What it does

Researcher is a reasoning agent that tackles multi-step research tasks. It combines a deep-reasoning model with your work data and, where allowed, the web to produce a structured, cited output — think competitive analysis or a market brief.

Key facts

• It runs an agentic loop: plans, gathers, reasons, and comes back with a longer worked answer rather than a one-shot reply.
• Grounds in your Microsoft Graph content and can pull from the web when policy permits.
• Shipped as part of the Copilot agent line-up, initially via the early-access ("Frontier") programme before broad availability.
• Lives inside Copilot Chat as a pinned agent.

When to use / skip

Use it for genuinely multi-source questions where you'd otherwise spend an afternoon reading and synthesising. Skip it for quick factual lookups — that's ordinary Chat, and Researcher's deliberation is overkill.

Configuration decisions

• Whether web grounding is available to the agent, and under what DLP policy.
• Who gets access, especially during any early-access window.

Gotchas

• It's slower by design. Users primed on instant chat replies think it's hung. Tell them it takes minutes.
• Cited doesn't mean correct — check the sources it leans on before you circulate the output.
• Output quality depends heavily on how well you framed the task; a vague brief gives a vague report.

Consultant notes

• Feature availability and naming here have moved fast — verify what's actually in the customer's tenant before demoing.
• It genuinely changes the economics of desk research, but only for people who write a proper brief. Coach the prompt.
• Web access is a governance decision, not a default. Settle it before you switch the agent on.

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Worth revisiting after the next release wave.