AB-900 Copilot and agent admin explained
Perform basic administrative tasks for Copilot and agents is worth 25–30% of AB-900. It covers three things: what Copilot and agents can do, the day-to-day administration of Copilot, and the lifecycle of agents from creation to monitoring. The skill being tested is operational: who gets what, who pays for it, and how you know whether it is being used.
Copilot and agents: the vocabulary
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Copilot | The licensed assistant inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams and the Copilot app, grounded in the user’s work data |
| Copilot Chat | The chat experience available to Microsoft 365 users; work-data grounding and agents can be added |
| Agent | A focused assistant with its own instructions, knowledge and actions, used inside Copilot |
| Researcher | A built-in reasoning agent for multi-step research across work data and the web, producing a structured report |
| Analyst | A built-in reasoning agent that works through data, such as spreadsheets, to find trends and produce analysis |
| Custom agent | An agent your organisation builds for a specific process, knowledge base or team |
When to pick which
- Researcher when the task is gathering and synthesising information: a market overview, a briefing before a customer meeting, a summary of everything written about a project.
- Analyst when the task is working through numbers: finding patterns in sales data, forecasting, explaining why a metric moved.
- A custom agent when the same kind of question keeps coming up over the same content: an HR policy agent, an IT help desk agent, a product specification agent grounded on one SharePoint site.
Licensing: monthly versus pay-as-you-go
| Per-user monthly licence | Pay-as-you-go | |
|---|---|---|
| Who pays | Licence per named user | Metered by use, billed to an Azure subscription |
| Fits | People who use Copilot daily across apps | Occasional users, or agents for staff without a licence |
| Set up in | Microsoft 365 admin center, licences | Microsoft 365 admin center, billing policy linked to Azure |
| SharePoint agents | Included for licensed users | Metered for users without a Copilot licence |
A billing policy connects pay-as-you-go usage to an Azure subscription and resource group, and scopes it to users or groups. Admins monitor spend there and can use Azure cost management budgets to cap surprises.
Administering Copilot
- Assign licences in the Microsoft 365 admin center, per user or through group-based licensing.
- Enable or disable features. Admins control what Copilot may do, such as whether it can ground responses in web content, and which agents users can reach. The outline asks you to identify which features can be switched on or off — not to memorise every toggle.
- Monitor usage and adoption with the Copilot usage reports in the Microsoft 365 admin center and with Copilot Analytics, which adds dashboards on adoption and impact.
- Manage prompts. Users can save prompts, share them with colleagues, schedule them to run at set times, and delete them. Know that these options exist and what each does.
Administering agents
Who can use agents
Admins decide which users can use which agents, from the agent management pages in the Microsoft 365 admin center: allow an agent for everyone, for specific users and groups, or block it. Pre-built, Microsoft-built and custom agents are managed from the same inventory.
Creating an agent
A basic agent is created by describing it in natural language, giving it instructions, and adding knowledge sources such as SharePoint sites or files. More complex agents are built in Copilot Studio, which the associate-level AB-620 exam covers.
The approval process
When a user shares an agent with the whole organisation, it goes to an admin for review before it appears to everyone. The admin checks what the agent does, what data it uses and who owns it, then approves, rejects or blocks it. This stops unreviewed agents spreading across the tenant.
Monitoring and lifecycle
Two admin centers split the work:
| Admin center | What you monitor there |
|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 admin center | Agent inventory, who uses which agent, usage, availability, blocking and removal |
| Power Platform admin center | Environments where Copilot Studio agents live, operational insights, capacity and governance policies |
The agent lifecycle — create, approve, publish, monitor, update, retire — runs across both. Questions usually describe a symptom, such as a department wanting to know which agents are used most, and ask which admin center to open.
Sample questions
Question 1. An employee needs to produce a report on competitor activity, pulling together information from internal documents, emails and public web sources, with a structured summary at the end. Which Copilot capability fits best?
- A. Analyst
- B. A saved prompt in the prompt gallery
- C. Researcher
- D. A custom HR policy agent
Show answer
Answer: C
Researcher is designed for multi-step research across work data and the web and produces a structured report. Analyst focuses on reasoning over data such as spreadsheets. A prompt saved to the gallery is reusable text, not a research capability. An HR custom agent is grounded on unrelated content.
Want more questions like this? Full AB-900 practice tests →
Question 2. Management asks how many licensed users actually used Microsoft 365 Copilot last month, and in which apps. Where should the admin look?
- A. The Copilot usage report in the Microsoft 365 admin center
- B. DSPM for AI in Microsoft Purview
- C. Identity Secure Score
- D. The Exchange admin center
Show answer
Answer: A
The Copilot usage report in the Microsoft 365 admin center shows active users and usage by app over a period; Copilot Analytics adds deeper adoption dashboards. DSPM for AI is about data security in AI use, Identity Secure Score is about identity posture, and the Exchange admin center manages mail.
Want more questions like this? Full AB-900 practice tests →
Question 3. A team lead built an agent and shared it with the entire organisation, but other employees cannot find it. What is the most likely reason?
- A. Each employee needs an eligible role in Privileged Identity Management
- B. The agent is waiting for admin approval before it is published org-wide
- C. The agent must have a retention label applied
- D. Every employee needs their own Azure subscription
Show answer
Answer: B
Agents shared with the whole organisation go through an admin approval process before they are available to everyone. Until an admin approves the request, others cannot find it. Agents do not require every user to hold PIM roles, a retention label or an Azure subscription each.
Want more questions like this? Full AB-900 practice tests →
What to practise
Read the Copilot and agent pages of the Microsoft 365 admin center documentation with the outline beside you, and write one line on what each setting controls. Then explain to a colleague — or to yourself — the difference between a Copilot licence and pay-as-you-go, and when Researcher, Analyst and a custom agent each make sense. If you can do that without notes, this domain is in hand.