. This feature will allow users to define exactly which documents, folders, or repositories Copilot should reference when generating responses. It’s a subtle but power...

Custom Engine Agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot

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Agents in BizChat has been available for some time already, but now there is an upcoming update to Agents. The introduction of “custom engine agents” in Microsoft 365 Copilot! These specialized agents can be built on any large language model (LLM), toolchain, or orchestration tool, tailored specifically for your domain or tenant workflows. Initially supported in Microsoft Teams, this feature will soon be available in Microsoft 365 Copilot Business Chat (BizChat).  

The introduction of Custom engine agents enables your organization to create customized experiences using your own AI systems and orchestrators. You can design unique prompts, connect to any LLM, and integrate these custom agents with Microsoft 365 Copilot. After the rollout, users will be able to access these agents, provided they are enabled and deployed in the Microsoft 365 admin center under the Copilot tab.  You can read more about the feature on this page.

Eligible users can create agents using Microsoft Copilot Studio for low-code tools or the Microsoft Teams Toolkit in Visual Studio for pro-code solutions. Access to Copilot Studio requires enabling the Microsoft Power Automate free license.  

Users can deploy agents for individual tasks and share them with internal teams, but organization-wide sharing requires admin approval. 

This feature is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 474439 and will hopefully be in preview during February. The current target for GA is a finished roll-out by end of April.