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Using agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat

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Agents use AI to automate and execute business processes, working alongside or on behalf of a person, team or organization. Agents range from simple prompt-and-response agents to more advanced, fully autonomous agents.

Note

Only declarative agents are available in Copilot Chat at this time. Additional agent types, like custom engine agents, will be available in the future.

Enable agents

Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat has both agents that can be used at no additional cost and agents that are billed based on metered consumption.

Agents that that are grounded in instructions, public websites, and uploaded files are available at no additional cost. These agents are available by default and will be available in the store based on your existing store settings for Teams and Microsoft 365 apps. See Manage agents for more information.

Agents that access shared tenant data, such as SharePoint or Graph Connector content, will be billed based on metered consumption. Agents utilizing metered consumption are off by default for users in Copilot Chat.

To enable agents utilizing metered consumption for users in Copilot Chat, admins will need to set up or utilize an existing Copilot Studio subscription through the Power Platform admin center (PPAC). There are two ways to pay for these agents:

Set up Pay-as-you-go billing: Admins can set up pay-as-you-go billing through the Power Platform admin center (PPAC). Learn how to set up a pay-as-you-go plan.

Purchase message capacity packs: Admins can purchase Copilot Studio capacity packs through the Power Platform admin center. Learn how to allocate or manage capacity packs.

Note

No action is needed to enable agents for Microsoft 365 Copilot-licensed users—the use of agents comes with Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses.

Find more information on how agents are billed in this overview on enabling agents.

Author agents

Copilot Chat users can author agents from the chat UX with Copilot Studio agent builder by selecting "Create an agent" under Agents. Learn about the Copilot Studio agent builder.

Users can additionally author agents through Copilot Studio.

In both cases, users must have maker rights to author agents. There are two ways to grant maker rights:

Option 1:

  • From the new Power Platform admin center, under Manage and Tenant Settings, select Copilot Studio authors to edit the default configuration.
  • Choose an existing group that you created previously in Microsoft Entra.

Option 2:

Admins can author agents using the full Copilot Studio authoring experience and provide them for their users. Get detailed instructions.

Note

Only declarative agents are available in Copilot Chat at this time. Additional agent types, like custom engine agents, will be available in the future.

Manage agents

Copilot Chat users will be able to discover and use agents from the chat UX. Access to agents can be controlled and configured within the Microsoft 365 admin center. Find more information on how to manage Copilot agents in integrated apps.

Admins can also manage Copilot Studio capacity for agents in the Power Platform admin center. Find more information on how to manage Copilot Studio messages and capacity.

Additional materials

To help admins and users learn about agents and set up agent access in their environments, please refer to agent enablement resources in the Copilot Chat and agent starter kit.