The Microsoft AI agent ecosystem

  • 3 minutes

Microsoft offers a flexible ecosystem of tools that support a wide range of use cases, from quick productivity wins to deeply integrated, custom-built solutions.

Microsoft’s AI agent ecosystem

There are three primary ways to realize value with AI in the Microsoft ecosystem:

A diagram outlining Microsoft AI solutions to empower organizations to improve productivity, transform business processes, and innovate with commercial AI applications.

  • Adopt: Use Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Chat, and other Microsoft first-party agents and Copilots to deliver AI-powered productivity for business users. These out-of-the-box solutions provide a range of capabilities to increase productivity for business professionals. Consider existing capabilities before investing in customization or building custom solutions.
  • Extend: Customize Microsoft 365 Copilot to expand AI-powered productivity and transform business processes. Build agents and connectors that extend Copilot with custom data, business logic, and skills for tailored scenarios.
  • Build: Create advanced custom agents and commercial AI applications leveraging custom models, orchestration, and business logic. These agents can address complex business needs, run autonomously, collaborate with other agents, and integrate into applications and services beyond the Microsoft ecosystem.

Note

This is not an "either-or" decision. Microsoft's AI development tools are designed to work better together. By combining different types of agents and solutions, you can create a comprehensive AI strategy that addresses a wide range of business needs across your organization.

Examples

Imagine your organization wants to automate internal support and boost employee productivity. Here’s how you could leverage Microsoft’s AI agent ecosystem:

  • Adopt: Use Microsoft 365 Copilot to help employees quickly find information, summarize documents, and draft responses to common internal queries.
  • Extend: Customize Microsoft 365 Copilot with an HR agent that answers employee questions about leave policies and benefits by connecting to your company’s internal knowledge base. Integrate the agent with your HR management system to submit leave requests directly from the Copilot agent.
  • Build: Develop a custom AI agent that integrates with IT systems to automate employee support tasks IT ticket tracking. Using Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), the agent can pull real-time information from internal documents and knowledge bases, delivering accurate, context-aware responses and recommendations.

Each approach addresses internal support and productivity in different ways, requiring varying levels of customization and investment. Microsoft’s AI agent ecosystem is designed to support all of these scenarios.

Agent development tools

These solutions include a range of agent development tools for business users, makers, and professional developers.

  • End users: End users can use the lite version of Copilot Studio in Microsoft 365 Copilot to build specialized Copilot agents or build agents within SharePoint. Both options provide a no-code interface for building agents using natural language for productivity and collaboration scenarios.
  • Makers: Makers can use the full version of Copilot Studio to build agents that extend Microsoft 365 Copilot or custom standalone agents that can be published to a variety of channels. Copilot Studio also provides advanced options including Azure AI Search, custom model selection, and the ability to modify Copilot Studio agents using pro-code tools.
  • Developers: Developers can use Visual Studio, GitHub, Microsoft Foundry, or Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit to design, build, and publish more customized or advanced AI agent solutions. Additional services and frameworks like Microsoft Agent Framework, Foundry Agent Service, Microsoft Teams SDK, and Microsoft 365 Agents SDK enable developers to implement custom orchestration, build multi-agent and multi-channel solutions, and deliver customized user experiences across Teams, Microsoft 365, and other channels.

Responsible and trustworthy AI

For each of these solutions, Microsoft is committed to helping customers use and build AI that is trustworthy ensuring AI is secure, safe, and respects privacy at every stage.

Learn more about Microsoft’s Responsible AI principles, practices, and guidelines: