Microsoft expands Scout Autopilot testing for Microsoft 365

Microsoft has begun wider testing of Scout, its first Autopilot agent, and is opening access to a select group of customers and organizations in its Frontier program. Scout will operate across Outlook, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams to schedule meetings, flag important messages and manage tasks for users.

Scout coordinates information across Microsoft 365 apps to create calendar events, surface key messages, book meetings and identify deadlines. One described capability is the ability to block-book a user’s calendar ahead of an identified deadline and assemble materials to address bottlenecks that might delay a project.

Microsoft describes Autopilots as agents with distinct identities that can run under separate rule sets, allowing different governance for work and personal contexts. Scout moved from internal testing to a limited external trial for enterprise customers.

Scout is built on OpenClaw, a project created by developer Peter Steinberger. Microsoft plans to contribute upstream to the OpenClaw open-source codebase.

The company says it has included controls for enterprise deployment. Administrators can validate agent identities through dedicated Entra entries, apply data protection policies from Microsoft Purview, and redact machine-identity credentials from logs and diagnostics. The platform requires human sign-off for actions the agent flags as sensitive.

In its announcement Microsoft wrote that Scout will be “managed with the same rigor you expect from any first-party Microsoft service,” and that it is built so it can be “trusted in your organization from day one.” Early internal trials exposed risks and allowed engineers to tune the agent to reduce security concerns while retaining autonomous capability.

Scout is designed to learn from a user’s work patterns and preferences so its activity and priorities adjust over time. Microsoft frames Autopilots as a way to offload routine administrative tasks so work continues when users are focused on other work.

Outside Microsoft, early access is limited. Organizations must be enrolled in the Frontier program, have an Intune policy configuration, submit an opt-in attestation and hold an active GitHub Copilot license to participate.

The announcement was authored by Omar Shahine, corporate vice president of Microsoft Scout, whose prior roles at Microsoft include positions on Windows Live, OneDrive and Mac Office.