Microsoft Launches Agent 365 to Manage Growing AI Workforce in Corporate Environments

Microsoft's Agent 365 Tries to Be the AI Bot Boss

A new tool from Microsoft called Agent 365 is designed to help businesses control their growing collection of robotic helpers. Agent 365 is not a platform for making enterprise AI tools; it's a way to manage them, as if they were human employees. Companies using generative AI agents in their digital workplace can use Agent 365 to organize their growing sprawl of bots, keep tabs on how they're performing, and tweak their settings. The tool is rolling out today in Microsoft's early access program. Essentially, Microsoft created a trackable workspace for agents. "Tools that you use to manage people, devices and applications today, you'd want to extend them to run agents as well in the future," says Charles Lamanna, a president of business and industry for Microsoft's Copilot, its AI chatbot. Lamanna envisions a future where companies have many more agents performing labor than humans. For example, if a company has 100,000 employees, he sees them as using "half a million to a million agents," ranging in tasks from simple email organization to running the "whole procurement process" for a business. He claims Microsoft internally uses millions of agents. This army of bots, with permission to take actions inside a company's software and automate aspects of an employee's workflow, could quickly grow unwieldy to track. A lack of clear oversight could also open businesses up to security breaches. Agent 365 is a way to manage all your bots, whether those agents were built with Microsoft's tools or through a third-party platform. Agent 365's core feature is a registry of an organization's active agents all in one place, featuring specific identification numbers for each and details about how they are being used by employees. It's also where you can change the settings for agents and what aspects of a business's software each one has permission to access.

Microsoft Agent 365 lets businesses manage AI agents like they do people

Microsoft is racing towards building an AI "agent factory" that lets businesses build and manage their own AI agents. While Microsoft was founded on the idea of being a software factory, it's quickly being transformed into an era where AI agents will increasingly take on more human work. Now, Microsoft is launching Agent 365 as a way for businesses to manage AI agents in the same way they do humans. "Agents are already changing how people work, and IDC predicts there will be 1.3 billion agents by 2028," says Jared Spataro, chief marketing officer of AI at work at Microsoft. "Agent 365 is the control plane for agents, extending the infrastructure you trust to manage your people to agents." Agent 365 will help businesses deploy and organize AI agents securely, to ensure these new AI coworkers don't do anything unexpected. Agent 365 is effectively a framework that has dashboards to show how AI agents are operating, with telemetry and alerts. It allows businesses to register AI agents with Microsoft Entra registry, limit what they have access to, ensure they can integrate with Microsoft 365 apps, and protect against external and internal security threats. It will also embrace a broader ecosystem of AI agents from companies like Adobe, Nvidia, ServiceNow, Workday, and more. The dashboards inside Agent 365 will let admins see connections between agents, people, and data, as well as monitor how AI agents are behaving in real time. Microsoft is making Agent 365 available through Frontier, the company's early-access program for AI features. This early rollout is designed for IT admins to test scenarios for adopting and managing AI agents.

Microsoft launches tracker to manage autonomous AI in the workplace

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 18 (Reuters) - In Microsoft's (MSFT.O), opens new tab view, humans are not the only ones to manage in a workplace. Artificial intelligence needs a manager, too. The software maker on Tuesday announced Microsoft Agent 365, a program for its customers to track what it expects to be 1.3 billion agents automating office work by 2028. Agents are AI-powered programs that perform tasks on humans' behalf. Sign up here. Microsoft and other companies are actively marketing agent software. While some customers have successfully deployed these systems for code generation, others have struggled with implementation, fueling concerns about a market bubble. According to Microsoft, just like IT staff can see who is on a company's network and manage what resources they can access, its latest software aims to extend similar controls to supervising AI agents. The program lets IT personnel quarantine rogue agents while equipping authorized ones -- whether built on Microsoft or other software like Salesforce -- with a range of productivity tools and aiming to secure them from cyberattacks, said Microsoft. In an interview, Judson Althoff, the CEO of Microsoft's commercial business, said the product came out of requests from business leaders to get a handle on AI agents at work and measure their return on investment. "Take supply chain. You might have an inventory agent. You might have an out-of-stock agent," said Althoff. "Without this kind of a tool, understanding how those things compose in an overall process is really, really hard." Microsoft Agent 365 is available to license holders that sign up for an early access program. The company announced the news at the start of Microsoft Ignite, a technology conference in San Francisco. Other announcements included Work IQ, which lets companies build agents on top of the same intelligence and business data powering its AI called Microsoft 365 Copilot. Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco; Editing by Kenneth Li and Lisa Shumaker Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Microsoft unveils tool to help companies control, track AI agents

Judson Althoff, CEO of Microsoft's commercial business and then mresident of Microsoft North America, speaks during We Day at KeyArena in Seattle on April 23, 2015. Microsoft made it easier for corporate workers to make AI agents that go off and do work. Now it's demonstrating a tool that IT specialists can use to see and manage those agents. The software, named Agent 365, provides a list of artificial intelligence agents inside companies' systems, even if they're from other companies, Microsoft announced Tuesday. The company will present the product to business leaders and information technology practitioners at its Ignite conference in San Francisco this week. "In the same way you provision an identity for a new employee or a contingent worker, you'll provision identity and access controls for your agents," Judson Althoff, CEO of Microsoft's commercial business, told CNBC in an interview. With Agent 365, administrators will be able to approve new agents, see which ones are becoming popular and find out how many hours of employee time they're saving each week. They'll also be able to spot security risks and block agents. End users will be able to analyze agents' activities. Following the ascent of OpenAI's ChatGPT in late 2022, software companies have built AI agents capable of developing software, generating ads and performing other simple tasks. Traditional corporations have started buying in. Agents from Adobe, Cognition, Databricks, Glean, ServiceNow and Workday will automatically show up in Agent 365. The software will also display agents that customers have built with Microsoft's Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio. Other companies that sell AI agents can integrate with Agent 365, said Ray Smith, vice president of autonomous agents at Microsoft. EY, one of the world's top accounting firms, had built an internal catalog of its AI agents, but has started implementing Agent 365 to gain more control, said Mark Luquire, a managing director for the company. Companies selling cybersecurity software recognize the complexity that might result from agents proliferating. Okta, which sells software for managing access for employees, said in September that it will bring out tools for discovering agents and tracking their activity. Customers enrolled in Microsoft's Frontier program for receiving early access to AI features can request to try Agent 365, Smith said. Microsoft has not finalized pricing.

Does your AI have an ID? Microsoft looks to document the digital workforce with new 'Agent 365'

Satya Nadella recently foreshadowed a major shift in the company's business -- saying the tech giant will increasingly build its products and infrastructure not just for human users, but for autonomous AI agents that operate as a new class of digital workers. "The way to think about the per-user business is not just per user, it's per agent," the Microsoft CEO said during his latest appearance on Dwarkesh Patel's podcast. At its Ignite conference this week, the company is starting to show what that means. Microsoft is unveiling a series of new products that give IT departments a way to manage and secure their new AI workforce, in much the same way as HR oversees human employees. The big announcement: Microsoft Agent 365, a new "control plane" that functions as a central management dashboard inside the Microsoft 365 Admin Center that IT teams already use. Its core function is to govern a company's entire AI workforce -- including agents from Microsoft and other companies -- by giving every agent a unique identification. This lets companies use their existing security systems to track what agents are doing, control what data they can access, and prevent them from being hacked or leaking sensitive information. Microsoft's approach addresses what has become a major headache for businesses in 2025: "Shadow AI," with employees turning to unmanaged AI tools at growing rates. It also represents a big opportunity for the tech industry, as tech giants look to grow revenue to match their massive infrastructure investments. The AI agent market is expanding rapidly, with Microsoft citing analyst estimates of 1.3 billion agents by 2028. Market research firms project the market will grow from around $7.8 billion in 2025 to over $50 billion by 2030. Google, Amazon, and Salesforce have all rolled out their own agentic platforms for corporate use -- Google with its Gemini Enterprise platform, Amazon with new Bedrock AgentCore tools for managing AI agents, and Salesforce with Agentforce 360 for customer-facing agents. Microsoft is making a series of announcements related to agents at Ignite, its conference for partners, developers, and customers, taking place this week in San Francisco. Other highlights: * A "fully autonomous" Sales Development Agent will research, qualify, and engage sales leads on its own, acting basically like a new member of the sales team. * Security Copilot agents in Microsoft's security tools will help IT teams automate tasks, like having an agent in Intune create a new security policy from a text prompt. * Word, Excel, and PowerPoint agents will allow users to ask Copilot, via chat, to create a complete, high-quality document or presentation from scratch. * Windows is getting a new "Agent Workspace," a secure, separate environment on the PC where an agent can run complex tasks using its own ID, letting IT monitor its work. As a backbone for the announcements, Agent 365 leverages Microsoft's entrenched position in corporate identity and security systems. Instead of asking companies to adopt an entirely new platform, it's building AI agents into tools that many businesses already use. For example, in the Microsoft system, each agent gets its own identity inside Microsoft Entra, formerly Active Directory, the same system that handles employee logins and permissions. Microsoft is rolling out Agent 365 starting this week in preview through Frontier, its early-access program for its newest AI innovations. Pricing has not yet been announced.

Microsoft reveals Agent 365 - the new and (hopefully) easy way to get a handle on all these new AI agents at work

Microsoft has unveiled a host of new tools for businesses to get to grips with all their AI agents. At Microsoft Ignite 2025, the company launched Microsoft Agent 365 platform, which will make it easier for organizations to manage and hopefully grow their agent usage. "Microsoft Agent 365 will extend the infrastructure for managing users to agents -- helping organizations govern agents responsibly and at scale," the company said. Living in the Microsoft 365 admin center, the new platform will bring together the company's security tools (Defender, Entra and Purview) with popular office software apps such as Word, Excel and Outlook, to give agents the best chance to find the information they need, boosting productivity across the board. Agent 365 will give users a complete view of every agent in their organization, as well as what permissions and access they have, including the ability to manage and limit this. Users will also be able to see clearly what connections their agents have with their people and their data, and monitor agent behavior and performance in real time to assess their impact n your organization. Agents can then be given access to apps and data to help improve the human-agent workflow, with conenctions to Microsoft's new Work IQ platform to get even more context when needed. All this is secured with Microsoft's top security tools, protecting agents from the threats and vulnerabilities before they are ever affected, as well as warning of any agents which might leak or overshare data. Elsewhere at Ignite, the company announced a host of new agents for its top office software apps, as well as launching a preview of native support for Model Context Protocol (MCP) on Windows. This will make it easier for AI agents to connect with enterprise apps and tools, with developer also now able to make their apps easier to discover, and new agent connectors allowing access to system files and Windows settings such as network and Bluetooth. Finally, new agent workspaces will let agents interact safely and securely with software, carrying out their tasks without disturbing the human user.

Microsoft's Agent 365 shifts AI agents from sandbox tools to enterprise-grade infrastructure

Managing and maintaining AI systems remains a challenge for many enterprises, particularly with the potential for agentic sprawl to expose businesses to risky entry points. Microsoft entered the observability fray with the launch of Agent 365 during its annual Ignite conference Tuesday. It described Agent 365 as the control plane for AI agents, serving as an observability layer for enterprises running any agent. The company said the platform "delivers unified observability" through telemetry, dashboards, and alerts to track every agent in use. Agent 365 supports any agents, whether built on Microsoft's platforms or from third parties, including Adobe, Databricks, Cognition, and ServiceNow. "Agent 365 marks a new chapter in how organizations build, secure, and scale their agents. This is a shift from isolated experiments to enterprise readiness, where agents operate as part of a unified, governed, and productive system," said Microsoft's president of business apps and agents, Charles Lamanna, in a blog post. What enterprises get Microsoft 365 has five capabilities: registry, access control, visualization, interoperability, and security. The first step in beginning observability tasks in Microsoft 365 is to log the agents that may be present, which will serve as a single source of truth. The company calls this registry Entra. "This single registry tracks the agents for every relevant role within your organization -- IT, developers, security, and business leaders. And with the Agent Store, users can easily discover the right agents for their role and workflows directly within Microsoft 365 Copilot and Teams," Microsoft said. Access Control would require agents to have a unique agent ID, allowing enterprise admins to limit access as needed. Organizations can set policies that agents must adhere to, and the tool can respond by blocking misbehaving agents. Agent 365 also offers a visual dashboard, allowing companies to see how their agents are connected, performance measurements, and task adherence. For enterprises already dealing with agent sprawl, Microsoft's approach stands out because it bundles what's usually a patchwork of add-on tools into a single, governed control plane. Most observability options today are either siloed features or separate platforms that add more complexity. Agent 365 treats agents as parts of the stack, giving IT and security teams unified oversight at a moment when that's becoming essential. Companies like DataDog, Dynatrace and Splunk offer observability services for AI systems. The startup Chronosphere released capabilities similar to observability, focusing on debugging issues, and Raindrop also introduced its own observability tools for performance. Google also began offering an observability dashboard on its AI Agent Builder. "As agents multiply in numbers and sophistication, companies face a new kind of challenge: how to manage and govern agents responsibly and at scale, without rebuilding the trusted systems they rely on," Lamanna said. "The clearest path forward is to manage agents the way you manage people, using the same infrastructure, apps, and protections that power your business today."

Microsoft introduces Agent 365 control center and a pack of new AI agents for enterprise users - SiliconANGLE

Microsoft introduces Agent 365 control center and a pack of new AI agents for enterprise users Microsoft Corp. is leaning more into enterprise artificial intelligence agentic workflow support with a new command center for AI agents: Agent 365. Announced today during Microsoft Ignite 2025 in San Francisco, Agent 365 provides centralized visibility and management for AI agents across an enterprise. It acts as a control plane that brings together telemetry, dashboards and alerts into one place. "As agents multiply in numbers and sophistication, companies face a new kind of challenge: how to manage and govern agents responsibly and at scale, without rebuilding the trusted systems they rely on," said Charles Lamanna, president of business apps and agents at Microsoft. He added that the best way to manage agents in the enterprise is the same way management handles people. To tackle the problem, Agent 365 brings together five core elements: registration, access control, visualization, interoperability and security. Building on Microsoft Entra, a comprehensive family of identity and access management products, information technology teams gain a single source of truth for every agent operating in their organization. It provides a single registry to track all agents and their relevant roles across the enterprise: information technology , development, security and business operations. All agents in the system are required to have an agent ID, which allows them to manage and limit access similar to how user roles are handled. IT can pre-program guardrails for creating, onboarding and managing agents. Policy settings in Entra will enforce adaptive, risk-based roles that respond in real time to context and risk, allowing rogue agents to be detected and curtailed. On the front end, users will get a visual dashboard filled with advanced analytics to provide a map of connections between agents, users and resources in use. This allows engineers and IT teams to dive into tailored metrics to understand how the complex web of software and people works together. It includes agent metrics for performance, speed and quality alongside detailed logging, reporting and discovery to assist with detecting and logging agent interactions for security and ethics audits. The company said the new control center is agent supplier-agnostic and will work with agents built using Microsoft platforms, open-source frameworks or third-party platforms across Azure and partner clouds. All of this is designed to work together with Microsoft Defender, the company's cybersecurity solution, and Purview, a unified data governance and compliance platform that provides visibility and control for both agents and data. Purview handles potential AI-related data exposure risks and prevents agents from processing sensitive information by applying policy settings. Defender allows organizations to detect and prevent known exploits and emerging threats that target agents and Entra acts to stop attacks in real-time. Managing and securing Copilot As more users adopt Copilot, organizations find themselves needing to monitor and secure its use. To this end, Microsoft released Baseline Security Mode today in general availability. This helps organizations secure their Microsoft 365 environment using recommended configurations. After a guided experience, IT and security teams can identify gaps in policy, simulate changes and deploy protections for common Microsoft apps, including Office, SharePoint, Teams, Entra and more. The company also released an additional Agent Dashboard. In preview mode, the dashboard offers centralized reporting on agent adoption across an organization. IT and leadership can use it to analyze trends, group adoption and highlight individual agent actions. The goal is to enable organizational administration and management to understand adoption, aiding in decision-making regarding governance and impact. Purview has been updated with Data Loss Prevention for Microsoft 365 Copilot, now in preview, which helps ensure that sensitive information stays protected. If a prompt sent to Copilot includes confidential or sensitive information -- such as credit card details or personal data -- the new prompt protection blocks Copilot and agents from responding, preventing the data from being used for grounding or web search. Also in preview, Purview Data Security Posture Management for SharePoint can now assist IT administrators in discovering and fixing links that are shared too widely at scale, reducing potential exposure of sensitive information. Purview AI Observability in DSPM, also in preview, will allow IT admins to see everything happening with agents and help security teams make informed decisions to mitigate risks. New agents for business users and IT admins Along with the agent control center with Agent 365, Microsoft introduced several new AI agents to assist employees in scaling and using their knowledge. Work IQ is the intelligence layer behind Microsoft 365 Copilot, the AI chatbot tool integrated into Microsoft products, and the company's AI agents. Tapping into Work IQ, Microsoft released three new agents designed to simplify workforce management, assist with upskilling and strengthen employee connections. These new agents include a Workforce Insights Agent designed to provide management with real-time insights into workforce roles, tenure and location to enable data-driven team planning decisions. The new People Agent helps users find the appropriate person to connect with, given their role or skill, based on previous interactions, helping connect employees. The Learning Agent will provide personalized micro-lessons, tips and curated courses to help employees build their skills and AI literacy. Sales teams will get access to the Sales Development Agent, new in preview. This agent acts as a fully autonomous sales agent, capable of doing research, qualifying and engaging leads during after-hours to provide additional coverage for salespeople. It can research prospects, reach out to them, and follow up without immediate human oversight. However, it will still transfer leads to human workers when it cannot handle a question or encounters an issue. In Teams, the company's collaboration platform that combines chat, video meetings and file sharing, a new Teams Admin Agent, now in preview, can help automate tedious recurring tasks. It will be able to securely execute tasks in Teams, such as meeting monitoring or managing user accounts. A new SharePoint Admin Agent, now in preview within the collaboration platform, will provide IT administrators with AI-driven insights and automation capabilities. Microsoft said it will assist with monitoring inactive and ownerless sites, track overshared content and permission-sprawl, and implement policies to archive or lock down roles as needed. Admin teams can also use it to better understand increasing AI agent usage as Copilot adoption accelerates.