SharePoint Agents: The AI Agent You Can Learn to Use in 5 Minutes

Aevo Technology
5 days ago
5 min read

Updated: 5 days ago

Whether you have jumped in or not yet, Artificial Intelligence continues to be a hot technology across all industries. At this point, you've likely heard of products like ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, Anthropic, and/or Perplexity.

At this stage, hopefully your business has educated itself on the risks and benefits of AI and is well on its way towards a planned and healthy adoption of the technology.

AI as a whole is a technology that is rapidly expanding with new capabilities and features, and a large step forward recently is the introduction of an "AI Agent".

What is an "AI Agent"?

An AI agent is a type of software that uses artificial intelligence to operate on its own. Essentially a software robot that can specialize on certain information and tasks.

Every major software vendor is working on developing and implementing agents into their platforms right now.

Here’s how it works:

Agents can observe: It watches and gathers information about its environment.
Agents can make decisions: Based on what it observes, it decides what to do next.
Agents can take actions: It performs tasks to achieve specific goals.

The best part is that it can do all of this without needing constant help from a human.

However, a human still creates, configures, and supervises agents. Humans decide what information an agent can see, what decisions it can make, and what actions it can take.

Additionally, IT needs to ensure proper privacy and access protocols are in place to secure agents, similar to how they do so for your computers and identities.

Introducing Microsoft SharePoint Agents

Pretty much all AI vendors at this point are building AI Agent platforms that require minimal training for you and your Staff to use.

Business focused platforms, such a Microsoft Copilot, are designed to protect your data, to keep it private, and to limit access only to those that need it.

A "Microsoft SharePoint Agent" is part of that same Copilot platform. It is an AI agent that can access a limited set of files within a SharePoint Team Site, becoming a subject matter expert on that data, then provides an easy-to-use interface for you and your Staff to interact with it.

Some example use cases:

An agent called "The Manual Reader" that has access to a folder filled with manuals for different devices. It's able to pull specific instructions about a specific model to help with troubleshooting.
"The Contract Researcher" that is the subject matter expert for a collection of contracts. You can compare, review, and provide feedback on contracts. It can provide insights on a new contract, pulling information from existing documents.
"The HR Policy Master", an agent that knows everything there is to know about HR and Benefits within a folder. It can be used by Staff to ask benefits and policy questions to get quick answers before asking management.
Another could be a "Best Practices Helper" that reads through a collection of your company processes, handbooks, and guides. It can help answer "How To" questions about your internal workflows as well as provide advice on situations that come up day to day.

When set up correctly, a SharePoint agent can save your business time and help your team become more efficient and accurate, while still keeping your data secured.

They are also relatively easy to create! Let's look into that next.

Creating a SharePoint Agent

The best way to learn how to use a SharePoint agent is to just go ahead and make one!

Requirements:

You'll need to be a licensed Microsoft 365 User
You must have a Copilot for 365 License
You need to be an Owner or Member of a SharePoint Site or Microsoft Team

For this scenario, we are going to create a "Bike Sales Agent" that can read data from a folder in our SharePoint. I've copied that data into the folder called "Bike Sales":

Agents can access Word, Excel, and many other file formats!

This folder is part of a Microsoft Team and this folder is already configured for access to those that should have access. Next up, I create the agent inside this folder:

AI Actions -> Create an agent

Agent Creation Screen

Now that we are in the agent creation screen, we can:

Give our agent a name
Change the picture of the agent
Give a purpose/description
On the right, at any time we can test the agent via "Agent preview" to see if it is working the way we expect

The tabs are how we navigate configuration options

Overview = Where we are now
Sources = Where we control what data the agent has access to
Behavior = Where we configure the agent and "teach" it

I click the "Sources" tab, and I can see that it already added my "Bike Sales" folder as a source:

From here, you could add other sources if desired. Note that I've selected "Prioritize knowledge sources you added before the agent's general knowledge". This means that my data is more important than other data.

Onwards to the "Behavior" Tab:

Behavior is where you customize the agent to really make it your own. I'll go ahead and make the following changes:

Welcome Messaging
- These are the words everyone using your Agent will see whenever they start a conversation with it.
Starter Prompts
- The prompts listed here should be relevant to your content. They help you and your Staff get started with using the bot.
Agent Instructions
- Other than Data, this is the most important component for configuring your Bot.
- Use this section to define its "voice", explain your business/product/information, and to set limitations on what it can and can't do.
- As you use SharePoint Agents more, this is the spot you'll find yourself making adjustments to fine tune it into a reliable tool!

With those now set, before I click create, I want to test and make sure it looks right. Let's do some tests in "Agent Preview":

Now... I'm ready to "Create" my Agent. I click "Create".

This will publish the Agent into SharePoint. Anyone with access to the folder I published this into will have access to the Agent (assuming they are licensed to use it).

A new "Bike Sales Agent.agent" file is created. This a shortcut that loads the Copilot Agent we just created:

It can be clicked or shared like any other file. Clicking it will take me to the agent in the Copilot App:

Now let's test it out:

It not only answers the question, but it crosschecks for relevant information, such as the return policy for Bob.

To check this, I click "Sources" and open the documents it used to get this answer:

Sure enough, I can see there is a single "Bob" sales entry and in the contract, there is a specific return exception that permits Bob to return his bike if desired.

The Agent is now published and active. Anyone on my Team can access it, and if I wanted to, I can send them a direct link to use it. The agent will routinely and automatically update its knowledge based on the data sources you give it access to. Additionally, as our needs develop, I can adjust its instructions and fine-tune its behavior to make it even more useful.

Pretty cool right?

Wrapping Up

The feature is available to anyone with a "Microsoft 365 Copilot" license. If you already have a license, it's ready for you to start exploring. Other AI vendors are in different stages of similar solutions; just make sure you aren't exposing data you don't intend to!

Here's more training an info on SharePoint Agents: