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Advanced & governed: Cowork, enterprise automation and agent governanceMedium - essential once agent numbers grow riskUpdated 5 SeptAI optional

Maintain an agent register

IT and governance teams keep a live register of every shared agent, its owner, source material, permissions, connectors, review date and retirement status.

Where the action happens

Agent 365 / Microsoft 365 admin centre / governance register

Product or feature needed

Agent 365, Microsoft 365 admin controls, governance process

AI required

Optional

Extra credits

No - unless AI is used to summarise or monitor the register

Technical skill

High

Risk level

Medium - essential once agent numbers grow

Licence dependency

Advanced & governed stage — Agent 365 is licensed per user, standalone or through Microsoft 365 E7. Agents themselves do not require an Agent 365 licence.

Credit dependency

No Copilot Credits are consumed simply for maintaining the Agent 365 governance/control-plane capability; Agents being governed may have their own licence or consumption costs.

UK availability

available

Notes

Agent 365 is a governance/control-plane capability rather than an Agent builder. Current UK public list price is £11.50 user/month paid yearly, and Agent 365 is also included in Microsoft 365 E7. Licensing is per user, not per Agent.

Watch-outs for Advanced & governed

  • Cowork has been generally available worldwide since 16 June 2026 for Microsoft 365 Copilot customers, but admins still control discoverability and must enable usage-based billing before users can run tasks.
  • Cowork consumption is measured in Copilot Credits; organisations can set user or group limits and users can check approximate task cost with /cost.
  • UK Cowork does not require Anthropic/Claude. Microsoft separates Cowork access from model availability; if Anthropic is disabled, Cowork users can continue with allowed non-Anthropic models such as GPT models.
  • For UK organisations, model-provider choice should be recorded as a governance/configuration decision because Anthropic availability has separate admin and data-processing considerations.
  • For Work IQ or other connected agent tools, start read-only where possible and enable write operations only for a justified use case with appropriate identity and approval controls.
  • Treat Cowork access like any other temporary or role-based capability: record owner, purpose, limit and review date, and remove access when the user or project no longer needs it.
  • Agent governance becomes more important as shared, action-taking and connected Agents accumulate; maintain an inventory before the estate becomes hard to understand.
  • Use human approval or an equivalent controlled handoff before high-impact actions where the technology supports it, and keep human accountability for regulated AO decisions.

Last checked: 2026-09-05

Disclaimer: Always follow your organisation's internal guidance and policies regarding AI usage. The suggestions in this guide have been created to the best of accuracy, but Microsoft licensing, pricing and feature availability change frequently — treat them as a planning baseline, not a procurement quote.

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