Published December 2 2025
Agent Name
Program Agent
Built with
Copilot Studio
Industry
Community Services (can be adapted for any industry)
Deployed to
Microsoft Teams / SharePoint
Today is Day Two of our holiday series 12 Days of Agents, and we’re shining a light on the Program Agent. It’s a practical, supportive tool built for the teams inside community organisations who help match people with the right programs every day.
These roles often work with individuals who may be at risk or in vulnerable situations, where timing, clarity and accurate information genuinely matter. Even a few extra minutes of searching can slow down the support someone receives.
Program work moves quickly, and staff juggle a lot including changing eligibility rules, regional boundaries, service criteria and the nuances that shape each program. The Program Agent helps make that work easier. It sits in Microsoft Teams and SharePoint as an internal tool, giving staff a clear, prioritised view of which programs are most relevant to the scenario they’re working through. It supports decision-making, reduces time spent searching across systems and helps staff feel confident they’re moving in the right direction, all while keeping human judgement at the centre.
Challenge
Program information was scattered across many places including SharePoint libraries, PDF manuals, service booklets, spreadsheets and external directories. Support team members had strong program knowledge, but still spent time cross-checking documents, searching for updated criteria or confirming a rule before giving internal guidance.
This created common pain points:
- information spread across too many systems
- eligibility rules and program boundaries that shift over time
- manual searches eating into already busy workloads
- dependency on a handful of “human encyclopaedias”
- difficulty maintaining consistency across teams
- pressure to respond quickly with accurate information
Support staff didn’t need a replacement for their expertise, instead they needed a tool that helped them move faster and back their advice with confidence.
How the program agent solves these problems
Built with Microsoft Copilot Studio, the Program Agent brings all relevant program knowledge into a single, easy-to-use experience right inside Microsoft Teams or SharePoint. Support staff simply describe the scenario they’re assessing, and the agent does the heavy lifting of comparing program rules, pulling from approved sources and presenting the information in a way that speeds up internal decision-making.
Here’s how it works:
1. Staff ask questions in plain language
The agent understands how people naturally write questions, such as:
“Looking for programs that support families with education costs in west Melbourne.”
It extracts the relevant details, identifies gaps and prompts for clarification where needed.
2. It analyses the scenario against program data
Using structured metadata including eligibility criteria, regions, cohorts, funding rules and service boundaries, the agent returns a list of relevant program matches.
3. It produces a ranked shortlist
The Program Agent lists and the program, and one of our favourite features – it will priortisie them based on relevance too.
It delivers a 1–5 relevance ranking, showing which programs are most likely to fit the scenario.
Each result includes:
- a confidence rating
- a short explanation of why the program matches
- a direct link to the source document. This relevance ranking became one of the most valuable features by giving support staff an immediate sense of which programs to consider first.
4. Internal-first orientation
Internal programs are always prioritised before external directories.
The Program Agent shows AI in its best light by taking on complex, manual work (like scanning through hundreds of programs) and can genuinely change how people spend their time. This agent could be applicable to any organisation or scenario with high-volume data, health programs, grants, referral pathways, benefits, research hubs etc.
Expected outcomes
When you’re helping people who may be in crisis, at risk, or navigating difficult circumstances, every minute genuinely matters, and having the right information at your fingertips quickly can change the tone and direction of a conversation.
Staff no longer need to spend as much time scrolling through long documents or jumping between systems just to find the right information. The agent gives them a quick, prioritised view of the programs that might be relevant, along with the context they need to decide what to do next. They can still check details as they normally would, the agent simply gets them to the right starting point faster. And for the people who rely on these services, that small shift can lead to safer, more consistent decisions at moments that matter.
Like what you see?
If you’re looking at how agents could support your teams day-to-day, we’re here to help. For organisations that work with a wide range of community programs, an agent like this can make it easier for staff to find the right information quickly and stay focused on the person in front of them.
At Engage Squared, we design and build practical agents that fit the way people actually work. Whether you want to trial a small use case or explore a broader approach to AI and agents, we can support you with a clear, grounded path forward.
