Knowledge Agent Licensing and Work IQ Explained with Microsoft’s Adam Harmetz

By Microsoft MVP and MCT · Pluralsight Author

Published December 17, 2025 · Updated February 9, 2026 · Microsoft 365, Microsoft Copilot, Power Automate, SharePoint

Microsoft announced a lot at Ignite! From the Knowledge Agent being included with Microsoft 365 Copilot to Work IQ, updates to workflows in SharePoint, and more. But what do these changes actually mean for enterprises?

In this video, I sit down with Adam Harmetz, Vice President of Product Management, Data Science, and Tech Community at Microsoft, to break everything down in plain English so you know exactly how these updates impact your organization.

Here is what we cover:

✅ Knowledge Agent licensing: Who needs a license and how organizations should think about rollout
✅ Work IQ explained: How it relates to Microsoft Graph, how Copilot uses it, and why it is becoming the brain of Microsoft 365
✅ Metadata and AI: How SharePoint metadata improves Copilot and agent responses
✅ SharePoint workflows: The new simplified UX for Power Automate inside SharePoint
📅 What to learn for 2026: Adam’s advice for IT pros, admins, and builders

If you want the clearest explanation of these Ignite announcements and how they affect governance, licensing, and day to day usage, this conversation will save you hours of digging through documentation.

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Video Summary

  • Metadata finally pays off — Copilot and agents fully understand it now. After years of us telling customers “metadata matters,” AI is proving it. Pre‑cooked metadata means faster, more accurate answers, especially for structured content like invoices or product libraries.
  • Knowledge Agent + Autofill are now part of the M365 Copilot license. No more confusing SKUs, no more Syntex vs. Premium naming headaches. If you have M365 Copilot, you get the Knowledge Agent and Autofill built in. Non‑licensed uploads may still fall under pay‑as‑you‑go, but the experience is dramatically simpler.
  • Work IQ isn’t “just Microsoft Graph renamed.” Graph stays the API layer for developers. Work IQ is the intelligence layer — the “brain” of Copilot — adding memory, preferences, inference, and deep understanding of your work. Copilot talks to Work IQ, which pulls what it needs from the Graph.
  • SharePoint’s new workflow experience = simpler UI + Power Automate engine. No new workflow service! It’s the same Power Automate backend with a friendlier, SharePoint‑first UX and templates for everyday users. And when you need more? There’s always “Edit in Power Automate.”
  • 2026 will be a massive year for builders and agents. Adam’s advice: lean into Knowledge Agent, agent development, Copilot‑powered app building, and solution creation. Microsoft is going all‑in on making 2026 the year makers level up.

For more information, read the transcript below, or watch the video above!

Transcript

Microsoft’s biggest conference of the year, Microsoft Ignite, finished just over a week ago, and now we are at ESPC, where we finally have time to deep dive into some of those amazing announcements and really understand what they mean for enterprises. Because there are so many great announcements for SharePoint, today I have the honor of being joined by Adam Harmetz, VP of Product at Microsoft. Thank you so much for joining me.

Good to be here.

You presented at Ignite. You’re presenting four sessions here with the lightning talks and everything, right? You’re a busy man.

Yeah. No, it’s fun. This is a good season to engage with the community, update people, and also recap the year. It’s been a really intense 2025, and so it comes at a good time when we’re figuring out everything we did this year and packaging it all together. It’s been a busy year for sure.

And I think this week you talked about SharePoint’s 25th birthday, so I guess it’s going to be an even busier year ahead.

Yeah. I think 2026 will be a big year for SharePoint. We want to look ahead, not back, but it’s good to celebrate 25 years of community and progress, and a resilient product, and understand why that is, and let it inform where we’re going. We hope the birthday is both a way of celebrating the community and talking about where the product is going, kicking off a big year for us.

I think my favorite memory was the picture you posted on LinkedIn with your friend, the SharePoint Monkey.

Yep.

That was my favorite SharePoint swag ever. I still have the 2010 and 2013 versions.

Yeah. So hopefully we’re going to get a 25-years-of-SharePoint SharePoint Monkey.

I would love that. We need to give ideas to the marketing team.

I know, right? We have this great video. We did this boot camp once when the monkeys were in full swing, and we had like 150 of them we gave out to new hires, and we launched them all at once.

Oh wow—150 monkeys screaming.

That’s something.

After Ignite, you announced a bunch of things, and of course, the community comes to us, MVPs with questions. So hopefully I can ask some of them to you, and you can go a bit deeper into the details. One of the really cool announcements you made this year—and I think you made it official at Ignite—is that agents now fully understand SharePoint metadata. We’ve always known SharePoint metadata is important. You’ve been doing SharePoint for 25 years, so I’m sure you’ve told many customers, but nobody ever wants to do it. What can you tell us about agents and metadata? Does Copilot care about metadata at all?

Yeah. And it’s a great question. The larger story is that it’s becoming clear that pre‑cooking data helps Copilot and agents have better citations. AI can figure out in real time what’s going on and how to respond, but if you can pre‑cook the data, that’s even better. If you have a list of invoices—say 100,000—and you want to figure out the expenses across all of them, AI can go into every invoice and extract the expenses, but that will take a long time. What you want is to pre‑cook the data. You want to pull that information out and have it indexed so AI can respond quickly.

I’ve never heard the term “pre‑cook” before.

Well, it’s an old concept recast in the era of AI. I’m trying to make sure people understand the story arc from before to after. Extracting metadata helps humans, filters, and views—but it also allows AI to respond faster and more accurately. We’re looking at our internal emails to evaluate the value of metadata, and early results suggest it helps AI respond better on the first try. Without metadata, AI can still find the answer, but sometimes it takes multiple turns before it reaches the correct response. If you have a structured repository with good metadata, you get the answer better the first time.

Metadata isn’t necessary for every document across the enterprise, but for structured, high‑value repositories—product libraries, invoices—it’s extremely useful.

There are two sides to this. One: The Knowledge Agent can extract that metadata automatically. And two: now agents—and soon Copilot—understand that metadata. So when you ask a question where the answer is in that metadata, they can respond. For example, “What’s the highest invoice in this library?” is something you can ask an agent right now, and very soon you’ll be able to ask Copilot.

Okay, so right now it’s in SharePoint agents as we’re recording this, but as we go into the new calendar year, it will be in Copilot Chat and all Copilot experiences.

Yeah, exactly. That is the vision, and we’re already done coding it. We’re just rolling it out.

That’s amazing. I had a SharePoint Premium workshop on Monday where we added metadata to invoices, and then we could compare invoices directly in the Knowledge Agent. That was pretty cool.

Yeah. It’s exciting. And even beyond that, we have new capabilities, like Copilot being able to create a list. That’s another great example of using metadata. There’s a whole ecosystem around lists, libraries, metadata, agents, and Copilot that is coming together. We’re very far along, and we’ll get the rough edges smoothed out in the first few months of 2026.

Entering metadata has always been painful. Was it two years ago that Autofill columns were released? We had the SharePoint Syntex models before, but Autofill is way easier and way cooler. AI fills the metadata for us 95% of the way, and we only fix the rest. At Ignite, you also had a cool announcement about how everyone can now use the Knowledge Agent. No more excuses, right?

Yes. Basically, we’ve had Syntex and SharePoint Premium. I take responsibility for the naming changes—Microsoft Syntex, etc. Part of that evolution is tied to how AI and Copilot became the center of gravity. Customers asked us to simplify. So we merged Autofill with the Knowledge Agent, and then merged the Knowledge Agent into the Copilot license. It’s all one thing now. The Copilot license includes a bunch of out-of-the-box agents, one of them being the Knowledge Agent. And Autofill is included. Everyone with Copilot benefits.

Awesome. So just to confirm: as soon as you have Microsoft 365 Copilot, once Knowledge Agent goes GA—hopefully in January—everyone with Copilot gets it?

We haven’t announced a date. We’re targeting early next year. Public preview is off by default, so please turn it on and give feedback. We’re watching the data closely. We’re being quality‑driven, but we think we can track to that timeframe.

By the way, for admins: since November 5, we can turn it on with opt‑in at the site level. No more enabling it tenant‑wide and then opting out thousands of sites. Now we can just opt in on a few sites to test.

Yeah. We planned to have that at public preview, but something missed the train and caught up later. We prefer people turn it on everywhere—it is the AI mode for SharePoint sites—and it only impacts users with Copilot licenses. But we know some departments want to test it first.

Eventually, when it reaches GA, it will be on by default, but you can turn it off if needed.

Exactly. That’s the plan, though it will be finalized closer to GA. Like many AI features, we think it should be on by default.

I want to deep dive into licensing because not everyone has a Copilot license yet. Some people use pay‑as‑you‑go or Copilot Chat, included in Microsoft 365. Who needs the Copilot license? The person creating the columns? Uploading the document?

Great question. During preview, the Autofill column part of the Knowledge Agent is included for everyone with a Copilot license. So you can create columns, and if you upload a document, it will be processed by Autofill for free. If a non‑licensed user uploads a document, Autofill will only process it if pay‑as‑you‑go is set up, and it will be billed accordingly. Things are still in preview and will be documented more clearly at GA. The big picture is that the Knowledge Agent is included with the Copilot license.

Makes sense. I know you don’t want the same issues we had with the Syntex per‑user license.

Yeah. Syntex is awesome—the scenarios live on—but both we and customers wanted fewer things done better, all under the Copilot license.

Now let’s switch to something even more basic. At Ignite, you announced Work IQ. From the description, people said, “Wait—that’s Microsoft Graph. Did they rename Microsoft Graph?” What’s the relationship between Graph and Work IQ?

You’re right. Since the Delve days—and even before—we used “Graph” to refer to the intelligence layer of Microsoft 365, and also to the API/data layer. The developer‑focused API access remains Microsoft Graph; that isn’t changing.

We needed a new term for the intelligence layer—the brain of Microsoft 365—especially in the AI era. Work IQ clarifies how important this layer is.

Work IQ is more expansive than how we used “Graph” before. It includes memory and inference. For example, it remembers your preferences: if you prefer concise responses from Copilot, or if you use a specific tone when emailing certain people. That was never part of the original Graph vision. Over time, Work IQ will expand into group memory and concepts.

So for developers, Graph is still Graph. For business users, Work IQ is the brain of Copilot.

So if I’m explaining Copilot to a business user, I’d say: Copilot talks to Work IQ, which calls the Graph to get your work data.

Yeah, that’s right.

We also recently took some new Copilot exams, so it’ll be interesting to see how those get updated after Ignite.

We don’t just want Work IQ to be another Microsoft term to memorize. It’s critical to Copilot’s differentiated value. Customers will choose tight integration between productivity, the content system, the intelligence layer, and the AI experiences built on top. Work IQ really is the brain of Copilot.

And you showed that at Ignite in Jeff Teper’s session—the difference between ChatGPT connected to SharePoint and M365 Copilot. Copilot understands the content more deeply than external services using only connectors.

Yeah. Connectors are important for external repositories, but for core productivity data—documents, email, chats—connectors are a thin straw. They don’t have a deep understanding.

For example, we’ve generated thumbnails for every PowerPoint slide for years. We send those slide thumbnails to the LLM so it has visual references. That allows Copilot to answer questions like, “Who is the CEO in this org chart?” because it can actually see the slide. That depth of integration beats connector strategies hands‑down.

One final question. At Ignite, you announced SharePoint Designer—just kidding. But you did announce a new, simpler way to do workflows directly in SharePoint. Can you clarify whether it’s a different service than Power Automate, or just a simpler way to interact with Power Automate?

It’s the latter. It’s completely coordinated with Teams, built on the same codebase. It’s a new, simpler UX designed for productivity scenarios, built on top of Power Automate.

Over the past years, we’ve had different ways of integrating with Power Automate. Sometimes, simple things we built ourselves, sometimes templates, sometimes automation kicked off automatically. This new experience says: the right strategy is one workflow system—Power Automate. We love Power Automate, but the UX was too complex for the average SharePoint or Teams user.

So we created a front‑end UX with a healthy number of templates that match the simplicity we want for those users. Everything has an “Edit in Power Automate” button, so you can round‑trip it. Think of it as expanding templates and simplifying the UX so workflows are easy to set up.

Eventually, it will replace the custom rule engine we have today?

That’s the intention. Whether there are still two systems under the hood for technical reasons is TBD, but conceptually, for end users, yes.

That’s awesome. You have a “get started” experience and then advanced editing in Power Automate for those who need it.

Yeah. It took longer than expected—it was a big joint project across Microsoft—but it feels right, especially in the AI era, since there’s already a natural‑language box for creating or assigning a template.

One final question for you. As we head into 2026, what should people learn? If there were one or two features you wish every company would try, what would they be?

The Knowledge Agent is transformative for end users and site owners. Try it, especially during public preview. Second, it’s a great time to be a maker and builder. Agent development is here now. App Builder was announced around Ignite. More is coming in SharePoint next year. Skill up on agent development and building solutions. Expect 2026 to be a year of agent development, solution development, and vibe coding integrated deeper into productivity experiences.

Thank you so much for your time. For everybody watching, please connect with Adam—he’s very active on LinkedIn with an amazing blog around product management and managing teams: Mind the Beat. The link will be in the description below. If you enjoyed this video and want to see more conference interviews, like the video and subscribe to the channel. See you at the next one.