News

Microsoft Updates Copilot To Add Context-Sensitive Agents to Teams, SharePoint

• By Chris Paoli
• September 23, 2025

Microsoft has rolled out a new public preview for collaborative "always on" agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot, bringing enhanced, context-aware tools into Teams channels, meetings, SharePoint sites, Planner workstreams and Viva Engage communities.

These agents are designed to operate continuously in the background, gathering the right content, insight and metadata so that Copilot can provide responses grounded in the latest, most relevant organizational data. At the heart of the update is the SharePoint "Knowledge Agent," automating key content management tasks. These tasks include tagging metadata, organizing files, assessing content freshness, fixing broken links and identifying under documented topics based on how people actually search.

The goal, Microsoft says, is to make internal content reliably "AI ready," helping ensure that agents and Copilot draw on accurate, well-structured information.

"Knowledge Agent solves the most pressing content management challenges -- like content readiness for AI, discoverability and freshness, manual governance processes and content creation bottlenecks," said Microsoft's John Mighell, in a blog post last week.

The agent runs in the background and includes built-in privacy and control settings. Reports are available for site owners and admins to review the agent's activity and suggestions, with the option to manually approve changes or let the agent act automatically in supported areas. User feedback tools are also included to help fine-tune performance.

On the task management front, the Project Manager Agent helps teams turn high‑level goals into detailed task plans. It can generate a plan from goals, pull in relevant resources to provide context, assign tasks (including to itself), track progress and generate status reports.

The Project Manager Agent integrates tightly with Microsoft Planner, Project for the Web, Loop and Teams. It also connects with the Facilitator Agent for meetings, enabling automatic tracking of action items discussed during calls. While still in preview, Microsoft plans to expand the agent's capabilities and data sources over time.

Microsoft says the agent is best used as part of a team-based workflow, rather than a personal productivity tool. To use it, organizations must have Microsoft 365 Copilot and either Planner Premium or Project licenses. The agent currently supports English and is rolling out gradually to commercial cloud customers.

Collaboration agents are also appearing in Microsoft Teams meetings and channels. For example, the Facilitator Agent can prepare agendas, capture decisions and follow‑ups, keep meetings on track, and integrate with the Project Manager Agent for task tracking. In Viva Engage communities, community agents can field questions with citation‑backed answers, manage announcements, and help maintain lively yet accurate discussions.

Microsoft emphasizes that these agents use Microsoft Graph for context, so they can understand who is in the team, what files are relevant, what conversations have occurred -- and do so under enterprise‑grade security, identity, compliance and admin controls. The aim is to reduce miscommunication, accelerate planning and make content more discoverable, all while keeping governance and data control intact.

These features are now at public preview for Microsoft 365 Copilot users; Facilitator for Teams meetings is generally available. As Microsoft moves toward general availability (targeted in early 2026 for some components) feedback from this preview period will be used to shape enhancements in customization, control and agent behavior.