Custom engine agents for Microsoft 365 overview

Custom engine agents are conversational Teams bots designed to harness the powerful capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) for seamless user interaction. These advanced bots mark a significant departure from traditional bots, offering an extensive range of features that elevate the overall user experience.

Custom engine agents utilize LLM technology at their core that allows them to easily understand and respond to user queries, creating dynamic and immersive interactions. Custom engine agents also offer advanced functionalities such as UI manipulation, task execution, and content creation, making them indispensable tools for streamlining workflows and boosting productivity.

Important

  • Custom engine agents are conversational Teams bots with custom LLM, therefore they don't require Microsoft 365 Copilot license to build, debug and deploy.
  • The cost of a custom engine copilot depends on the Azure services consumed in the app. To estimate the cost, visit the Azure Pricing Calculator.

Build custom engine agents

For enterprises seeking bot solutions that are precisely customized to user demands and scenarios, using Teams AI Library to utilize LLMs that adhere to Microsoft's UX principles and are compatible with Teams and Microsoft 365 is a great choice. Developing custom engine agents with the Teams AI Library can provide more natural, intuitive, and specialized user interaction experiences. This option is advantageous for developers wishing to customize model selection and orchestration, applying prior experience in Teams bot development, or aiming to ensure accessibility for all Microsoft 365 users.

Developers can also utilize the Teams Toolkit to easily construct their projects, taking advantage of its prebuilt templates for a seamless project launch, offering an ideal solution for quick starts, easy debugging, and deployment.

Explore templates to get started

Kickstart building your custom engine agents using Teams AI library with the prebuilt templates available in Teams Toolkit:

Template Description
Basic AI ChatBot Build a basic AI chatbot for Teams using Teams AI library.
AI Agent ChatBot Build an AI agent chatbot for Teams that can make decisions and perform actions based on LLM reasoning. AI Agent template has options to start from scratch or use OpenAI Assistants API.
Chat with your data Expand AI bot's knowledge with your content to get more accurate answers to your questions. Chat with your data supports Azure AI Search, Microsoft Graph Search with Microsoft 365 and SharePoint content, and custom OpenAPI and data ingestion options.

Take a tour of the sample scenarios

Explore sample scenarios available in Teams AI library GitHub repository to understand more about the capabilities you can add in your custom engine agents:

Sample Description C# JS Python
List bot Harness the power of AI, simplify your workflow and bring order to your daily tasks with action chaining capabilities. C# JS Python
DevOps bot Perform DevOps actions such as create, update, triage, and summarize work items. C# JS Python
Twenty questions bot Use LLM capabilities and the concept of user intent by having users guess a secret within 20 questions, grounding the chatbot with some question and answer as a data source. C# JS Python
Math tutor assistant Use OpenAI's Assistants API with the Code Interpreter tool and create an assistant that's an expert on math. C# JS Python
Food ordering assistant Call actions to order food from a fictional restaurant called The Pub with complex interactions. C# JS Python

Next steps

Discover the possibilities of custom engine agents with a closer look at Teams AI Library.

See also