Microsoft To Grant Users More Access To Autonomous AI Agent Capabilities
'Every organization will have a constellation of agents — ranging from simple prompt-and-response to fully autonomous,' Microsoft CMO Jared Spataro says.
Microsoft made the news as part of its AI Tour London event held Monday, during which the Redmond, Wash.-based vendor said that 2.1 million users engage with copilot in business applications monthly.
“Every organization will have a constellation of agents — ranging from simple prompt-and-response to fully autonomous,” Jared Spataro, Microsoft’s chief marketing officer for AI at work, said in a blog post Monday. “They will work on behalf of an individual, team or function to execute and orchestrate businesses process. Copilot is how you’ll interact with these agents, and they’ll do everything from accelerating lead generation and processing sales orders to automating your supply chain.”
[RELATED: New Microsoft Copilot Update Wave Focuses On App Integration, Agents]
Microsoft AI Agents
Microsoft is billing agents as the new applications for an AI-powered world that connect to an AI copilot. Agents range from simple prompt-and-response apps to full autonomy executing and orchestrating business processes.
Agents mark an evolution in Microsoft’s AI wares, adding on to the copilot brand of AI assistants the vendor had been releasing. Microsoft–which has a partner ecosystem of more than 400,000–has been criticized for how well copilots perform by customer relationship management (CRM) software rival Salesforce.
The agents draw on work data in the Microsoft 365 Graph, Dataverse, Fabric and systems of record for context. And Copilot Studio-made agents follow data loss prevention, authentication protocols and other guardrails and controls established by makers.
Agents can show the underlying logic for their business process paths to users, with details, steps and systems involved, according to the vendor.
“This provides insight into why the agent chose a particular method, its decision process, and context, along with detailed steps, including variables and outputs, which are crucial for debugging,” Charles Lamanna, Microsoft corporate vice president of business and industry copilot, said in a blog post Monday.
Microsoft will provide users an “activity” tab of past agent runs, with progress tracking, block identification, trend analysis and previous decisions reviews.
Autonomous agents have a limited private preview of Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s o1 model for better predictions and natural language processing.
10 New D365 Agents
As for the 10 new autonomous agents users can make in D365, Microsoft revealed several of them in a Monday blog post.
In sales and service, the agents include:
- Sales qualification agents for D365 Sales–can research leads, help with opportunity prioritization and assist with personalized emails and responses for customer outreach
- Sales order agents in D365 Business Central–can automate order intake processes from entry to confirmation, interacting with customers to learn preferences.
- Customer intent agents in D365 Contact Center–continuously discover new intentions based on past and current customer conversations across channels and keep a library of customer issues and corresponding resolutions
- Customer knowledge management agents in D365 Contact Center–keep knowledge articles updated based on case notes, transcripts, summaries and other artifacts
- Case management agents for D365 Customer Service–automate case creation, resolution, follow up and closure to reduce handle time
- Scheduling operations agents for D365 Field Service–optimize schedules for technicians, adjusting for traffic delays, double bookings and cancellations
In finance and operations, the agents include:
- Financial reconciliation agents in Copilot for Finance–can prepare and cleanse data sets to reduce time on the financial period close process
- Account reconciliation agents in D365 Finance–meant for accountants and controllers seeking automated transaction matching and clearing between subledgers and the general ledger, hastening decision-making due to better cash flow visibility
- Supplier communications agents for D365 Supply Chain Management–work on supply chain optimization, autonomous supplier performance tracking, delay detection and responding to delays.
- Time and expense agents in D365 Project Operations manage time entry, expense tracking and approval workflows to prevent revenue leakage and keep projects on track and within budget
More agents are planned for the coming year, according to Microsoft.