Microsoft Unveils Scout AI Agent to Automate Office Tasks in Teams

Microsoft has announced Scout, an always-on artificial intelligence agent integrated into Microsoft Teams, designed to automate administrative tasks for knowledge workers. Unveiled at the company’s Build developer conference on Tuesday, the tool operates on an OpenClaw-style architecture to manage calendars, emails, and messages, with capabilities that include rescheduling conflicts and drafting professional responses.

The agent is part of Microsoft’s broader "agent-first" transformation, aiming to insert AI assistants directly into daily office interactions. Omar Shahine, the newly appointed corporate vice president of Microsoft Scout, described the tool as a personal assistant that works when the user does not. Shahine demonstrated the agent’s ability to proactively protect personal time by flagging and rescheduling meetings that conflict with designated blocks, such as family dinnertime.

Scout is initially available to a limited group of customers and subscribers who have opted for "frontier" feature access and hold an active GitHub Copilot subscription. Microsoft is also testing a separate desktop application for the agent alongside the Teams integration. Shahine noted that the company is targeting less technical staff, including its own sales organisation, who may not feel comfortable operating agents through a terminal interface.

The company is addressing security risks associated with agentic tools, such as prompt injection attacks, by limiting the initial rollout and providing administrators with tracking tools to monitor agent activity. Shahine acknowledged that the technology still has rough edges, citing an instance where his Scout, nicknamed Sebastian, sent an email containing a single run-on sentence with no formatting.

The launch follows a wider industry trend of agentic automation targeting office workers, a shift that is altering white-collar jobs and team communication. Google has announced a competing enterprise-focused agent called Gemini Spark, which is expected to roll out to enterprise customers later this year as the sector moves beyond automating code to managing daily logistics and internal messaging.