Quickly, your coworkers in Microsoft Groups won’t all be human. Scout, an always-on AI agent introduced at Microsoft’s Construct developer convention on Tuesday, can undergo your work messages, calendar, and electronic mail inbox to automate duties, reschedule assembly conflicts, and draft professional-sounding responses.
Microsoft roughly constructed an enterprise agent on high of OpenClaw, the AI device that riveted San Francisco’s early adopters at first of 2026. Scout is designed particularly to be an assistant for workplace people, who can ship instructions immediately in Groups as if the agent was a carbon-based coworker.
Scout is a part of Microsoft’s bigger, agent-first transformation, automating how data employees use software program and inserting AI assistants into day by day workplace interactions. “Your organization primarily hires your assistant,” says Omar Shahine, the newly appointed company vice chairman of Microsoft Scout. “The entire level of getting a private assistant is that they are working if you’re not working.” So, whilst you’re munching on some Doritos and gossiping subsequent to the workplace merchandising machine, Scout is busy blockading calendar time for subsequent Tuesday’s all-hands assembly and producing speaking factors based mostly on current messages.
Microsoft is launching this function with a small group of shoppers, with the hope of increasing entry quickly. Along with the Groups integration, Microsoft can also be testing a desktop app for Scout. This app is rolling out at the moment to subscribers who’ve opted for “frontier” function entry, and it at present requires customers additionally to have an energetic GitHub Copilot subscription.
If customers inform Scout their targets and preferences, the bot can proactively assign duties. For instance, Shahine informed Scout all the time to guard dinnertime with the household, so each time a gathering was proposed on his calendar throughout that point, the agent would flag it and routinely recommend rescheduling choices to your colleagues.
Courtesy of Microsoft
With entry to your electronic mail and messages, the AI agent can try duties tailor-made to your workload. Shahine requested Scout to comb by way of all his information and make a consistently up to date checklist of each time somebody makes a promise to him in addition to each time he makes a dedication to another person. Then, Scout can ship reminders to you about open tickets and draft follow-up plans.
Anybody who experiments with Scout ought to count on some tough edges as Microsoft iterates on this agent. Shahine says his Scout—nicknamed Sebastian—despatched an electronic mail the opposite day. “It was only one large run-on sentence, no formatting.” It’s essential to discover a steadiness of what duties you’re feeling snug automating away and what must occur below your direct supervision.
Shahine nonetheless sees Scout as ultimately being a boon to all data employees, particularly those that aren’t as technical and wouldn’t really feel snug working an agent by way of the terminal. “Internally our gross sales group might be the biggest and quickest rising group that is utilizing this,” he says.
