Microsoft 365 admins can now control who uploads advanced Copilot agents: here's what changes on 25 October 2026
From 25 October 2026, any M365 user can upload advanced Copilot agents by default. Here's what the new admin setting does and where to find it.
Microsoft has added a new admin control to Microsoft 365 that determines which users in your organisation can upload advanced Copilot agents and plugins. The setting became visible in the Microsoft 365 admin centre from 25 September 2026, and the default behaviour locks in on 25 October 2026. If your organisation has not touched the setting by that date, uploads are automatically allowed for everyone.
That is worth pausing on. This is not a permission that quietly stays off until you enable it. It defaults to open.
What counts as an “advanced” agent?
Microsoft draws a clear line between basic and advanced packages.
A basic package is a Declarative Agent that uses instructions only, with no actions attached. These are essentially agents that can hold a conversation and follow a prompt, but cannot reach out to external systems or trigger processes.
An advanced package is one that either includes a Declarative Agent with actions, or is backed by a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server. These agents can do things: call APIs, retrieve live data, interact with external services, and take steps on a user’s behalf.
The new setting only applies to advanced packages. Basic agent uploads are unaffected regardless of how you configure it.
It also only applies to packages uploaded by members of your own organisation. Agents built and published by Microsoft or third-party developers through official channels are governed separately. This control is specifically about what your own users can upload.
Where to find the setting
The control lives in the Microsoft 365 admin centre. Navigate to Copilot > Settings > All settings > Advanced package uploads.
From there, you have four options:
- All users, anyone in the tenant can upload advanced agents and plugins (this is the default)
- Selected users, you specify individual accounts
- Specific Microsoft Entra ID groups, you restrict uploads to one or more groups, which is the cleanest option for most organisations
- No users, uploads are blocked entirely
If you want to limit uploads to your developer team or a specific internal group, the Entra ID group option is the most practical route. It lets you expand or contract the list without returning to this setting each time.
The setting also covers uploads made via the Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit, so it catches developer tooling as well as manual uploads through the Copilot and Cowork surfaces.
What happens if you do nothing?
From 25 October 2026, if no configuration has been selected, the default applies: all users can upload advanced agents and plugins. Microsoft has been explicit that this matches the current behaviour before the setting existed, so it is not a sudden expansion of access. It is simply a formalisation of what was already happening.
That said, the existence of this setting is itself a prompt to think about whether “all users” is actually the right choice for your organisation.
Advanced agents with actions or MCP server integrations can interact with external systems. A well-built agent is enormously useful. A poorly built one, or a malicious one, could expose data, trigger unintended workflows, or create compliance issues. Allowing any user to upload these into your Copilot environment is a meaningful trust decision, and one worth making deliberately rather than by default.
What this means for your organisation
For most large or regulated organisations, the sensible starting point is to restrict uploads to a defined group, such as your development team, a Centre of Excellence, or whoever is responsible for vetting Copilot extensibility. That way, agents go through some form of review before they are shared across the tenant.
For smaller organisations or those with a high level of trust in their users, “all users” may be a perfectly reasonable choice. The key is that it should be a choice, not an accident.
Admins can view user-uploaded packages from the Microsoft 365 admin centre. The details page for each package shows its components, so you can inspect what has already been uploaded and make a more informed decision about access going forward.
What to do before 25 October 2026
A short checklist:
- Open the Microsoft 365 admin centre and navigate to Copilot > Settings > All settings > Advanced package uploads.
- Decide which users or groups should be permitted to upload advanced agents. If you are unsure, defaulting to a restricted group and expanding later is lower risk than opening it wide and narrowing later.
- Update any internal documentation for IT support staff so they understand what the setting controls and where to find it.
- Let relevant teams know, particularly developers using the Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit, so they understand the governance boundary.
If you have already reviewed the setting and made a deliberate choice, you are done. If the setting has not been touched, now is the time to make that call rather than leaving it to default.
The broader context here is that Copilot agents are becoming significantly more capable. MCP-based agents in particular can connect to a wide range of external services, and Microsoft is adding new agent types regularly. Getting the governance model right now, before agent adoption accelerates, is considerably easier than trying to retrofit it later.