Microsoft has spent the previous two years positioning Copilot because the AI layer throughout its enterprise stack. At Construct 2026 in San Francisco on June 2, nonetheless, it went additional. A brand new set of merchandise shifts the mannequin from AI you immediate to AI that acts with out being requested.
The headline product is Scout. It’s an always-on agent that runs repeatedly throughout Microsoft Groups, Outlook, OneDrive, SharePoint, and calendar. Crucially, it joins Groups group chats and handles Outlook electronic mail threads autonomously. That makes Scout the primary agent Microsoft has positioned instantly inside these surfaces as a participant, relatively than a sidebar function. CEO Satya Nadella launched it as the primary of a brand new product class, Autopilots:
“Autopilots are always-on brokers that work autonomously, with their very own id, and act in your behalf.”
Scout is constructed on OpenClaw, the open-source autonomous agent framework created by Peter Steinberger that collected 180,000 GitHub stars within the three months following its November 2025 launch. Microsoft selected to construct Scout on prime of the prevailing OpenClaw codebase relatively than develop a competing framework, and is contributing enterprise-grade coverage controls again to the challenge upstream. Omar Shahine, Company Vice President of Microsoft Scout, defined the way it sits throughout the M365 surroundings:
“Microsoft Scout is built-in throughout the Microsoft 365 apps you utilize each day, holding it grounded in your circulate of labor. It operates throughout cloud, desktop, and net, connecting to Groups, Outlook, OneDrive, and SharePoint, and to the information that powers your day, together with chats, electronic mail, calendar, and contacts.”
Scout carries its personal Entra ID, tying each motion to a verifiable id that flows by way of present tenant coverage. Microsoft has made it out there now for Copilot Frontier customers. Broader preview follows in late June, with common availability focused for October 2026. Microsoft has indicated Scout will probably be an add-on for M365 E3 and E5 subscribers, although it has not but confirmed pricing.
Work IQ: What Provides Scout Its Organisational Consciousness
Scout’s understanding of how a enterprise operates comes from Work IQ, the M365 intelligence layer that reads alerts from emails, information, conferences, and calendar information. Quite than ready for customers to transient it, Scout makes use of Work IQ to map priorities routinely. Particularly, it tracks who a person works with, which initiatives are lively, and the place choices are stalling.
Charles Lamanna, Govt Vice President of Copilot, Brokers and Platform at Microsoft, defined the premise within the Work IQ API announcement:
“Work IQ is the intelligence layer that understands your information, your instruments, and your group. That basis permits brokers to plan, act, and produce outcomes which can be grounded in how what you are promoting runs.”
Work IQ is now typically out there throughout GitHub Copilot, Foundry, and Copilot Studio. Moreover, Microsoft opens its APIs to builders on June 16. From that date, any agent on the M365 stack can draw on the identical organisational information layer Scout makes use of natively.
Agent 365 and the Governance Query
Scout’s persistent, cross-app entry drew a direct response from enterprise IT groups. Issues centred on information boundaries and compliance, notably in organisations the place M365 governance is tightly managed. In response, Microsoft acknowledged that full tenant-level controls are nonetheless in improvement, with availability anticipated later in 2026.
The structural reply is Agent 365, additionally introduced at Construct. It treats brokers as ruled identities relatively than purposes. Every agent will get its personal productiveness licence and Entra ID. In consequence, admins can evaluate, monitor, and block brokers by way of the M365 admin centre, utilizing the identical controls they apply to human customers.
Microsoft additionally introduced two supporting open-source frameworks. First, the Agent Management Specification units a normal for the place and the way controls apply within the agent execution loop. Second, ASSERT provides groups a framework for policy-driven security analysis and regression testing. Each are at the moment in preview.
One-Click on Agent Publishing to Microsoft Groups
For organisations constructing customized brokers by way of Copilot Studio or Microsoft Foundry, one-click publishing to Groups and Microsoft 365 Copilot reaches common availability subsequent month. On publication, id and tenant coverage circulate by way of routinely. That removes a major integration step for enterprise builders who at the moment wire these connections manually.
The transfer additionally issues for channel companions and ISVs constructing on the M365 platform. Publishing an agent instantly into Groups, with governance dealt with on the platform stage, cuts the time between constructing and deploying. Finally, it will get brokers into the surroundings the place most enterprise customers work each day.
A Copilot Tremendous App This Summer season
Nadella used the keynote to substantiate a Copilot tremendous app is coming. The app will consolidate chat, Cowork, and coding right into a single interface. Though it didn’t seem as a dwell demo at Construct, Nadella was direct:
“Come summer season, we will probably be bringing coding to all information work inside one Copilot Tremendous App. You’re going to have Chat, Cowork, and Code all in Copilot.”
Jacob Andreou, Microsoft’s EVP of Copilot, leads the challenge below the interior slogan “Delivering one Copilot.” The objective is to exchange the present fragmented expertise. At the moment, totally different Copilot merchandise carry totally different account necessities, interfaces, and information entry fashions. The tremendous app combines all of that right into a single floor spanning client and enterprise use.
