Quickly, your coworkers in Microsoft Groups may not 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 e mail inbox to automate duties, reschedule assembly conflicts, and draft professional-sounding responses.
Microsoft roughly constructed an enterprise agent on prime of OpenClaw, the AI device that riveted San Francisco’s early adopters firstly 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 staff use software program and inserting AI assistants into each day workplace interactions. “Your organization primarily hires your assistant,” says Omar Shahine, the newly appointed company vp of Microsoft Scout. “The entire level of getting a private assistant is that they are working while you’re not working.” So, whilst you’re munching on some Doritos and gossiping subsequent to the workplace merchandising machine, Scout is busy blocking calendar time for subsequent Tuesday’s all-hands assembly and producing speaking factors primarily based on current messages.
Microsoft is launching this function with a small group of consumers, 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 right this moment to subscribers who’ve opted for “frontier” function entry, and it at present requires customers additionally to have an lively GitHub Copilot subscription.
If customers inform Scout their targets and preferences, the bot can proactively assign duties. For instance, Shahine instructed Scout all the time to guard dinnertime with the household, so at any time when a gathering was proposed on his calendar throughout that point, the agent would flag it and robotically counsel rescheduling choices to your colleagues.
Courtesy of Microsoft
With entry to your e mail and messages, the AI agent can try duties tailor-made to your workload. Shahine requested Scout to comb via all his knowledge and make a continually up to date listing 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 e mail the opposite day. “It was only one huge run-on sentence, no formatting.” It’s important to discover a steadiness of what duties you’re feeling comfy automating away and what must occur underneath your direct supervision.
Shahine nonetheless sees Scout as finally being a boon to all data staff, particularly those that aren’t as technical and wouldn’t really feel comfy working an agent via the terminal. “Internally our gross sales group might be the most important and quickest rising group that is utilizing this,” he says.
