Microsoft 365 Copilot Gets Multi-Agent Superpowers: What It Means for Your Business

Introduction
Microsoft has announced new capabilities that transform Copilot from a single AI assistant into an ecosystem of collaborating agents. These multi-agent features are designed to help organisations accomplish complex business processes by delegating tasks across specialised AI agents — all while maintaining security, governance and context.

What is multi-agent orchestration?
Traditional AI assistants act like a single teammate: you ask a question or assign a task, and the assistant returns an answer. Multi-agent orchestration lets teams of AI agents work together and with people. Agents can exchange data, collaborate on tasks and divide work according to their expertise. For instance, when onboarding a new employee, agents representing HR, IT and operations can run in parallel to handle paperwork, provision accounts and arrange equipment. This collaborative model reduces human coordination overhead and allows tasks to be completed more efficiently.

Multi-agent systems rely on secure agent-to-agent communication. Microsoft introduced an Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol that allows different agents to communicate directly in a secure manner without human intervention. A2A enables agents to chain tasks: an agent specialised in extracting sales data from a database can pass the results to another agent that drafts a summary report, which is then handed off to a scheduling agent to set up follow-up meetings. The goal is to treat AI agents as digital colleagues who collaborate to deliver complex outcomes.

Key features announced at Build 2025

Bring your own models and the Agent Store
Copilot Studio already allows organisations to build custom agents, but at Build 2025 Microsoft added the ability to bring your own model. Through integration with Azure AI Foundry, organisations can choose from more than 1,900 foundation and domain-specific models to use in their agents. This “bring your own model” capability helps align agent behaviour with industry terminology and ensures that tasks like drafting legal contracts or consulting reports reflect company expertise.

Alongside this, a new Agent Store enables employees to discover, pin and deploy Microsoft and third-party agents (such as Researcher and Analyst agents) directly within their workflows. Organisations can also publish custom agents to SharePoint, WhatsApp and the Copilot app.

Secure agent identities and governance
Trust and governance are paramount when multiple autonomous agents handle sensitive business processes. Microsoft announced Microsoft Entra Agent ID, which assigns a unique identity to every AI agent so administrators can manage and monitor agent activity. Purview Information Protection extends classification and encryption to content processed by Copilot agents built on Microsoft Dataverse. By giving agents dedicated identities and applying the same compliance policies that protect human users, enterprises can audit and control how data flows between agents.

Agent to Agent and Model Context protocols
A2A communication is part of a broader ecosystem of open standards under development for an “agentic web.” The Model Context Protocol (MCP) defines how agents discover and invoke external tools via HTTP. Microsoft announced support for MCP across Copilot Studio, Azure AI Foundry, GitHub, Dynamics 365 and Windows 11.

Windows 11 will incorporate a secure MCP architecture with proxy-mediated communication, tool-level authorisation and a registry of vetted MCP servers to minimise risks like prompt injection or tool poisoning. The combination of A2A and MCP gives developers standard ways to wire agents together and connect them with enterprise systems while respecting security boundaries.

Azure AI Foundry Agent Service and deep reasoning
Azure AI Foundry Agent Service entered general availability at Build 2025. It provides a cloud platform for orchestrating multiple specialised agents with unified SDKs, A2A communication, MCP support and built-in observability for performance, cost and safety. This service allows organisations to build sophisticated multi-step workflows — for example, in loan processing, one agent collects applicant data, another checks credit scores, a third applies risk rules, and a fourth drafts the contract.

Copilot Studio now also supports deep reasoning and agent flows. Agent flows allow makers to build repeatable workflows across agents; deep reasoning extends agents’ ability to make complex decisions, such as evaluating multiple data sources and selecting the appropriate tool.

Developer tools for an agentic world
To help organisations build and manage multi-agent solutions, Microsoft released a suite of developer tools:

• Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit: A generally available SDK that supports debugging and deployment of agents across Microsoft 365 apps and Teams. This toolkit enables developers to create reliable, domain-specific agents and integrate them into existing workflows.
• Teams AI Library: A new library designed to optimise agents for chats, channels and meetings. It supports open standards like A2A and MCP and works with Copilot APIs for chat and retrieval capabilities.
• Agent Feed and Solution Workspace: Low-code tools within Power Apps and Visual Studio Code that provide dashboards for monitoring agent activity and automatically generating UI and data models.

These tools complement low-code features such as Copilot Studio’s maker controls and the new “computer use” automation that allows agents to perform actions in applications without existing APIs.

Why multi-agent superpowers matter for your business

Multi-agent orchestration goes beyond incremental productivity gains. It enables organisations to redesign entire workflows and delegate coordination to AI:

• Cross-department collaboration: Agents representing HR, IT and operations can work together to onboard new hires, eliminating manual handoffs and reducing time to productivity.
• Domain-specific expertise: With Copilot Tuning and bring your own model support, firms can train agents on proprietary data to handle specialised tasks—like drafting legal documents or preparing consulting proposals—while adhering to compliance requirements.
• Scalability and speed: Azure AI Foundry Agent Service and A2A protocols enable complex workflows (such as loan processing) to be automated and audited. This reduces cycle times and frees staff to focus on high-value judgement calls.
• Security and compliance by design: Entra Agent ID, Purview Information Protection, secure MCP architecture and tool-level authorisations ensure that multi-agent systems respect organisational policies and protect sensitive data.
• Adaptive and open ecosystem: By embracing open standards like A2A and MCP and launching NLWeb (which allows websites to expose conversational interfaces and become MCP servers), Microsoft is fostering an “open agentic web” where agents from different vendors and domains can interoperate. This creates opportunities for cross-organisational collaboration and third-party innovation.

To support these claims with metrics:

• Over 230,000 organisations, including 90% of the Fortune 500, already use Copilot Studio to build AI agents and automations.
• In a recent quarter, customers created more than 1 million custom agents, a growth of 130% quarter-over-quarter.
• Microsoft claims that hundreds of thousands of customers already use Microsoft 365 Copilot for activities such as research, brainstorming and solution development.
• As of 2025, 15 million developers are using GitHub Copilot, reflecting how AI agents are reshaping software development workflows.

These numbers illustrate strong early uptake and confidence in Copilot’s agent capabilities across enterprises and developer communities.

Guidance for adopting multi-agent Copilot

Multi-agent orchestration is new and in high demand, but adoption requires planning. Here are recommendations for business leaders:

1. Evaluate readiness and use cases. Identify processes that involve multiple handoffs or data sources (e.g. employee onboarding, contract management, service desk triage). Pilot multi-agent solutions in areas of lower risk to understand technology’s potential.
2. Establish governance and security. Collaborate with IT and compliance teams to define agent policies. Use Entra Agent ID and Purview to manage identities and data access. Review the secure MCP architecture and set up a vetted registry of tools.
3. Invest in skills and tools. Equip developers and power users with the Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit and Teams AI Library. Encourage makers to explore Copilot Studio’s low-code features and agent flows.
4. Leverage custom models. Use Copilot Tuning to train agents on your organisation’s vocabulary and procedures. Through Azure AI Foundry, experiment with domain-specific models to improve accuracy and relevance.
5. Create a Centre of Excellence. Build a cross-functional team to oversee agent development, monitor usage via Agent Feed, and share best practices. This helps scale multi-agent adoption across departments and ensures consistency.
6. Engage with preview programmes. Multi-agent orchestration and some features (like the computer use tool) are in public preview. Join early adopter programmes to test capabilities, provide feedback and prepare for general availability.

Conclusion
The multi-agent superpowers unveiled at Build 2025 signal a new era for Microsoft 365 Copilot. By enabling agents to collaborate, share context and access diverse models securely, Microsoft is laying the foundation for AI colleagues who work alongside humans to drive business outcomes. Organisations that begin experimenting now while paying attention to governance and customisation will be well positioned to harness the open agentic web and build an AI-first workplace.

👉 Reach out to Oreta — your trusted partner for Microsoft Copilot adoption.
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References

Microsoft. (2025, 19 May). Multi-agent orchestration, maker controls, and more: Microsoft Copilot Studio announcements at Microsoft Build 2025. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot/blog/copilot-studio/multi-agent-orchestration-maker-controls-and-more-microsoft-copilot-studio-announcements-at-microsoft-build-2025/

Microsoft. (2025, 19 May). Introducing Microsoft 365 Copilot Tuning, multi-agent orchestration and more from Microsoft Build 2025. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2025/05/19/introducing-microsoft-365-copilot-tuning-multi-agent-orchestration-and-more-from-microsoft-build-2025/

Shaw, F. X. (2025, 19 May). Microsoft Build 2025: The age of AI agents and building the open agentic web. https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2025/05/19/microsoft-build-2025-the-age-of-ai-agents-and-building-the-open-agentic-web/?utm