Language models are trained mostly on public data. What makes your organization different is your trusted enterprise data and the way your business actually operates. That’s where an agent data platform comes in.

Microsoft IQ is designed to bring your own “IQ”—your context, rules, and data—into AI agents so they behave predictably in real business environments. Instead of just generating answers from generic knowledge, agents are:

• Grounded in authoritative data from across your organization, not just what’s on the public internet.
• Enforced by permissions at runtime, so users only see what they’re allowed to see, even when AI is doing the retrieval.
• Limited to governed, auditable actions when they take steps on your behalf.
• Managed as part of a broader agent estate, including third-party and custom agents.

Microsoft IQ does this through three coordinated layers:

• Work IQ – Adds work context from Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and connected systems so agents understand people, content, and collaboration.
• Fabric IQ – Unifies your data estate and turns it into semantic knowledge that agents can reason over in near real time.
• Foundry IQ – Lets agents access and act on knowledge from anywhere, with enterprise-grade security and policy built in.

The result is an agent data platform that lets you steadily increase agent capability and autonomy—moving from simple assistants to coordinated multi-agent systems—without losing control over data, security, or governance.

Work IQ is the intelligence layer that personalizes Microsoft 365 Copilot and agents to your organization’s real work context. Instead of only reacting to prompts, it helps Copilot act like an informed work partner that understands:

• Who people are and how they collaborate.
• Which projects and customers matter most.
• What’s in motion, what’s been decided, and what needs attention.

Work IQ is built on two tightly integrated layers:

1. Unified Work Data
   
   • Microsoft Graph brings in unstructured productivity data from Microsoft 365: files, emails, chats, meetings, and user profiles.
   • Microsoft Dataverse brings in structured operational data from Dynamics 365 and Power Platform: accounts, opportunities, cases, inventory, SKUs, SLAs, approvals, and more.
   • Over 200 Microsoft 365 Copilot connectors and 1,600+ Power Platform connectors extend this to thousands of non-Microsoft systems, while keeping data inside your tenant boundary.
2. Real-Time Context
   
   • Memory – Copilot builds both explicit and implicit memories. Users can set Custom Instructions (e.g., “respond in active voice”) or ask Copilot to remember preferences. Over time, Copilot also infers durable insights from chat history and workflows.
   • Semantic Index – Your Microsoft Graph and Dataverse data is automatically semantically indexed, enabling meaning-based search instead of simple keyword matching. This improves retrieval quality and relevance.
   • Business Understanding – Dataverse provides a business semantic layer: entity relationships, glossary definitions, and synonyms. This lets agents understand your internal terminology, acronyms, and business rules.

Because of this, Copilot can handle complex, cross-system questions such as:

“Help me evaluate how issues raised by my parts supplier in our Teams call last week might impact my inventory and sales in the coming months.”

Behind the scenes, Work IQ connects the Teams meeting, supplier communications, CRM data, and inventory records—while respecting permissions, sensitivity labels, and tenant boundaries end to end.

For implementation, organizations typically:

• Identify high-impact scenarios where work context matters most.
• Connect enterprise data sources via Microsoft 365 and Power Platform connectors.
• Enable Dataverse Search to take advantage of the AI-enhanced semantic index.
• Surface early agents directly inside familiar Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365 experiences.

Microsoft IQ is designed so you can scale agent capabilities without giving up control. As you move from simple assistants to more autonomous, multi-agent systems, several safeguards stay in place:

• Permissions enforced at runtime
  Even when agents are retrieving and acting on data, they respect the same identity, access, and compliance controls you already use. Data is permission-trimmed, sensitivity-label aware, and tenant-bounded by default.
• Governed, auditable actions
  Agents are limited to governed tool access and auditable operations. This helps you track what agents did, on whose behalf, and against which systems.
• Unified data estate with security by design
  
  • Fabric IQ unifies data in Microsoft OneLake and applies consistent security, governance, and observability across analytics and operations.
  • Foundry IQ extends this to knowledge from “everywhere,” with identity and policy built in so external sources don’t become blind spots.
• Business-aware reasoning
  Through Dataverse, agents understand your business ontology, glossary, and synonyms. This reduces misinterpretation of internal terms and helps keep actions aligned with your actual business rules and processes.
• Stage-gated rollout
  The Microsoft IQ approach encourages a layered, stage-based implementation:
  • Prototype agents on narrow, well-understood workflows.
  • Move to pilots with clear guardrails and monitoring.
  • Scale to production once governance, observability, and security controls are validated.

In practice, this means you can reimagine how work gets done—using agents that plan, retrieve knowledge, and execute multi-step processes—while still meeting enterprise expectations for trust, control, and operational rigor.