Taking a peek at the new Agents in SharePoint features

Introduction

Just spotted a new button in my tenant - Yes, Agents for SharePoint - Wahoo! This was announced as part of the Wave 2 feaures that are now here to those with MIcrosoft 365 Copilot licenses. So lets see how to get this work and to my surprise, I could a Copilot setup in a document library with just 3 clicks, of course assuming you start in the default document library. This is brand new to me, and now it has landed in my own tenant (the same time as writing this post) I’d thought I’d share my first observations of the features - as such this is going to be an image heavy post.

This Agents for SharePoint feature is preview, so there maybe some rough edges, not that I’ve seen many though. Overall, I REALLY like this new capability, ok Im a SharePoint guy so anything in SharePoint I like - but this is a cool new feature and feels very simple to get started. Lets walk you though the interfaces and you can judge for yourself.

Getting Started - The Creation Journey

Let’s start in the document library in a SharePoint Modern Team site (Microsoft 365 group), I have a library with some sample content. From the screenshot below, you will notice 2 new buttons, the “Create a Copilot agent”, my eyes were drawn to this button and the agent icon which in my opinion is less obvious, in the suite bar.

When you Click (first click), on the Create a Copilot agent in the library navigation bar, a dialog will open to start the selection process. At this point, I had NOT select on any documents.

then simply click (second click) Try it - and boom, you have a SharePoint Copilot agent that uses your Documents library, then on the side of the library is a typical Copilot chat interface that you can start writing prompts (third click) based on the data in the library.

But whats this new file, to store the configuration this is held in a new Documents agent.copilot file. So, at this point, the reason I was initially confused, the UX at first was a little confusing and led me to create duplicate Copilot agents. If the right hand panel closes. I couldn’t see (the icon in the suite bar) how to re-open the panel, naturally clicking on the Create a Copilot Agent button again, the same dialog appears, clicked Try it to get the panel back.

Now I have two files 🤦‍♂️ - its very easy to do. I haven’t assessed what permissions are needed yet to create these but it is something to watch out for.

Editing Experience

Ok, there is a lot going on here in the following interfaces, you have the options to edit your agent to give it some identity such as branding and descriptions. Updates sources, to include other content and SharePoint locations. Finally the behaviour to give agent instructions on how to act with instructions and give users some initial prompts to get started. Lets have a look at these:

The first screen you are presented with “Identity” is more around branding that say security, allowing you to control the icon, description which is used when you selected a agent there is a little bubble that appears to show this (Nice!), you have the option to test the agent, Save and if you want to enhance the capabilities to “Add advanced customizations in Copilot Studio”. Sweet!

For the next tab, the “Sources” tab here:

You have the option to tweak what the agent refers to, so when you prompt it can use these to “ground” Copilot to only specific information in these areas. This can be another SharePoint site which the “Users must have permissions to” (keep the security folks happy) or you can select additional libraries, files and folders.

Finally, the last tab “Behaviour” tab:

You can edit the welcome message, starter prompts to help users get going with their conversation with agent and instructions, where you can tell agent how it should act with the users - it is good there is a testing interface this aspect may require a few round trips of editing/testing to get the optimal experience, well it does for other types of development experiences for Copilots.

Other interface features

Selecting different agents in the same library

You can select an agent, if you open the agent pane using the icon in the Suite bar, there is a selector option, that you can interact with agents on the site level. Interestingly, there is a marker to show it is an “Approved” agent for the site, so another point of research to understand that feature.

Delete all Microsoft Copilot Chat History

Delete all Copilot History is strange, takes you to privacy area in your profile where you can delete ALL chats across all workloads (see Delete your Microsoft 365 Copilot activity history | Support Article) this feels a bit extreme to just delete those chats, not remove everything everywhere. However, there is under chat history back in the agent right hand pane in the document library, three dots (…) selecting that reveals the option to deleted the selected chat.

Previewing a Document agent .Copilot file

If you click on a Copilot file the preview experience is a agent chat experience.

Selecting an item

You can select an item or multiple items, the “Create a Copilot agent”, the familiar dialog as above is shown with those documents selected.

Lets crack open a .Copilot file - because why not right…

Ok this is a bit technical, but its my way of peeking under the hood to see how this works, since you can download the file and poke around, I did and this is what you get 👇 if you are familiar with Declarative agents, this looks very similar. Of course, its best to use the UI that Microsoft provides for these settings. With the JSON format below, in thoery you could deploy default agents to key locations pre-configured (may try that in another post) but to warn you this may not be a supported scenario.

{
    "schemaVersion": "0.2.0",
    "customCopilotConfig": {
        "conversationStarters": {
            "conversationStarterList": [
                {
                    "text": "Summarize the selected file."
                },
                {
                    "text": "Create an FAQ from the selected file"
                },
                {
                    "text": "Suggest next steps from the selected file."
                }
            ],
            "welcomeMessage": {
                "text": "Welcome! Enhance your productivity with this Copilot agent. Start a conversation by asking a question or selecting one of the suggested prompts."
            }
        },
        "gptDefinition": {
            "name": "Documents agent",
            "description": "This is an agent curated based on the content from the selected file sources.",
            "instructions": "Provide accurate information about the content in the selected files and reply in a formal tone.",
            "capabilities": [
                {
                    "name": "OneDriveAndSharePoint",
                    "items_by_sharepoint_ids": [],
                    "items_by_url": [
                        {
                            "url": "https://tenant.sharepoint.com/sites/SharePointBasedCopilot/Shared%20Documents",
                            "name": "Documents",
                            "site_id": "f8bf0e89-6abc-47ce-80bb-0702e15e9839",
                            "web_id": "f3c407ed-608f-484c-b81f-27f2c4f2ea1f",
                            "list_id": "9071b188-6dee-4b2f-942b-9fdca7a3ebc7",
                            "unique_id": "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000",
                            "type": "Folder"
                        }
                    ]
                }
            ]
        },
        "icon": "data:image/png;base64,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"
    }
}

Conclusion

There are lots of great possibilities here, with what it can do and look forward to conversations with clients on how they think this could be useful for their scenarios. This is just the start, and I hope you can get a sense of how this feature works so you can explore in more detail, I’m sure am and looking forward to using this feature more 🥳

Resources

The following resource could be useful for you to learn further:

• Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2: AI Innovations in SharePoint and OneDrive
• Delete your Microsoft 365 Copilot activity history

Enjoy!