Exploring Microsoft's Agentic AI

Agentic AI

This week I was asked a great question: What is the difference between Generative AI and Agentic AI? Aren’t they really closely linked? Yes and no. Generative AI is using AI to create content. This type of AI relies on advanced machine learning models to replicate patterns in the data they are trained upon. It’s totally reactive to an end users’ prompts to create content. Agentic AI is designed to act independently to achieve a specific goal. Agentic AI makes decisions, takes actions, and can adapt to an ever-changing environment. And yes, this is also different to Robotic Process Automation (RPA).

For example, with Agentic AI, I can craft an Agent to complete a specific task, such as scheduling all my meetings. Diaries change all the time, and I can instruct an Agent on the types of meetings to prioritise, to always allow 10 minutes between meetings and to never allow meetings to clash. If you are wondering what Agents you can use, Microsoft have created a number of Agent templates and starter Agents for you to try out today.

Copilot Studio

To use a Microsoft phrase, Copilot Studio is the spiritual successor to Power Virtual Agents. Very kindly, Microsoft have given you all the tools to get started with such as templates. Whilst these are still in Preview, there are 14 templates available at the time of writing, with another 6-awaiting release. One of these templates is the Website Q&A. This template can answer frequently asked questions customers may have about your organisation and content on your website. When designing the Website Q&A Agent, by feeding it your website, it can reason off all content on there. This Agent can enhance user experience and supporting your customers’ experience on your website.

A second example template is IT helpdesk, which is an Agent that can reason off your organisations’ knowledge base. This can enhance employee satisfaction, boost efficiency, and optimise device allocation. With one Agent, end users can seek assistance with technical issues and resolve common problems or even request new hardware and software. Where this Agent can go further is with integrations. Like with ServiceNow! If your Agent cannot answer a question, rather than a usual escalation route, the Agent can generate a ticket for a human to answer. With an integration like ServiceNow, this Agent can view the details within tickets and provide status updates. Wouldn’t it be nice to press pause on those chaser emails to the IT department?

Generally Available and Public Preview Agents

Let’s move away from Copilot Studio and explore an Agent you can use today: Agents in SharePoint. Agents in SharePoint help users interact with SharePoint sites, pages, and document libraries. They can summarise documents and pages, assist with a specific task by leveraging the sites data and answer questions on site contents. Agents in SharePoint can be interacted with in a few ways. First off, on a SharePoint site is a Copilot button where you can start asking questions such as “Where can I find the latest HR policy?”. Then there are custom Agents that can be created for a specific folder or document library. The behaviours of a custom Agent can also be tailored. And the third method is by integrating a SharePoint Agent in Microsoft Teams or other Microsoft 365 Applications for continued collaboration. People with an M365 Copilot license can create and use Agents in SharePoint. Unlicensed users require a pay-as-you-go service enabled. More information about this service can be found here.

In Public Preview, Microsoft have unveiled the Facilitator Agent and the Project Manager Agent. Public Preview allows you to sign up and test the features while they are still in development. The Facilitator Agent acts a meeting participant to summarise discussions, track and assign tasks and provide relevant insights during and after your meeting. Right now, people who use M365 Copilot are used to generating a post-meeting summary. The Facilitator handles the notetaking in real-time, as the meeting is ongoing…and much more. In the future it’ll be able to build agendas!

The Project Manager Agent is integrated into Planner and Teams, acting as a virtual project manager. The Project Manager Agent automates tasks like creating plans, can break down your goals into actionable steps and tracks progress for you. This Agent can also execute tasks assigned to it, which is ground-breaking! We could see more organisations give some love to Microsoft products that have been included in our subscriptions for years!

Agents of the future

Available in a Private Preview is the Employee Self-Service Agent. This Agent is designed for internal use, for end users to quickly access HR and IT resources, resolve common queries, perform tasks like requesting time off, retrieving benefits information and open helpdesk tickets. The Employee Self-Service Agent can streamline a lot of processes and red tape. Having healthy and clean data that is accessible and up to date is important in the successful use of this Agent.

And finally, Microsoft announced late last year the Interpreter Agent. A real-time language translation assistant, integrated into Microsoft Teams. It enables participants to speak and listen in their preferred languages in Teams. Imagine being able to provide the same services you do, now on an international scale. We expect to see this Agent released for Public Preview in the first half of 2025. While in testing, the Interpreter Agent works in 9 languages including English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Mandarin Chinese, and Spanish.

In summary…

Agents are designed to do a task or a small number of tasks really well. Most of these Agents require a Microsoft 365 Copilot license or can be used on a pay-as-you-go model. Agents aren’t designed to be a one-stop shop that do everything. What will enhance this? One day, an Agent being able to call on another Agent – now that’ll be fun! While we get to grips with Agents, being able to integrate them into Microsoft Teams so you can @Agent’s in a flash and within your meetings, chats and more, can lead to major productivity gains. It’s a mindset change! We’ve never worked like this…one day we might!