Enhance collaboration using agents

Agents can give a team a shared conversational entry point to approved knowledge. Instead of relying on different search terms or personal copies of documents, team members can ask the same agent questions and review its citations.

Support shared understanding

Agents in SharePoint and Microsoft Copilot Chat can support collaboration by:

• Finding relevant content across the agent's configured knowledge sources.
• Summarizing information for a project update, handoff, or discussion.
• Comparing sources to identify differences among requirements, plans, or policies.
• Explaining terminology from team documentation in the context of a question.
• Citing sources so that team members can review the underlying information.

For example, a project team can create an agent grounded in its charter, requirements, decision log, and status reports. A team member can ask the agent to summarize current priorities and cite the documents that support the response.

Share agents responsibly

Sharing an agent and granting access to its knowledge are separate operations. A recipient needs access to the .agent file and to the relevant source content. If the recipient lacks permission to a source, the agent doesn't use that source in its response to the recipient.

Before sharing an agent, its owner should:

• Confirm that the agent uses authoritative sources.
• Review the agent's instructions and conversation starters.
• Share the agent file only with the intended audience.
• Verify that source permissions follow the organization's access policy.
• Establish an owner who reviews the agent as source content changes.

Select the right agent capability

A knowledge-focused agent supports user-initiated questions and summaries. It doesn't monitor projects, send notifications, or update systems by itself. If a collaboration scenario requires those capabilities, the solution needs configured actions, a workflow such as Power Automate, or a custom engine agent.