How to Enable Key Microsoft Agents in Your Org Today

Why This Matters (and Why Now)

Microsoft 365 Copilot is expanding from a personal assistant to team‑aware agents that coordinate work, keep meetings on track, and maintain knowledge hygiene.

Crucially, these agents run where collaboration already happens, Teams, SharePoint, and Viva Engage, grounded in Microsoft Graph with enterprise security, compliance, and admin controls. For IT, this is an opportunity to light up practical value quickly using familiar governance levers.

Public preview is available now for several agents if your tenant has Microsoft 365 Copilot; Facilitator for Teams meetings is reaching general availability with core skills, while some task/doc creation capabilities remain in preview. That means you can pilot safely today without waiting on a major deployment wave.

What’s New at a Glance

Facilitator (Teams meetings): GA rollout for M365 Copilot users: agenda support, time cues, collaborative AI notes, Planner task capture, and first‑draft docs (some skills still in preview).

Project Manager Agent (Planner & Teams): Public preview in meetings and channels: turns conversation into plans/tasks and summarizes status; premium Planner capabilities still require Planner Premium.‍

Sales Community Agent (Viva Engage): Public preview: per‑community agent drafts grounded, cited answers with optional expert review; SharePoint grounding is being added during preview.‍

Knowledge Agent (SharePoint): Public preview via tenant opt‑in: organizes, tags, fixes content, and answers in context; enablement is via SharePoint Online Management Shell during preview.

1 / Facilitator Agent (Teams Meetings)

What it Does

Facilitator participates as a visible teammate in scheduled Teams meetings: it proposes or infers an agenda, keeps time, captures collaborative AI notes, answers in‑meeting questions, assigns tasks that sync to Planner, and can draft documents in Word or Loop. It also enhances the Teams Rooms experience for in‑room participants.

How to Enable / Use

No tenant‑wide toggle is required beyond allowing the app and ensuring Copilot licensing. Organizers or eligible participants can turn Facilitator on from the meeting invite or during the meeting; it’s included for M365 Copilot‑licensed users and respects your existing Teams app permission policies.

Licensing & Availability

Facilitator is included for Microsoft 365 Copilot users; GA rollout for core meeting skills begins late September 2025 with completion expected by early October 2025. Task management and document creation skills remain in public preview.

2 / Project Manager Agent (Planner & Teams)

What it Does

Project Manager Agent converts meeting and channel conversation into execution: capture and assign tasks via Facilitator in meetings (auto‑synced to Planner), generate plans, summarize status, and answer plan questions. Channel agents can use PM skills so teams can add tasks and get status inside the channel thread. Meetings support 40 languages; channels are currently English (US).

How to Enable

Confirm Microsoft 365 Copilot for pilot users and join Teams Public Preview to light up PM Agent skills in meetings and channels. Ensure Loop is enabled for document creation hand‑offs. Then @mention Facilitator in meetings or the channel’s agent in Teams channels to create tasks, get summaries, and surface blockers without leaving chat.

Licensing & Availability

Public preview requires Microsoft 365 Copilot; Planner Premium is still needed for premium features like dependencies, baselines, and advanced timelines.

3 / Sales Community Agent (Viva Engage)

What it Does

A per‑community agent proactively drafts answers to unanswered questions, cites sources, and can require expert review before posting. It scopes to the community’s content and will incorporate SharePoint sites/libraries as grounding sources during preview, improving accuracy and transparency.

How to Enable

At the network level, toggle Community agent (Public Preview) on in the Engage admin center (Tenant settings). At the community level, a Copilot‑licensed community admin clicks Add agent, chooses Require review (recommended at start), and, as integration lights up, adds SharePoint sources that community members can access.

Licensing & Availability

A Microsoft 365 Copilot‑licensed admin is required to add/configure the agent and review suggestions; posted answers are visible to all members regardless of license. Public preview began September 18, 2025, with SharePoint grounding rolling out during preview and GA expected early 2026. 36

4 / Knowledge Agent (SharePoint)

What it Does

Knowledge Agent is a built‑in SharePoint capability that appears as a floating button on SharePoint surfaces. It helps organize libraries, enrich metadata, generate AI views/rules, flag stale pages and broken links, and answer questions grounded in the current site/library—making your content more trustworthy for Copilot.

How to Enable (Preview)

Enablement is tenant‑scoped today via SharePoint Online Management Shell (v16.0.26413.12010 or later). Use Set-SPOTenant to include all sites or exclude selected sites:

1# Update module (admin PowerShell)
2Update-Module -Name Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell
3
4# Enable Knowledge Agent preview for all sites
5Set-SPOTenant -KnowledgeAgentScope AllSites
6
7# OR: enable broadly but exclude specific sites
8Set-SPOTenant -KnowledgeAgentScope ExcludeSelectedSites `
9  -KnowledgeAgentSelectedSitesList @("https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/Legal",
10                                     "https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/Records")
11

Admins can change scope later; site owners and members with Copilot licenses will see the floating button and can run Organize this library or Improve this site actions.

Licensing & Availability

Usage is included with Microsoft 365 Copilot for eligible users. Public preview is tenant opt‑in; GA timing is not yet announced. Note that Government cloud support is excluded during preview (GCC, GCC High, DoD, and air‑gapped)

How to leverage AI inside SharePoint (beyond “turning it on”)

If you want Copilot and agents to return authoritative, cited answers, your SharePoint needs clean structure and metadata.

Knowledge Agent accelerates this in the flow of work: autofill metadata, create views, classify content, and set rules so files and pages are easy to find and govern.

It also drives content freshness by identifying broken links and outdated pages, and it lets users ask context‑grounded questions right from the site or library. Pilot your highest‑traffic sites first (HR, IT, Sales Playbooks) to lift Copilot answer quality across M365.

Governance, Security, and Licensing

These experiences inherit Microsoft 365 security, identity, and compliance controls, which means you deploy within your existing guardrails.

You manage scope and data access the same way you manage Microsoft 365 today. For planning, note the current availability states and any premium add‑ons so you can right‑size your pilot.

What to Measure

Measurement keeps the pilot honest and highlights quick wins. Pick a few metrics per surface so teams can see progress week by week. Favor measures that reflect momentum and clarity, not just volume.

• Meeting throughput: Decisions per meeting, tasks captured, average time to next action.
• Project momentum: Tasks created from meetings, on‑time rate, blockers closed per week.
• Community health: Response time to unanswered questions, percent of answers Verified, reduction in repeat questions.
• Content quality: Metadata coverage, broken links resolved, pages retired, search success rate.

Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

Most issues trace back to unclear ownership or weak grounding. Assign named people to review, approve, and tidy. Use the Knowledge Agent to strengthen your content foundation and give Copilot better sources to cite.

• Unclear ownership: Assign a Meeting Owner to accept agenda suggestions and close tasks, a Community Expert to review agent drafts, and Site Owners to drive content hygiene.
• Poor grounding data: Use Knowledge Agent to tag and organize; publish authoritative pages; link communities to the right libraries when SharePoint integration is available.
• Licensing mismatches: Confirm M365 Copilot for users interacting with agents and Planner Premium where needed.

How We Recommend Rolling This Out

Start small, prove value, then scale with guardrails. The sequence below creates a tight feedback loop and builds confidence across functions. It also gives you clean artifacts, status posts, verified answers, improved libraries, you can showcase to stakeholders.

1. Start with the meeting loop: Pilot Facilitator + Project Manager Agent with one cross‑functional team for 2–3 sprints.
2. Stand up a Sales community: Enable review‑first workflow; measure answer time and verified rate.
3. Stabilize your SharePoint foundation: Use Knowledge Agent to lift metadata coverage and retire stale pages, then connect agents to authoritative libraries.
4. Scale with guardrails: Create prompt menus, screenshot‑backed SOPs, and a light RACI; monitor content quality and agent telemetry monthly.

FAQs

Do end users without Copilot see community agent answers?

Yes. Posted answers are visible to everyone; Copilot licenses are required for admins/experts who activate and review the agent.

Is Knowledge Agent available in government clouds?

Not during preview (GCC, GCC High, DoD, and air‑gapped clouds aren’t supported).

Can we avoid enabling Knowledge Agent everywhere?

Yes. Use KnowledgeAgentScope ExcludeSelectedSites and manage the exclusion list via PowerShell.

What’s GA today vs. preview?

Facilitator (Teams meetings): GA rollout underway for core skills; some capabilities remain in preview.

Project Manager Agent, Channel/Community Agents, Knowledge Agent: Public preview for M365 Copilot customers; watch roadmap and message center for GA specifics.

Enable Safely, Show Value Quickly

You can turn these on today using your existing governance model. Start with a small cohort, scope access deliberately, and measure impact weekly.

The payoff is faster decisions, cleaner content, and trusted answers, delivered right where your people already work.