How to Publish an Agent in Copilot Studio to Teams and SharePoint

To publish an agent in Copilot Studio, select Publish, add the Teams + Microsoft 365 channel and select Publish agent. SharePoint works differently: only a standard agent has that channel, so you open Channels > SharePoint, pick the site and select Deploy.

I did both today with my SPGuides IT Help Desk agent. The new-experience version now runs in Teams and Microsoft 365 Copilot, and a standard copy answers questions on our SPGuides SharePoint site.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to publish an agent in Copilot Studio, add it to a Teams chat, group chat or channel, deploy it to a SharePoint site, republish changes, and fix the errors I ran into.

Here are both click paths in one place:

GitHub Copilot agent (new experience):
Publish > Add channel > Teams + Microsoft 365 > Add channel > Publish agent

Standard agent (SharePoint):
Publish > Publish, then Channels > SharePoint > Search or select SharePoint site > Deploy

The first path makes the agent available in Teams and Microsoft 365 Copilot. The second puts a standard agent on one SharePoint site.

Which Channels Can You Publish a Copilot Studio Agent To?

It depends on how you built the agent. My agent came from the Agent tile on Home, which uses the GitHub Copilot harness; I covered that build in my guide to create an agent in Copilot Studio.

Microsoft Learn lists these channels for the two harnesses:

Channel	GitHub Copilot agent (new)	Standard agent
Microsoft Teams + Microsoft 365 Copilot	Yes	Yes
SharePoint	No	Yes
Demo website / web app (iframe)	Yes	Yes
WhatsApp, Dynamics 365 Contact Center	No	Yes
MCP client, A2A client	Preview (early release environments)	–

Important: you can’t move an agent from one harness to the other. If you need SharePoint, build a standard agent, as I do further down.

Step 1: Open Publish and Add the Teams + Microsoft 365 Channel

Open the agent and select Publish in the top right. With no channel yet, the dialog only offers Add channel:

Select Add channel. The list shows the channels available with your current authentication settings. Mine offered Teams + Microsoft 365, App and a grayed-out Demo website:

Pick Teams + Microsoft 365. Under Availability, choose Microsoft Copilot and Microsoft Teams, or Microsoft Teams only. This one can’t be changed after publishing:

On About info, enter a Short description (up to 80 characters). The Long description takes up to 3,400. Then select Add channel:

Step 2: Publish the Agent and Open Use and Share

Back in the dialog, Teams + Microsoft 365 now sits under Channels. Select Publish agent:

After about 40 seconds, I got “Your agent published successfully,” and the Draft badge changed to Published:

Now open the channel panel again and go to the Use and share tab. It holds View in Microsoft Teams, View in Microsoft Copilot and Submit to org catalog:

Submit to org catalog sends the agent to your admins for the org’s Agent Store, and App manifest has a Download .zip. For a web page instead, see how I publish an agent to a live or demo website.

How to Add a Copilot Studio Agent to Teams Chat

A personal (one-on-one) chat is the default scope, so there’s nothing extra to switch on. Here’s how you get the agent into your own Teams:

1. In Copilot Studio, open the Teams + Microsoft 365 panel and select View in Microsoft Teams (a standard agent calls it See agent in Teams).
2. Teams opens the agent’s install dialog. Select Add.
3. The agent shows up in the agent list on the left. Open it and type your question.
4. In Microsoft 365 Copilot, type @, pick the agent and ask your question.

Coworkers need access first: share the agent and send its installation link, or wait for admin approval.

Note: installation links don’t work in the Teams mobile app. Mobile users need the agent in the Teams app store.

Recreate the Agent as a Standard Agent for SharePoint

Because my new agent had no SharePoint channel, I built a second copy with the same instructions and knowledge. On Home, under Other ways to build, select Agent [Standard]:

Enter a name in the Name your agent dialog and select Create. I called mine SPGuides IT Help Desk – SharePoint:

It took about 40 seconds to provision. I pasted the same instructions and added Microsoft Support as a public website, the way I explain in add a public website knowledge source.

Then I selected Publish, and Publish again in the Publish this agent dialog:

About 40 seconds later, the header read Published 11/1/2026. A standard agent must be published once before any channel works.

How to Add a Copilot Studio Agent to a SharePoint Site

You need write access to the SharePoint site. Open the agent’s Channels page (it’s under the +4 overflow next to Topics). The SharePoint tile sits under Microsoft channels:

Select the SharePoint tile, search for the site and pick it. I typed SPGuides and chose the SPGuides site, which showed as Undeployed:

Select Deploy. Learn adds a Confirm step, but none appeared in my run. The panel said “Successfully deployed the agent to the SharePoint site” and SPGuides changed to Deployed:

Deploying writes a .agent file to the site’s Documents library, in a folder named Copilot Studio Agents.:

Select the SPGuides link under Deployment Status (or open the .agent file) to chat with the agent. I asked, “How do I share a file from OneDrive with a coworker?”

It cited the Microsoft Support article “Share files with my team members” and gave six numbered steps:

Then I checked the Copilot button in the site’s suite bar. It showed “The default agent is not available”:

That’s a site owner step. Per Microsoft Learn, the owner marks the agent as Approved, and it then appears in an Approved section of the agent picker for every site user. I haven’t done that on our demo site yet.

To remove it later, open the SharePoint panel and select Undeploy. If the agent should answer from site content, add a SharePoint list as knowledge in Copilot Studio.

How to Add a Copilot Studio Agent to a Teams Group Chat or Channel

The settings for team and group scopes are on the standard agent. In the new agent’s panel, I only found Availability, About info, Use and share and App manifest.

On the standard agent, open Channels > Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams, select Add channel, then Edit details. Teams settings has two checkboxes:

• Users can add this agent to a team lets people add it to any team they belong to and @mention it in its channels.
• Use this agent for group and meeting chats lets people use it in group chats and meeting chats.

When I checked the first one, Copilot Studio asked “Give everyone access to this agent?” because every team member needs permission to chat with it:

I chose Cancel on our demo, since I didn’t want to share it org-wide. In production, select Yes, then Save, and don’t tighten the security setting afterward, or users hit permission errors.

If you already submitted the agent for admin approval, submit it again. After that, users add it from Teams (not sure which scope fits? see team vs channel in Microsoft Teams):

1. Open the group chat or the team channel.
2. Select Actions and apps (the + icon) in the compose box and search for the agent.
3. Add it, then type @ and the agent’s name with your question.

Note: in group chats and channels, the agent can’t use knowledge that needs user sign-in, such as SharePoint. That works only in one-on-one chats, so my public website knowledge was fine.

How Do I Republish After Changes?

Edit the agent on the Build tab, save, test it, and select Publish. The Publish your changes dialog lists what changed, and the new version replaces the old one on every channel.

A standard agent’s Publish dialog also has a Force the newest version checkbox for ongoing Teams chats. Otherwise, type “start over” in an open chat to pick up the update.

Content changes don’t need a new admin approval. Changes to the name, icon or descriptions do.

Errors and Fixes When You Publish an Agent

• No SharePoint channel: GitHub Copilot agents don’t support it. Build a standard agent instead.
• “You need access” on the .agent link: the file follows site permissions. An account outside the site’s members got this for me, so add users to the site.
• “The default agent is not available”: a site admin must approve the agent from the document library and set it as default.
• Demo website grayed out: it depends on authentication; here’s my fix for the demo website authentication error.
• Team or group chat option missing in Teams: Teams caches. Refresh the browser, sign out and back in, or clear the Microsoft Teams cache.
• SystemError after republishing: turn the Teams channel off and on, then republish.
• EnforcementUsageCredits: the environment is out of Copilot Credits. SharePoint use also consumes Copilot Studio capacity.

If you’re rolling this agent out to more people, I’d read these next:

• Build and Deploy a Smart HR Assistant Bot Using Copilot Studio [Step-by-Step]
• Create Autonomous Agents in Copilot Studio
• Create Custom Topic in Microsoft Copilot Studio [2 Easy Methods]
• How to Collect User Feedback in Copilot Studio Agents

Frequently Asked Questions