Copilot extensibility in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem
When you customize Microsoft 365 Copilot with agents and use plugins and connectors to extend Copilot's skills and knowledge, you're taking advantage of the entire Microsoft 365 ecosystem to extend the reach of your apps, services, and data.
As a developer, you can write once and run anywhere across the growing list of Microsoft 365 host applications and integrated apps. Copilot seamlessly integrates your agents, plugins, and connectors with its list of skills and knowledge. You won't have to integrate with any other Microsoft 365 apps and services.
Your users will stay in the flow of their work, using the apps and services that support their workflow as skills and knowledge that they access through Copilot's natural language interface.
Business decision makers and IT admins can confidently adopt and centrally manage your enterprise-grade technology, backed by Microsoft's commitment to Responsible AI.
The agents, plugins, and connectors you build for Copilot are part of the larger Microsoft 365 Copilot system. The following diagram illustrates how a user's prompt is interpreted, rationalized, and processed into natural language results through different native components and agents of the Copilot system.
The Copilot system uses data from a plugin in two stages: (1) it matches the user's prompt to the most relevant skill and parameters, and (2) it determines which results from the plugin are the best response to the user's prompt. The first stage corresponds to steps 1-4 in the data flow diagram; the second stage happens as Copilot prepares a response for the user.
You can extend, enrich, and customize Microsoft 365 Copilot for the unique way your customers work. As part of the broader Microsoft 365 ecosystem, your agents benefit from enhanced discoverability and potential audience reach, centralized and trustworthy distribution and management, and comprehensive development tools and support.
Important
- API plugins are currently only supported as actions within declarative agents. They aren't enabled in Microsoft 365 Copilot. For an example that shows how to add an API plugin to a declarative agent, see Add a plugin.
- The capability is enabled by default in all Microsoft 365 Copilot-licensed tenants. Admins can disable this functionality on a user and group basis and control how individual plugins are approved for use, and which plugins are enabled. For more information, see Manage Agents in Integrated Apps.
Agent in-app experience
When you build agents, you can tailor the user experience by providing in context and immersive experiences.
In-context experience: An in-app experience where users interact Business Chat (BizChat) in the context of an app, such as a Teams chat or a Word document. Users can
@-mention the agent and interact with it directly within the app experience.To build in-context experiences, you can use plugins and declarative agents. In-context experiences bring additional information to the chat experience with Microsoft 365 Copilot, allowing it to reason over and provide responses in the context of the conversation. This also enables Microsoft 365 Copilot to interact with external systems.
Immersive experience: The full experience of the Copilot app in Microsoft 365. Users chat directly with the agent embedded in Copilot.
To build an immersive experience, you use declarative agents. When a user activates an agent with an immersive experience, the conversation is a 1:1 interaction with the agent, tailored to its capabilities and scope.
Note
BizChat is the full-featured and secure chat experience for Microsoft 365 Copilot. BizChat is available on the web via the Microsoft 365 App and is integrated into Teams, Outlook, Word, and PowerPoint.
Plugin and connector availability in Microsoft 365 experiences
Over 350 million users are active daily across applications in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, including Teams, Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and the Microsoft 365 app. When you write a plugin or connector, it can reach all the apps that support Copilot extensibility across Microsoft 365.
Your plugin or connector also runs outside of Copilot experiences. The following table lists all the ways the skills and knowledge from your plugins and connectors are available to users within an organization.
| Copilot extensibility type | Microsoft 365 product availability | Learn more |
|---|---|---|
| Teams message extension plugins | Microsoft 365 Copilot, Teams, Outlook | Agents are Microsoft 365 apps |
| Power Platform connector plugins | Microsoft 365 Copilot, Power Automate, Power apps, Azure Logic apps | Connectors overview |
| Microsoft Graph connectors | Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Search, Context IQ in Outlook and the web, Microsoft 365 app (microsoft365.com) | Graph connector experiences |
Microsoft is simplifying the way Microsoft 365 Copilot extensibility and other Microsoft 365 apps and services are published and managed, both within your organization and within in-product app stores of Microsoft 365 products.
Unified app model
The Microsoft 365 ecosystem provides a unified app model for distributing and managing agents, Teams apps, Outlook Add-ins, SharePoint Framework solutions, and more. The app package for Microsoft 365 is a zip file that contains one or more configuration (manifest) files and your app icons.
To learn more, see Agents are apps for Microsoft 365.
Microsoft 365 and Copilot program for Partner Center
For independent software vendors (ISVs), the Microsoft 365 and Copilot program (formerly known as Office store) within Microsoft Partner Center is available for publishing Microsoft 365 apps, services, and Copilot extensibility solutions.
After your solution is purchased and deployed by an organization, your agent's plugins are incorporated into a unified catalog that represents Copilot's available skill list.
To learn more, see Publish agents for Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Microsoft admin center
Line-of-business developers and IT admins can publish agents and manage both custom and store-bought Microsoft 365 and Copilot extensibility solutions via the Microsoft Admin Center (admin.microsoft.com).
For more information about deploying agents, plugins, and Microsoft Graph connectors to your organization, see Publish agents for Microsoft 365 Copilot.
To learn more about managing agents, see Manage extensibility for Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Comprehensive tools and support
Microsoft 365 provides a rich set of developer resources for extending Microsoft 365 Copilot, Teams, and other Microsoft 365 experiences.
Teams Toolkit
Teams Toolkit is the pro-code option for building and debugging agents, plugins, and custom engine agents. It provides support for all major Microsoft 365 platform extensibility surfaces, including agents, tabs, bots, message extensions, and Outlook Add-ins. Teams Toolkit is available as an extension for Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio.
Copilot Studio
Microsoft Copilot Studio is the graphical low-code option for copilot extensibility, including Microsoft 365 agents, custom agents, and actions (plugins). Copilot Studio (previously known as Power Virtual Agents) is available as a standalone web app copilotstudio.microsoft.com and also as an app for Microsoft Teams.
Copilot developer mode
Microsoft 365 Copilot developer mode provides a way to test if and when the orchestrator selects your plugin with different prompts. When you enable developer mode from the Copilot chat prompt, a card with debug information is returned whenever the orchestrator searches specifically within your plugin to respond to a prompt.
Microsoft security, trust, and commitment to Responsible AI
Microsoft 365 Copilot is compliant with existing privacy, security, and compliance commitments to Microsoft 365 commercial customers, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and European Union (EU) Data Boundary. Microsoft 365 Copilot presents only data that each individual can access using the same underlying controls for data access used in other Microsoft 365 services. For more info, see Microsoft privacy policy and service documentation and commitment to responsible AI.
To learn more as a developer of Copilot extensibility solutions, see Data, Privacy, and Security considerations of extending Microsoft 365 Copilot