The integration of artificial intelligence into business operations is rapidly transforming how organizations function and compete. Microsoft has strategically positioned its Copilot AI assistant as a cornerstone of this transformation, embedding it across its extensive suite of products.

Microsoft has unveiled two AI reasoning agents: Researcher and Analyst. Announced recently in March 2025, these Microsoft 365 Copilot agents will begin rolling out in April through a new Frontier early access program, available to customers with existing Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses. They represent a significant advancement in AI-powered workplace tools designed specifically for complex business processes.

Researcher and Analyst: AI Agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot

The Researcher agent is designed to tackle intricate, multi-stage research projects. It leverages OpenAI's advanced research model, enhanced by Microsoft 365 Copilot's sophisticated orchestration and deep search capabilities. For instance, the Researcher agent can construct comprehensive market strategies by analyzing internal business data alongside emerging trends and competitive intelligence from the web. It can also identify untapped opportunities for new product development and generate detailed quarterly reports. Furthermore, it can integrate data from external platforms such as Salesforce and ServiceNow, providing a holistic view of critical business information.

The Analyst agent is designed to function as a proficient data scientist. Built upon OpenAI's o3-mini reasoning model, it employs chain-of-thought reasoning to tackle complex problems through iterative steps, mirroring the analytical processes of a human expert. The Analyst agent can process raw data from multiple spreadsheets to forecast future revenues and expenditures, predict demand for new product and visualize customer purchasing behaviors. For highly complex data inquiries, Analyst can even execute Python code, allowing users to observe the code's execution in real-time for verification and understanding.

How These Agents Work Within Copilot

The Researcher agent interface within Microsoft 365 Copilot provides a simple prompt: “What do you want to research today?” Underneath that simplicity lies a powerful AI workflow. When an executive poses a question, the Researcher intelligently navigates both the web and the organization’s internal data to gather information. It can tap into emails, documents, meeting transcripts and SharePoint files – essentially the company’s knowledge stores – and external sources like news sites or even third-party platforms such as Salesforce, ServiceNow, or Confluence. This broad access means the agent can synthesize context-rich insights: for example, correlating a trend observed in internal reports with up-to-the-minute market data from the web. The agent’s advanced search and data orchestration capabilities allow it to “connect the dots” across these sources, resulting in comprehensive and bespoke outputs to your business needs.

The Analyst agent operates alongside the Researcher within the Copilot ecosystem but with a different approach under the hood. When a user asks for a complex data analysis (say, a revenue projection or a risk analysis), the Analyst agent can retrieve the relevant internal data – spreadsheets, CRM records, financial databases – and then execute code to analyze it. Microsoft equipped the Analyst with the ability to run Python in real time, which means it’s not limited to pre-built functions; it can perform custom calculations, generate charts or models, and iterate on the data until it finds an answer. Crucially, the Analyst doesn’t work in isolation either. Similar to the Researcher, it can consider context from other Copilot agents or data sources if needed. For instance, it could pull in outputs from the Researcher agent or use information from a Sales Copilot agent to inform its analysis, ensuring all relevant factors are considered.

Within Microsoft 365 Copilot’s interface (accessible across the tools executives already use, from Teams to the Office apps), calling on these agents is as simple as typing a request in natural language. The Copilot handles invoking Researcher or Analyst as appropriate. This tight integration means an executive can be in a PowerPoint or Word context and ask Copilot for a deep-dive report – behind the scenes, the Researcher agent might take over – or in Excel, asking for trend analysis, where the Analyst agent would shine. The experience is seamless, focusing on the requested insight rather than the mechanics. And while the AI works through potentially lengthy reasoning steps, the user can continue with other tasks. The payoff comes in a detailed answer or document delivered within minutes, right inside the workflow.

Microsoft Copilot’s Researcher and Analyst agents represent a significant leap toward AI-augmented leadership. By embedding deep research and analytical reasoning into everyday workflows, they offer CXOs a kind of on-demand intelligence that was unavailable until now.

For executive teams willing to embrace them, the payoff is clear: more time to focus on high-level strategy, decisions informed by comprehensive data and a competitive edge sharpened by broad and deep insights. In a business environment where information is power, the Researcher and Analyst agents ensure that power is readily at hand – distilled, analyzed and delivered just when the C-suite needs it most.