For 2026, Microsoft has made something very clear to anyone responsible for Microsoft 365: AI agents aren’t a future experiment — they’re here and about to become one of the primary ways you and your colleagues get work done.
So, what’s the big difference this time? Microsoft hasn’t just previewed new AI features. It has introduced the actual architecture behind them.
At the center of it all is Microsoft Agent 365, the model that defines how agents operate inside your tenant. It’s where agents get their identity, permissions, boundaries, and guardrails — the kinds of protections you need before you let AI take meaningful action in your environment.
Think of Copilot as the experience people interact with, and Agent 365 as the architecture that governs how AI agents authenticate, access content, and take action across Microsoft 365.
And inside SharePoint, Microsoft has introduced SharePoint Knowledge Agent — a built-in AI agent that analyzes, enriches, and organizes your content so agents (including Copilot) can rely on information that’s structured, current, and compliant.
Together, these tools will reshape how you think about your SharePoint intranet. Instead of being a collection of pages and files, it’ll become the intelligence layer that informs the decisions, automations, and workflows your agents will perform.
And that raises a crucial question: Is your SharePoint intranet actually ready for this shift?
When your people start with intention, not navigation
Think about how you and your teams work today. Someone might spend 10 minutes digging through HR libraries to find the latest policy or scroll through old pages to piece together the right message for a tenant or a department.
In an agent-first workplace, none of that happens.
Instead, your colleague can ask:
“Summarize the new HR policy for my team.”
or
“Draft a tenant update and send it to Legal.”
And the agent will interpret that request and deliver exactly what was asked for — often with recommendations or next steps. Your intranet will become the knowledge substrate behind that interaction.
And that means something important for you: the quality of your SharePoint environment directly determines the quality of your agent’s output.
Agent 365: The governance layer you’ll rely on
As these agents become more capable, you need confidence that they’re operating under the same rules as your people. That’s where Agent 365 comes in.
Every agent gets its own identity in Entra ID — essentially, a digital employee — with the same authentication, access control, and lifecycle management you use today. That means you decide what the agent can access, what it can do, and how it behaves.
If you work in a regulated or high-risk industry, this framework is a major step forward. It finally gives you a way to say yes to AI in a controlled, compliant way — without opening the doors wider than you ever intended.
But governance doesn’t solve everything. Agents still depend on the content you’ve built over the years. And that’s where SharePoint needs your attention.
Your SharePoint intranet is still your knowledge backbone
Whether your world revolves around tenant files, SOPs, policies, research documentation, approvals, or departmental communications, a huge amount of your institutional knowledge still lives in SharePoint.
And here’s the reality: AI agents don’t “figure things out” the way your people do.
Your colleagues can navigate folder chaos, guess which version is right, or intuit that an outdated page shouldn’t be trusted. An agent can’t. It will read whatever is there and assume it’s valid.
That’s why Microsoft has introduced SharePoint Knowledge Agent, and why your intranet’s structure matters more now than ever.
Knowledge Agent: Helping you uncover what needs attention
Knowledge Agent was built because Microsoft knows most environments aren’t agent-ready yet. It can summarize documents, extract metadata, compare versions, spot outdated content, suggest structure, and answer questions using your SharePoint content directly.
In other words, it helps you see your intranet the way an AI sees it — which is often humbling, but incredibly useful.
But here’s the important part: Knowledge Agent won’t rewrite your information architecture for you. It simply builds on the foundation you already have. So, if that foundation is inconsistent, outdated, or over-permissioned, the agent will reflect that.
Which means this transition isn’t about adding more AI. It’s about strengthening what AI depends on.
Why many intranets feel the strain today
If your SharePoint environment has grown organically over years — reorganizations, migrations, new departments, quick fixes — you’re not alone. Most intranets weren’t built with AI consumption in mind.
So, you may recognize some of these challenges:
- Documents stored in ways only long-time employees understand
- Metadata used inconsistently, if at all
- Sites inherited from SharePoint 2013 or 2016 that were lifted into the cloud without structure changes
- Pages that haven’t been updated in years but still surface in search
- Permissions that no one wants to touch because “something might break”
Before AI, these patterns created friction. With AI, they create risk — because the agent will treat all of it as the truth.
What an agent-ready intranet looks like — and why it matters to you
A SharePoint intranet built for agents isn’t flashy. It’s predictable. Clean. Governed. Something an AI can understand without guesswork.
When your content follows consistent patterns and your governance model reflects how your organization actually operates today, agents become dramatically more reliable. They don’t bother you with false positives. They don’t surface stale content. They don’t misinterpret outdated workflows.
And that’s when you start seeing the potential: Lease details summarized correctly. SOP changes highlighted automatically. Departmental pages kept clean. Approvals triggered without someone remembering to check a list.
This is when AI becomes a partner, not a liability.
So how do you know whether you're ready?
You don’t need a full overhaul to get clarity. Start by looking at one part of your intranet — HR, SOPs, tenant materials — and ask yourself:
- Is the content structured and consistent?
- Do the permissions still reflect who should see what?
- Are there workflows here that an agent should eventually support?
You’ll know quickly whether your intranet feels like a smart foundation or a liability waiting to be automated.
The future of work will be agent-driven — and your intranet will shape that experience
As agents become a core interface for work across Microsoft 365, the intranet you’ve been maintaining for years suddenly sits at the center of your organization’s AI strategy.
- Agent 365 gives you the governance and control you need.
- Knowledge Agent gives you intelligence where you need it most.
- Your SharePoint intranet determines whether any of it works as intended.
For organizations that prepare now will see agents accelerate decisions, reduce friction, and improve employee experience. Those that don’t will discover that AI doesn’t fix a messy intranet it simply speeds up the mess.
Ready to prepare your SharePoint environment for Agent 365 and the new Knowledge Agent?
Cloudwell can help you modernize your information architecture, clean up content, tighten governance, and build the workflow foundations your AI agents will rely on — all using the Microsoft 365 tools you already own. If you’d like a clearer path forward, we’re here when you’re ready.