- Microsoft unveils a host of AI-powered agents at Ignite 2024
- AI agents promise to solve even specialized business problems
- Microsoft Teams and Share Point among tools getting the upgrades
Microsoft has revealed a host of new AI-powered agents it says will help users and businesses alike address some of their most pressing issues.
At Microsoft Ignite 2024, the company unveiled several new specialized agents working across the Microsoft 365 suite alongside office software stalwarts such as SharePoint and Teams, as part of an initial look at how transformative the technology can be.
The company says the launch will see the agents, "take on unique roles, working alongside or on behalf of a team or organization to handle simple, mundane tasks as well as complex, multi-step business processes."
AI agents for Microsoft 365
Among the new agents is Employee Self-Service Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot Business Chat (BizChat), which can quickly provide answers for employees concerning specific HR and IT policies within their business. Users can get information from BizChat on anything from payroll data, holiday allowance, requesting a new laptop from IT, and much more, all in a single location.
Microsoft also revealed users will be able to create and customize agents for its SharePoint collaboration platform in order to help support everyday tasks and processes. For example, an agent can be designed to learn about a specific project or business area, with users able to ask the agent questions about specialized areas, and the answers shared in real time across emails, meetings and chats.
As for Microsoft Teams, there is a new Facilitator agent which the company says can provide more effective collaboration and communication by taking notes in real-time, before sharing a summary of the most important information as the chat continues. There is also a new Interpreter agent which can translate up to nine languages at one time in a Teams meeting, allowing participants to speak and listen in the language of their choice.
Finally, a new Project Manager agent is able to automate project management in the Microsoft Planner platform, either creating an entirely new plan, or offering one of a series of pre-configured templates. The agent can then handle assigning tasks, tracking progress, and sending reminders and notifications to get status updates.
Build it smarter
Elsewhere, Microsoft has also announced several updates for Copilot Studio, the platform used for building new agents.
Going forward, users will now be able to build smarter autonomous agents, able to take action on their behalf, for example responding to an email, or recording an uploaded file, without having to prompt the agent each time.
There will also be a library of agent templates for common business scenarios, helping users create an agent for the first time, alongside the existing range of customizations on offer.
Users will also be able to upload images to Copilot Studio, with agents able to analyze the uploads and ask questions about the images in order to gain extra context and insight. Any unanswered questions can be solved by matching specific instructions to fix a knowledge gap at the root of each unanswered question, with the ability to add new sources over time and build up the agent's intelligence.
Developers will also be able to build "full-stack, multichannel, trusted agents" using a new Agent SDK that brings together tools from Azure AI, Semantic Kernel and Copilot Studio, and can be deployed across multiple channels, such as Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 Copilot, the web and other third-party messaging platforms.
