Microsoft announces ten new AI scenarios in Dynamics 365 apps as part of autonomous agent push

Microsoft’s shift from copilots to agents continues as the company today announced new autonomous agent creation capabilities and new pre-built agents for Dynamics 365 application scenarios.

Copilot continues as a brand, but agents are the entities doing the work, in either interactive or autonomous scenarios, the company says. Microsoft CMO for “AI at Work” Jared Spataro explained in an announcement: 

Think of agents as the new apps for an AI-powered world. Every organization will have a constellation of agents — ranging from simple prompt-and-response to fully autonomous. They will work on behalf of an individual, team or function to execute and orchestrate businesses process. Copilot is how you’ll interact with these agents, and they’ll do everything from accelerating lead generation and processing sales orders to automating your supply chain.

In Copilot Studio, the successor to Power Virtual Agents, autonomous agent capabilities will be progressing into public preview next month. 

Autonomous agents can work within a set of rules, parameters, and data sources to provide assistance. By contrast, a traditional assistant or agent built with Copilot uses carefully scripted scenarios, typically offering pre-planned sets of questions or lines of inquiry to the person interacting with it. 

In Dynamics 365, Microsoft is announcing ten new agents across several applications, Spataro stated. 

“The agents coming to Dynamics 365 follow our core security, privacy and responsible AI commitments,” he added.

Bryan Goode, CVP for business applications and platforms, detailed more about the introduction of new autonomous agents into D365 applications. They will be available in public preview later in 2024 and into 2025, he said.

Agents revealed by Microsoft today included: