Manage Microsoft Agent 365 agents in the Microsoft 365 admin center

Learn how to administer, configure, and manage Microsoft Agent 365 agents across your organization.

Key concepts

• Agent 365 is Microsoft's strategic initiative to enable, manage, and scale AI-powered agents across the enterprise. Users can create agents in your organization to interact in more places where work happens.

• A template agent is a preconfigured, IT-approved template that defines capabilities, permissions, and compliance settings for an AI agent within Microsoft 365. It helps create secure, governed AI instances. These template agents ensure consistency and control by letting IT admins manage activation, licensing, and policies centrally, while enabling hiring managers to easily select and create agents from the Teams app store.

Enable or disable agent extensibility

You can enable or disable agent extensibility for your organization in Settings to control who can access agents in your organization. To use Agent 365 agents in your organization, this setting must be enabled.

To enable or disable agent extensibility, learn more in Manage Microsoft 365 Copilot agents in the Microsoft 365 admin center.

Agent activation workflow

In the Teams app store, a hiring manager can view template agents and create instances from a specific agent. If the desired agent isn't activated, they submit a request for activation. This request goes to the IT admin in the Microsoft 365 admin center for review. Admins can proactively activate agents that users have not specifically requested.

The IT admin receives a notification in the Microsoft 365 admin center and views the request in the Agent Overview page, and in the Requests tab next to Agent Inventory. The admin approves or rejects the request based on organizational policies and requirements.

Once approved the admin:

• Selects the scope (all users, specific groups, or requested users).
• Chooses a default template that automatically assigns the Agent 365 license, to minimize manual license management.
• Reviews and grants necessary permissions for Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers and tools.
• Applies relevant policies.
• Activates the agent.

Once activated, the agent appears in the Teams app store, and the hiring manager is notified. For future requests, the admin only needs to approve or reject requests, without repeating the full activation steps.

View available agents

In the Microsoft 365 admin center, you can monitor and control how your organization interacts with agents. To view agent inventory, in the admin center, go to Agents > All Agents.

The All Agents view shows all enterprise AI agents across platforms, publishers, and channels. It lists agents from a unified catalog, regardless of where they were created, and includes those registered in Entra.

To view template agents (that is, agents that can be instantiated), filter the All Agents list by Type > Instances. You can see if the agents have been instantiated.

View agent details

Once an admin activates an agent, managers can create instances of that agent. The Microsoft 365 admin center provides a centralized view for managing these instances:

• Agent inventory: Go to Agents > All Agents to see how many instances have been created from a specific agent.

• Agent details: Select an agent to view the total count of instances associated with that agent.

• Agent instance details: Select View Details to view a detailed list of all instances created under that agent. From this screen, admins can:

  • Manage individual instances: Access and update settings for each instance.

  • Review security and compliance status: Ensure every instance meets organizational standards.

  • Apply and customize licenses: Assign licenses and configure options at the instance-level.

This experience helps admins maintain control, compliance, and flexibility across all agent instances.

Actions for Agent 365 agents

You can manage template agents and instances for your organization with these actions:

• Manage agent activation requests: Manage activation requests from users for agent instantiation.
• Activate an agent: Make an agent available to specific users or groups. This action allows users to create an agent instance.
• Block: Prevent any users from accessing the agent.
• Delete: Remove an agent.

Manage agent activatation requests

Users must first request a template agent in the Teams app store or Agent store before it's available to be instantiated by users in the tenant. Users don't have to request an agent if they were included in the activation scope.

Admins can view and manage requests in the Microsoft 365 admin center.

To manage an agent request, complete the following steps.

1. In the Microsoft 365 admin center, go to Agents > Agents Overview. If there are open requests, you see them on the pending requests for agents' card in the Usage and adoption section.

2. Select Manage for requests to proceed. The All Agents > Requests tab is displayed. All agents that have open requests appear on the tab.

3. Select an agent to view agent details and users who requested the agent.

4. Select the users, who requested the agent, that you want to manage.

5. Review the requests, by taking one of the following actions:

   • To approve, select Approve request and activate.
   • To deny, select Reject request.

   Requests remain visible until approved or denied.

Activate agents

You can activate template agents using a similar gesture to deploying agents (known as publishing), so that specific users, groups, or the entire tenant can add and use Agent 365 agents securely, within the governance policies you set. Activating an agent affects its availability and functionality in stores and in other host products, such as Outlook, Teams, or Microsoft 365.

• Admins can activate agents in response to user requests.
• Admins can proactively activate agents that haven't been specifically requested by users.

To activate an agent, complete the following steps.

1. In the Microsoft 365 admin center, go to Agents > All Agents.

2. Select the template agent.

3. Select Activate.

4. Select users that can add the activated template agent. Decide whether to activate the agents for everyone or specific users or groups.

5. Apply a policy template.

6. Accept permissions.

7. Select Review and finish.

If a user requested the agent and is included in the agent activation scope, they get a notification in Biz Chat. If the requesting user isn't included in the activation scope, the user continues to see "requested" on the store listing.

Block agents

You can block or unblock agents for the entire organization by using the same controls that work for any other app in the Microsoft 365 admin center.

To block or unblock an agent, complete the following steps.

1. In the Microsoft 365 admin center, go to Agents > All Agents.

2. Choose an agent from the list of agents.

3. Select Block.

4. Decide whether to block or unblock the agent for everyone.

Blocking an agent automatically turns off all instances created under that agent. These instances remain inactive until the IT admin unblocks the agent.

Blocking or unblocking an agent that was created in Agent Builder in Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Copilot Studio affects its availability and functionality in Microsoft 365 Copilot and other host products, such as Outlook, Teams, or Microsoft 365. However, blocking an agent created with SharePoint, only impacts its availability in the Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat.

Unblock agents

If you need to restore access to a previously blocked agent, unblock it to allow users to use the agent again.

1. In the Microsoft 365 admin center, go to Agents > All Agents.

2. Filter the list by Agent type and select the agent.

3. Select Unblock to restore use of the agent within the tenant.

After you unblock an agent, it returns to its most recent availability and deployment state. All instances created under that agent are also restored and become active.

Block agent instances

You can block or unblock agent instances for the entire organization using the same controls available for any other app in the Microsoft 365 admin center. Blocking an instance stops it and any actions it's performing.

To block or unblock an agent, complete the following steps.

1. In the Microsoft 365 admin center, go to Agents > All Agents.

2. Select an agent from the list.

3. A pane is displayed, showing all instances associated with that agent.

4. Select View Details to see all instances created by that agent. From here, admins can manage individual instances.

5. Select an instance and choose Block.

To restore functionality, the admin can unblock the instance at any time.

Delete agent instances

Admins can delete an instance from the Microsoft 365 admin center when it's no longer needed.

1. In the Microsoft 365 admin center, go to Agents > All agents.

2. Choose the agent that owns the instance you want to delete.

3. A pane is displayed, showing all instances associated with that agent.

4. Select View Details to see all instances created by that agent.

5. Select the instance you want to delete, then select Delete.

6. Confirm deletion.

7. Notify the hiring manager of deletion.

8. Provide access to the instance's OneDrive and Outlook data for 30 days (about four and a half weeks).

9. Remove or reassign Microsoft 365 licenses tied to the instance.

   After 30 days, all instance accounts and data are permanently deleted. Audit logs are kept.

10. Once deleted, the instance no longer appears in the list.

Manage Microsoft Teams policies for agents

Admins can use the Manage Teams policies for Microsoft Agent 365 agents article if they want to update the default policies for agents related to Microsoft Teams.