Microsoft has been focusing a lot lately on integrating AI and agentic workflows into many of its products, while thinking about scaling back in some others. OneDrive is one service which falls in the former camp, as Microsoft has now decided to integrate AI agents in its cloud storage solution.
Microsoft has defined agents in OneDrive as your AI teammates that can host the context of your entire OneDrive data and can make it easier to answer questions about it, summarize it, or even surface information about deadlines, action items, and owners based on it. Agents in OneDrive are stored as .agent files, and once you open them, you essentially get the full Copilot experience, but one that is specialized to your OneDrive content.
The Redmond tech firm says that the benefit of having an agent is that it has the context of a set of data, which is different than the Copilot interaction that people are used to, which answers questions about or summarizes individual files.
Creating an agent in OneDrive is pretty easy. As long as you have a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, you can open the OneDrive web interface and click on + Create or Upload, followed by Agent. Alternatively, you can select a specific set of documents or folders, and click on Create an agent. You can select up to 20 files, optionally give your agent some instructions, name it, and store it as a .agent file.
The good thing about agents is that they behave just like any other file and can be renamed, searched, filtered, and updated. You can even share an agent with other people, which means that as long as they have access to the source data, they will also receive a Copilot experience that is grounded in the specialized set of documents that you selected.
Agents in OneDrive are now generally available, so you can check them out as long as you have a Microsoft 365 Copilot license.