Share via

Create agent instances

Important

You need to be part of the Frontier preview program to get early access to Microsoft Agent 365. Frontier connects you directly with Microsoft’s latest AI innovations. Frontier previews are subject to the existing preview terms of your customer agreements. As these features are still in development, their availability and capabilities may change over time.

Once your agent is published and available in the Microsoft Admin Center, it's now ready to be instantiated into agent instances and agent users based on the agent blueprint and agent code you created.

Prerequisites

1. Configure agent in Teams Developer Portal

After publishing, you must configure the agent blueprint in Teams Developer Portal to connect your agent to the Microsoft 365 messaging infrastructure. Without this configuration, your agent doesn't receive messages from Teams, email, or other Microsoft 365 services.

Get your blueprint ID

Run the following command to display your configuration:

a365 config display -g

Copy the agentBlueprintId value from the output.

Open your browser and navigate to the configuration page:

https://dev.teams.microsoft.com/tools/agent-blueprint/<your-blueprint-id>/configuration

Replace <your-blueprint-id> with the agentBlueprintId value you copied.

Note

If you don't have access to the Developer Portal, contact your tenant administrator to grant you access or complete this configuration on your behalf.

Configure the agent

In the Developer Portal:

  1. Set Agent Type to Bot Based
  2. Set Bot ID to your agentBlueprintId value
  3. Select Save

Screenshot showing the Developer Portal configuration page with Agent Type set to Bot Based and Bot ID field filled in.

This configuration is required before you can create agent instances in Teams.

For more information about Agent Identity Blueprints and Developer Portal configuration, see Configure the Agent Identity Blueprint.

2. Create agent instance

Now, you can request instances of your agent blueprint from Teams. This request again goes to the tenant admin, who has to approve from the Requests tab on Microsoft 365 Admin Center: Microsoft Admin Center - Requested Agents. Once this is approved, you can create an agent instance from Teams. See how this can be done here: Discover, create, and onboard an agent

3. Test your deployed agent

After creating an agent instance, you can test it in Microsoft 365 to ensure it works correctly in production.

After deployment, and with agent notifications enabled in the Agent 365 SDK, your agent integrates with Microsoft 365 services. It works with Teams for chats, channels, and meetings; with email and calendar for sending/receiving and scheduling; and with SharePoint and OneDrive for document access and file sharing. It also supports collaboration features such as organizational presence, Planner tasks, and document comments.

Important

Just like regular users, agent users also require appropriate Microsoft 365 licenses to access services. Common licenses include Microsoft 365 E5, Teams Enterprise, and Microsoft 365 Copilot.

View deployed agent in Admin Center

After you publish your agent, it appears in Microsoft Admin Center for hiring. It might take some time to propagate.

Navigate to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center - Agents to:

  • View your published agent
  • Manage agent settings
  • Monitor agent usage
  • Configure permissions

Test agent in Teams

After deploying, publishing, configuring your agent blueprint, and creating an agent user, you can test the agent user directly in Microsoft Teams:

Note

License requirement: Ensure you have the "Microsoft Agent 365 Frontier" license assigned to your account. This license is required to create agent instances and interact with agents in Microsoft Teams while Agent 365 is in Preview. Contact your tenant administrator if you don't have this license.

  1. Start testing

    • Search for your new agent user in Teams. The agent user creation process is asynchronous and can take a few minutes to a few hours for the agent user to become searchable after it's created.
    • Start a new chat with your newly created agent instance.
    • Send test messages to verify agent functionality.

  2. Example test message

    If you configured the agent with Email, send this message to test email functionality (update the recipient email as needed):

    Send an email to recipient@contoso.com with subject "Hello from Teams" and message "This is a test message from my agent!"

    The agent should process the request and send the email without requiring more confirmation.

Next steps

Congratulations! Your agent is now live in the cloud and ready to work alongside your team in Microsoft 365. What started as local code is now a discoverable, enterprise-ready assistant where users can create agent instances across your organization. Your agent's development lifecycle is complete—but its impact is just beginning.

Much of what you built with in the agent 365 developer lifecycle, is open-source and welcomes community contributions. Raise bugs, feature requests and pull requests:

  • Last updated on