SharePoint has long been a fixture in Swiss organizations — for document management, team collaboration or as an intranet. With SharePoint Agents, introduced by Microsoft as part of Microsoft 365 Copilot, an additional AI layer arrives on top. What can these agents really do, and where does deploying them in Switzerland make sense? Let's look at it without the marketing fluff.
What are SharePoint Agents?
SharePoint Agents are AI assistants that work on the content of a SharePoint site or library — documents, lists, pages — and use it to answer questions or take on recurring tasks. They always respect the requesting user's permissions: what you are not allowed to see, the agent will not see for you either.
What can they actually do?
Answer questions: A large document library full of project data? An agent can tell you in seconds which projects ran over budget — with source citations.
Summarize content: Instead of plowing through reports for hours, an agent will compress the key points from recent minutes for you.
Help with recurring tasks: For example, surface onboarding documents for new joiners or suggest the right templates in response to common requests.
Improve search: You ask in natural language; the agent narrows things down on your data.
How is an agent created? There are two paths
Important clarification — earlier versions of this article cut this short: Microsoft documents two paths for creating agents.
1. Directly in SharePoint (the simple route): Every modern SharePoint site has a ready-made site agent you can use right away — just click the Copilot icon in the top right of the site. If you want your own, use "Create an agent" inside the site or library. No extra tool, no code. The result is an .agent file in the site that you can share.
2. Via Copilot Studio (for more complex cases): When the agent needs to combine content from multiple sites, use external connectors, have its own topics or custom actions, or be wired into Power Automate flows, Copilot Studio is the right choice. More capability, more setup.
For most Swiss SMEs, the first path is more than enough.
Sensible use cases for the Swiss market
In Switzerland, data protection, precision and efficiency count. Where SharePoint Agents shine:
SMEs with distributed teams: Sites in Zurich, Bern or Ticino? An agent pulls the latest home-office policies from the intranet — no matter where someone is working.
Compliance: In pharma, finance or industrial sectors, internal rules are gold. An agent can show staff which FADP-compliant templates to use.
Project management: Construction firms or engineering offices can have status reports or approvals summarized from SharePoint libraries.
Internal support: Surface intranet FAQs faster, so support teams in Geneva or St. Gallen can respond more quickly.
What is the actual value?
It is not only about time savings. In a country with expensive labor and high demand for specialized knowledge, agents take over repetitive work. And because they run on your SharePoint data inside your Microsoft 365 tenant, content stays in your system — a plus for data security, which is non-negotiable in Switzerland.
What to watch out for
Agents are only as good as the underlying data and hygiene. If your SharePoint is a mess of overly permissive sites, you risk oversharing through the agent. The tenant homework — permissions, sensitivity labels, DLP — pays off before the first pilot.
Bottom line
SharePoint Agents are not a revolution but a logical evolution for organizations that already use SharePoint. Once you understand the two creation paths — simple inside SharePoint vs. extended in Copilot Studio — you can pick the right tool for your case and reach realistic results.