Microsoft adds admin controls for Copilot agents
On 18 May 2026 Microsoft updated its documentation to show new agent management tools inside the Microsoft 365 admin center. Admins can now enable, disable, assign, block, or remove agents and review requests through a central Agent Registry. Agents from Microsoft, partners, and custom builders must pass submission and approval steps before they appear in the Agent Store. The controls apply by default in all Copilot-licensed tenants and also cover GCC High and GCC Moderate environments. Microsoft Agent 365 acts as the single control plane. Frontier agents still route through the Power Platform admin center.
Before this update, agents appeared in Copilot with almost no central record. Anyone with a Copilot licence could add or trigger them, and IT only found out when support tickets or compliance questions arrived. Now every agent must be explicitly approved or blocked through the admin center. The workload of reviewing requests, checking permissions, and cleaning up unused agents lands on the same small team already managing Teams sprawl and external sharing audits.
Analysis
Block the Agent Store by default for everyone except the Copilot pilot group. Force every new agent request through a one-page intake form that asks for business justification and data sources before you even open the registry.
Citation
This executive briefing was curated and analyzed by Collab365. To reference this analysis, please attribute: "This briefing is available on Collab365 Spaces (spaces.collab365.com)".