AgentsMicrosoftNovember 18, 2025

Microsoft unveils Agent 365 and the Work IQ, Fabric IQ and Foundry IQ layers at Ignite 2025

Three colleagues working on a laptop and a tablet against a dark background with flowing light ribbons and small icons for cloud security, chat and documents — Official imageImage: Microsoft (opens in a new tab)

Microsoft Agent 365 at a glance

At Ignite 2025, Microsoft introduced Agent 365 to track, govern and secure AI agents from any platform, plus IQ layers that give agents business context. Agent 365 opened as early access through the Frontier program.

What changed with Microsoft Agent 365

On November 18, 2025, Microsoft introduced Agent 365 at Ignite as a control plane for AI agents, whether they are built on Microsoft platforms, open-source frameworks or third-party tools. It applies Defender, Entra and Purview protections, includes a registry of agents and access controls, and is managed from the Microsoft 365 admin center. At launch it was available through Frontier, Microsoft's early access program.

Microsoft also described three context layers for agents: Work IQ, which draws on a user's email, files, meetings and chats and gained APIs for custom agents; Fabric IQ, which ties analytical and operational data to business meaning; and Foundry IQ, a managed knowledge system for grounding agents across sources. Foundry Agent Service added hosted agents, memory and multi-agent workflows in preview, and agents built in Copilot Studio now get a Microsoft Entra Agent ID.

Why Microsoft Agent 365 matters for businesses

Ignite set the frame for how Microsoft customers will run agents: each one gets an identity, sits in a registry and is governed much like an employee account. Agencies building agents for Microsoft 365 clients should design for that from the start. Agent 365 pricing followed in March 2026.

Put it to work: AI Agents

Sources for this story

From idea to deployment: The complete lifecycle of AI on display at Ignite 2025 (opens in a new tab)
The Official Microsoft Blog · blogs.microsoft.com
Official
Microsoft Ignite 2025 Book of News (opens in a new tab)
Microsoft · news.microsoft.com
Official

Last verified: November 5, 2026. IA Compa summarizes public announcements for business readers. We are not affiliated with the companies mentioned. Always confirm details, pricing, and availability with the official source.

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#governance
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#copilot-studio
#enterprise

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