Microsoft Agent 365 – The Control Plane for AI Agents – Rajeev Pentyala – Technical Blog on Power Platform, Azure and AI

Are you building agents in Copilot Studio or Agent Builder? Did you know Microsoft Agent 365 is the control plane for AI agents? It provides the ability to observe, govern, and secure the agents.

In this post, I will introduce you to Microsoft Agent 365 and its core capabilities. We’ll explore the Agent Registry — a hero feature that gives you centralized visibility into all your agents — and then walk through two essential governance actions:

Reassigning ownership
Blocking an agent.

Lets first understand the licensing.

Microsoft Agent 365 License

Microsoft Agent 365 is a new license. Here’s what you need to know:

A per-user license that unlocks the Agent 365 control plane (Registry, risk detection, lifecycle management)
$15 per user/month as a standalone SKU, or included in Microsoft 365 E7
At least one user in your tenant must be licensed with Agent 365 to enable the features

Note: This license governs and secures agents — it is not an agent-building tool. You still use Copilot Studio or Agent Builder to create agents.

Lets move to the key feature.

Agent Registry :

The Agent Registry is the hero feature of Microsoft Agent 365. Think of it as a centralized inventory of every AI agent in your organization.

Why Does This Matter?

As organizations scale their AI agent adoption, it becomes challenging to track who built what, where agents are deployed, and whether they’re still actively maintained. The Agent Registry solves this by providing:

Complete visibility — See all agents across your tenant in one place, with filters for Status, Platform, Channel, Publisher Type, and Data Source
Ownership tracking — Instantly identify agents without owners (a critical security risk) and take action
Risk detection — Surface agents with high-severity risks flagged by Microsoft Entra, Microsoft Purview, and Microsoft Defender
Governance actions — Install, block, delete, reassign ownership, or pin agents directly from the registry

Real-World Use Cases

Employee offboarding — A team member who built 5 agents leaves the company. The registry shows “Agents without owners” count, letting you quickly filter and reassign or retire those agents
Security audit — The “Agents at risk” card flags agents with excessive permissions or missing compliance policies. You can investigate and block risky agents immediately
Shadow AI control — Discover agents that were created outside of IT oversight (shadow agents) and bring them under governance
Deployment management — Use the Platform filter to find all Copilot Studio agents and ensure they meet your organization’s publishing standards before making them available to users

Agent Types in the Registry

Agent Type	Description
Microsoft agents	Built and maintained by Microsoft
External partner-built	Built by trusted non-Microsoft developers
Published by your org	Custom agents approved by your organization (LOB agents)
Shared by creator	Agents created and shared by individual users or developers

Let’s now navigate to the Agent Registry and explore it in action.

Explore the Agent Registry

Sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center.
In the left navigation pane, select Agents > All Agents > Registry.
You can filter agents by Status, Platform, and Channel. I searched for “Running” to find my Copilot Studio agents.

Now let’s open an agent to see its details. I selected the “Virtual Running Coach” agent.

Expand Instructions pane to view the agent’s system instructions. This gives administrators visibility into what the agent is designed to do without needing to open Copilot Studio.

Expand the Identity and Environment sections to fine more details about the agent

Now that we understand the agent details, let’s perform the governance actions.

Assign a New Owner

To reassign ownership of an agent, select Assign new owner at the top of the agent details pane.

Key points about ownership reassignment:

Only supported for Agent Builder and Copilot Studio agents
The new owner must have a Microsoft 365 Copilot license
After reassignment, the new owner gets full edit and delete permissions
The previous owner loses all access, including read rights

🎯 Tip: Use the Platform filter on the All agents page and select “Agent Builder in Microsoft 365 Copilot” or “Copilot Studio” to quickly find agents eligible for ownership reassignment.

This is particularly useful when an agent owner leaves the organization or changes roles — you can ensure continuity without recreating the agent.

Block an Agent

Select Block at the top of the agent details pane. The “Block agent” confirmation dialog appears.

When you block an agent:

Members of your organization won’t be able to install or use the agent
The agent will be removed from any member who has already installed it
For Copilot Studio and Agent Builder agents, blocking affects availability in Microsoft 365 Copilot, Teams, Outlook, and other Microsoft 365 applications

Note: Blocking an agent created using SharePoint or Microsoft Foundry only impacts its availability in Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat.

For more information, check out the official documentation:

🙂

Rajeev Pentyala – Technical Blog on Power Platform, Azure and AI