Create a SharePoint agent for your site

[ MUSIC ] CJ TAN: Hello, everyone.

I'm CJ Tan, Product Manager.

And I'm excited to show you all the magic that is SharePoint Agents.

We are putting the power of Agents into the hands of users that know their data and how they want to use it.

All you need to start using Agents is your content and an idea of how this agent can help you and your team.

This transformation brings insights and actions for better business decisions and real results.

My team runs a preview program, and we've learned quite a bit about how organizations are using agents.

Agents are created to generate answers based on specific deployments and processes.

Often, experts are created to collate materials and answer questions around the clock.

And onboarding is streamlined using an agent on targeted content.

We've even seen cases in legal and IT where it brings together documentation or analyzes results.

Now let's have a closer look at these SharePoint agents.

This Green Energy site captures a new solar panel initiative from Relecloud.

A new initiative means there's going to be new people onboarding to this team.

And because every SharePoint site now automatically gets an agent grounded in the site content, that is, all the document libraries and the site pages libraries, there's no work for the site owner to have an agent that helps their audience discover the knowledge of their site, especially for new members who may not know how to get around the site just yet.

So from here, you can also see within the sidecar we have an "Agent Picker."

Now, the "Agent Picker" has two sections.

This top section are the "Approved agents for this site."

This is the area that the site owner controls.

They only show the agents that have been selected by the site owner.

And there's even one here that's been approved and selected as the default.

There's only one for this site right now, and that's this Green Energy agent.

What you see below in the "Recommended for you" section are really the agents that were most recently used by you.

This is a lot more personalized.

It's going to show the agents you created, the ones that were shared to you, and, more importantly, the ones that you used last so you can get back to what you were using before.

Now, as I navigate throughout the SharePoint site, you'll see that the sidecar stays open, always a companion here with this agent showing me the last part of my conversation.

The message box here shows that it's always asking that question to the site and grounding it in everything that's on that site.

But I can also select a file and ask a question specifically about that file.

What is the A100 series?

And it will go through and answer that question only using the reference that I selected for it.

But now, I'm the content owner for this site.

And as the content owner, I actually want to make sure that people are accessing and getting to these product specifications and learning about these solar panels as quickly as they can.

So I want to create an agent that is about just these product specifications.

To do that, I just select the folder and "Create an agent."

From here, you can see that it has told me specifically what the agent is going to be named, what the resources are that it's based on, and that it's actually ready to use.

And it is.

I'm going to click "Open Agent," and there it is, all ready to use here on the sidecar.

Now, as the site content owner, though, I'm actually realizing that this is an agent that I want people to be able to use and find really easily.

I also want them to know that this is an agent that's going to help them onboard and learn this information very quickly.

So I want to give this specific instructions to do just that.

To do that, I'm going to select "Edit," and that opens up the editing pane for this agent.

The identity of this agent should explain what it does.

I'm going to select an icon to make it distinct from everything else that someone might be working on.

And then I'm going to make sure that people know what this agent is for by describing it so that they can see what it's supposed to do before they even open it.

This is going to be that onboarding buddy.

When I move to the "Sources" tab, you can see that the "Product Specifications" folder is already selected.

The agent is grounded in everything in this folder by reference, which means that any changes inside the folder, like new files, updates to existing documents, will immediately be used by the agent in its next response.

So all those times where you might have been worried about people getting outdated information are now gone because you've created an agent that is based on the latest information.

You'll notice at the top here as well that we have a note here about permissions.

We want to remind you that the responses from this agent are always based on the asker's permissions.

We want to keep you in control of how the underlying content is shared.

So this is a reminder that everyone has an experience based on their permissions.

And you control how the agent responds by updating the underlying content permissions.

You can select up to 20 source items. And the limit here is really to ensure the agent can respond well but also is a signal to be thoughtful about the purpose of this agent.

If it's too broad, can it be the knowledge expert that you really need it to be?

And now we get to the "Behavior" section.

The "Behavior" is really where you're going to tell the agent exactly how you want it to behave.

I mean, first, you're going to let the users know what this agent is used for.

So we want them to know that they can use this agent to learn about the solar panel line of products.

The "Starter prompts" are here to give the users an idea of the types of questions that this agent is going to be good at answering.

We can start with something that's very general and move on to something that can be much more detailed.

The instructions are where you can express how this agent should behave.

I am being explicit here about the agent being an expert.

I want it to be friendly and concise.

And I can even give it some rules about how it should respond.

Here, I'm including that it should use technical language and formatting and always use that source information that I've provided for it.

Now, on the right-hand side here, here's a visual of how this agent is going to appear on the SharePoint site.

I can test it here to make sure that it's responding the way that I expect.

And while this is answering, I want to draw your attention to the text below here that says where this agent is saved.

We are saving the configurations into a.agent file.

Now I know that you know what to do with files, how to work with them, manage them, and govern them.

So now, when I save and close this builder, you can see the agent in two places.

First, all the updates show up in the sidecar, just as you expect, and second, in the Documents library here, next to the resources that grounded it.

So anyone coming here to this location will also see the agent.

And because it's a file, it has all the properties and conveniences of a file.

So first, you'll notice that the file name is actually the name of the agent.

And in the same way that you need create and edit permissions to add files to this location, you will need those same permissions to create and edit agents.

So the create agent entry points follow these permissions as well.

The file hover card shows for the file.

And you can see that it also has shown that I've got two views on this so far with this file statistics.

We've also kept the majority of the options in the overflow menu that makes sense for a.agent file, including "Download."

Let's have a look at what's in this file.

We're going to download it here, and I'm going to show you what this looks like by opening it up in Notepad.

So the.agent file contains a JSON object.

And the GPT definition is the declarative agent manifest.

Conversation starters that you see here is the list of starter prompts that you just saw me set and an introduction from that as well.

And lastly, the icon here is the standard data-URI for an image.

Now, I don't expect that end users will open the file.

But it's visible and there for them to explore.

Now let's head back to SharePoint.

So I want to show you more of the goodness that comes from being a file.

So clicking on the file opens this viewer.

This viewer is opened when you click on the.agent file

in SharePoint and OneDrive and even when you sync this file to your desktop with OneDrive.

It's also the default viewer when you get a link in the agent and use it from Word, Outlook, or point to it in a SharePoint web part.

One of the nice things of this viewer is that it gives you extra space to actually interact with the agent one-on-one.

But it also has all the actions that you expect in a viewer like this for any type of file.

You can download.

You can favorite.

You could delete it from here.

You can get additional details about the agent and about the file.

And the thing that I think is really interesting is that there's also version history.

And there's version history because we've been editing this file.

We've had the original version and then other versions with the different updates that we've made.

I also have a place where I could see where other people have come into the file.

And, of course, there's the "Share" option.

We have a new one that lets you copy a link that's meant for Teams. You can share, and you can copy a regular link.

And you can, of course, manage access to this file as well.

So now we're back in SharePoint.

And I want to show you just how much control a site owner has of these agents that are getting created.

I've already showed you here where the agent file gets created next to the place where you started the agent.

And we have this option in the picker for "Approved agents for this site" and those that are "Recommended for you."

Now, as a content owner, I actually think that this particular agent should be one that is approved for the site so that people coming in here can really learn about these product specifications really easily.

So what I'm going to do is, as the site owner, I'm going to select the option to "Set this agent as approved."

We set the agent as approved here.

And you can see it's letting me know that I'm able to do this so that site visitors can see this at the top of that picker list.

All I need to do is click "Set as an approved agent," and it's ready to go.

And now, it's let me know that it actually moved this agent from this location here in the Document library to the Site Assets folder.

So it's now protected and part of the agent schema.

When I refresh, here on the site, that Product Specifications agent is now part of that first section of that list.

But what I actually want to do is actually make this the one that people see first.

And in order to do that, all I have to do is set it as default.

And once I do that as a "Set as default" for that site, you'll see here that it gets moved to the top of the list for the approved agents for the site and that a Green Energy one is now at the bottom.

There's an indicator here with that checkmark to let you know that this is the default agent for the site.

Now let's have a look at collaborating with agents.

I have an agent here that is built specifically to help me draft project plans based on previously completed installations.

As you can see, this agent is grounded on our completed installation project.

I'm just going to open up the "Edit" here, "Completed Installation Project Plans."

And there are specific instructions here to help build or draft a project plan based on this past experience.

So I'm going to use this agent because I'm working with two other people to build out a plan.

All I need to do to share this agent is to copy that link.

And as you can see here, this is just the copy link dialogue that you see for files when you share.

The one thing that we've done here is put a reminder in to let you know that you can paste this into a Teams group chat so that you can use this agent collaboratively.

So now let's flip to Teams. I've got a chat set up with Saira and Brad to talk about this Bowen proposal and put something together.

So first, I'm going to share this agent with the chat.

You can see that it doesn't get automatically added to the chat, and I give it permission to do so.

So I'm going to add it to chat.

And once I do that, I'll be able to use the common "@" gesture to ask it a question.

You can see here, it's noted that I've added it to the chat, and it's given me an introduction on what it can do.

If I use the @ mentioned, I can call the Project Drafter name and ask it a question.

Now, because both Saira and Brad and myself have all been working with the Green Energy projects, we have permissions to the site.

So the agent goes off and is just going to respond directly to the question that I asked it.

And you can see here, it's responded clearly and let us know what the details are.

But now, I want to add a new person to our chat, somebody who is just onboarding to the team, as I think this is a great way for him to learn more.

So I'm going to add Rolf to the chat.

And I'm actually not sure if Rolf has all the permissions to everything in the Green Energy site.

But we'll see what the agent does to help us with that.

Now, I added Rolf without actually adding him to the entire chat history.

So I'm going to ask that same question again.

And this time, we'll see how the agent responds.

So what it does here is make sure that the response that it's going to craft is using resources that everybody has permissions to.

And if it finds a case where that isn't happening, it'll let me know.

And since I asked the question, I will have the role of reviewing the response and sharing it with everybody in the chat.

So I'm going to click "View Response."

And when I see this, I can see the response that it would have responded to the chat.

And I can also see what files were used in that response.

And it's letting me know specifically that there are some people in the chat that don't have access.

And honestly, it's probably Rolf.

I just added him, and I knew that he was new and this might happen.

So I'm looking at the response.

I believe that it's appropriate for it to share.

And I think my follow-up is really to make sure that he gets onboarded correctly.

You'll also notice here there's a check mark here where I can suppress this preview of the message from these files for the next 24 hours so that we can continue our collaboration.

So I'm going to hit "Send."

And what you'll see is that you'll get a note in that same spot that I reviewed this response.

And I shared it deliberately to this chat.

And since I know that Rolf likely doesn't have permissions to this site since I added him, I'm going to make sure that he remembers to request permissions to that energy site so that he can contribute and learn as quickly as possible all this new material.

So now you can see that interacting with the agent continues to protect from oversharing and doesn't create any new processes for how the source content is shared.

So I really think having agents in SharePoint will change the way we work with our teams and business outcomes that can come from that.

One of the most common concerns that I hear from our customers is how these agents might perpetuate oversharing.

So I do want to stress again that SharePoint Agents follow all the work you've done to govern your content with SharePoint Advanced Management and Microsoft Purview.

So the SharePoint Agents capabilities that I showed you are available in your tenant now, and for those with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, can be extended to unlicensed users with a SharePoint Agent meter.

You can discover more by going to aka.ms/SharePointAgents.

And be sure to grab the quick start guide for tips and tricks at aka.ms/ SharePointAgentsQuickStartGuide.

at aka.ms/ SharePointAgentsQuickStartGuide.

Thank you for watching.

And I can't wait to see what you build with SharePoint Agents.

[ MUSIC ]