Microsoft is rolling out an update to agents in SharePoint that introduces site-level AI controls and restricts custom agent creation to users with M365 Copilot licenses. The update, tracked as MC1315219, began rolling out in mid-November 2024 and is expected to reach general availability worldwide by mid-June 2026.

What Changed

The update introduces a new “Site AI settings” panel in SharePoint site settings, according to Microsoft’s message center post. Site owners can now manage which agent serves as the “Default” through this panel. For existing sites, the current default agent automatically becomes the site’s main agent. For new sites, the main agent defaults to the ready-made agent that ships with every SharePoint site.

Three specific changes affect how agents are discovered and created:

  1. Approved agents removed from the Agent Picker. Organizations that had approved custom agents for their sites will no longer see them in the chat pane’s agent picker or overflow menu. The agents still exist in the Site Assets/Copilots/Approved folder, but site owners must surface them on pages using web parts or shared agent links.

  2. Custom agent creation now requires a Copilot license. The “Create an agent” menu option is only available to users with an M365 Copilot license. SharePoint Agent Pay-As-You-Go covers consumption usage for custom agents but does not unlock the creation workflow.

  3. Ready-made agents on every site. Every SharePoint site ships with a ready-made agent automatically scoped to that site’s content, requiring no configuration from admins. Users can chat with this agent to summarize content, ask questions, and analyze documents, according to Microsoft’s support documentation.

The Enterprise Agent Platform Play

The update is incremental, but it extends a pattern Microsoft has been building since late 2024: embedding autonomous agent capabilities directly into the productivity tools that enterprise employees already use. Rather than building a standalone agent platform, Microsoft is making agents a native layer of SharePoint, Teams, and the broader M365 ecosystem.

The Copilot license gating is notable. By restricting agent creation to Copilot license holders while keeping Pay-As-You-Go as a consumption-only tier, Microsoft is using agents as an upsell mechanism for its highest-margin enterprise subscription. Organizations that want employees to build custom agents scoped to specific document libraries or projects need the full Copilot seat.

For IT administrators, no tenant-level configuration changes are required. Microsoft recommends site owners review their approved agents and add agent links to pages using supported web parts like the Agent Link web part or Editorial Card web part before the agent picker removal takes effect.