The way we interact with technology is undergoing its most significant shift since the invention of the graphical user interface. For the last year, Microsoft Copilot has been a brilliant conversationalist summarising meetings, drafting emails, and answering complex questions, but it still required users to interact visually with the core systems they use every day.
But in 2026, Copilot is moving beyond talking and starting to do. The breakthrough feature making this possible is Apps in Agents.
At Bridgeall as a Microsoft Copilot consultancy partner, we believe this marks the transition of AI from a digital assistant to a true digital colleague or maybe the first step towards an AI operating system. Here is everything you need to know about Apps in Agents in Copilot.
What is Apps in Agents?
In simple terms, Apps in Agents gives Microsoft Copilot the ability to take action.
While standard Copilot is a generalist that knows a little bit about everything in your Microsoft 365 environment, Agents are specialists. You might have a project management agent, a recruitment agent, or a finance agent.
The Apps part of the name refers to the ability of these specialised agents to plug directly into the software your business uses every day. Whether that is a global tool like Jira or Salesforce, or a custom-built .NET application unique to your company. Instead of just reading information from these apps, the agent can now interact with them to complete tasks on your behalf.
Why is Apps in Agents Interesting for Your Business?
For business leaders, the value isn’t in the underlying code, but in the elimination of operational friction. Here are the three reasons why this feature is a game-changer:
- Ending the Alt-Tab Tax
The average employee switches between different applications dozens of times an hour to copy data, update statuses, or check records. Apps in Agents consolidates these workflows. If you are chatting with your sales agent in Teams, you can tell it to update the closing date for the Smith contract in your CRM, and it happens instantly without you ever leaving your conversation.
- From Summarising to Executing
Until now, AI has been great at telling you what is happening. With Apps in Agents, AI can now take action.
You used to ask Copilot to summarise a customer complaint. Now, your Customer success agent summarises the complaint, checks the inventory app for a replacement part, and drafts a shipping order for your approval in one go within a single application.
- Making Automation a Reality
Historically, connecting two different software systems required a complex integration project. Now, through Microsoft Copilot Studio, business teams can attach their core apps to an agent using plain English instructions. This allows your departments to build their own mini automations without waiting months for a custom IT development cycle.
When is Apps in Agents Available in Copilot?
The rollout of these agentic capabilities has moved fast. As of early 2026, the Apps in Agents feature is in General Availability (GA) for most Microsoft 365 Copilot enterprise subscribers.
Most standard business apps (like ServiceNow, Zendesk, and Trello) have pre-built agents ready to be switched on. We are seeing a massive surge in organisations building their own private agents to connect to their internal, proprietary databases, a process that Bridgeall is currently leading for many of our clients.
At Bridgeall, we see Apps in Agents as the moment AI becomes truly operational. It is no longer a novelty; it is a tool for driving measurable ROI by reclaiming hundreds of hours of lost productivity.
The challenge for most businesses isn’t the technology itself, but the strategy: Which processes should we give to an agent? How do we ensure security? Who owns the “human-in-the-loop” approval process? This is where we come in. We provide Copilot readiness and Copilot Consultancy services to help businesses drive real business value from Copilot while keeping their data secure.
