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Entra Agent ID Debuts as the Basis for Agent Management
Last February, I reviewed the burgeoning presence of agents within Microsoft 365 and asked if the danger existed of agents running amok. In other words, agents could be deployed and run without any kind of tenant control. Three months later, the May 19, 2025, announcement that the Entra admin center will support the management of custom agents is a good step forward in the development of a management framework for agents to match Microsoft’s vision of an agentic future.
Listing Agents in the Entra Admin Center
Microsoft’s announcement says that “it’s critical to track agent identities, manage their lifecycle and permissions, and carefully secure their access to your organization’s resources.” Their answer is Entra Agent ID, which is now available in preview in the Entra admin center. Essentially, the Entra admin center recognizes agents as a type of object that it can manage and surfaces the agents in the Enterprise applications section if an administrator applies a filter to display agents (Figure 1), just like using a filter to display the service principals used by managed identities.
“Agents” covers anything from the Copilot agents in SharePoint Online sites to the more sophisticated (and complicated) custom agents created with Copilot Studio or the Azure AI Foundry. Copilot agents linked to SharePoint sites don’t pose a management issue because they are managed (and shared) like any other site object. Entra Agent ID takes on the task of managing custom agents by automatically assigning these agents an identity within Entra ID. Microsoft says that giving agents a manageable identity “is the first step in a broader initiative to manage and protect non-human identities as organizations continue to build AI agents.”
Limited Functionality for Now
The functionality available to manage agents through the Entra admin center is very limited. Essentially, you can list agents and amend some properties. However, you cannot update the display name of an agent to replace the obscure naming used by Copilot Studio. When I tried, the Entra admin center failed with a data validation error (Figure 2). I was able to update the Notes and Logo properties.
I assume the reason why the display name can’t be updated is that the value is used in some way to link Entra ID to Copilot Studio. I’m surprised by the failure because updating agent display names would make it much easier to find agents. A display name is just that – a name by which people can recognize an object. It shouldn’t be a form of immutable link between systems (that’s what GUIDs are for).
The only reason I recognize the agent is that it’s the only one I have published from Copilot Studio. Looking through a bunch of computer-generated names that mean nothing to humans to find the right agent to manage isn’t a real issue now, but if Microsoft lives up to its promise to deliver “more access management, security, and identity governance capabilities for Microsoft Entra Agent ID, plus support for agents from Security Copilot, Microsoft 365 Copilot and third-party solutions” over the next six months, the ability to quickly locate an agent in the Entra admin center will become more important.
It All Takes Time
Rome wasn’t built in a day and Entra ID won’t truly accommodate agents quickly. It will take time before the Entra admin center can do more than simply listing agents. Giving agents an Entra identity lays the foundation for other administrative features. I hope that Microsoft also delivers Graph APIs for agent management, just in case Entra doesn’t deliver everything an organization needs.
So much change, all the time. It’s a challenge to stay abreast of all the updates Microsoft makes across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Subscribe to the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook to receive monthly insights into what happens, why it happens, and what new features and capabilities mean for your tenant.