Microsoft has opened a public preview of Work IQ for business applications, which grounds Microsoft Copilot and agents in data from Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. The preview begins Sept. 30, with rollout continuing through October, according to a recent post by James Oleinik, partner director of product management for Microsoft Dataverse and Work IQ.
The most consequential design choice is where Work IQ gets its understanding of the business. It builds a semantic model from configuration that already exists in Dynamics 365 and Power Apps, including views, forms, relationships, and a business glossary. That model defines what records mean and how they connect, and every agent using it shares the same interpretation. The accuracy of agent answers will depend partly on how well an organization has maintained its application configuration.
The post appeared alongside Microsoft’s Sept. 25 Copilot announcements, which reorganized Copilot around Home, Code, and Autopilot. It also extends the groundwork Sameer Verma, vice president and chief product officer of Dynamics 365 AI ERP, set out. In a Sept. 23 post, he announced that the Dynamics 365 ERP plugin for Copilot Cowork and the ERP Model Context Protocol (MCP) server were generally available. Those connectors give agents access to ERP records. Work IQ gives agents a common reading of what those records represent.
How Work IQ Models the Business
Work IQ has three working parts. The first is the semantic model, which combines a defined data scope and semantic indexing with knowledge drawn from existing applications and company terminology. Administrators can refine it by switching signals on or off, excluding outdated views or relationships, and adding vocabulary the system cannot infer.
The second is business skills, which package a company procedure with the context and resources an agent needs to follow it. A skill is defined once and reused across agents connected through the Work IQ MCP server, including agents built in Copilot Studio. The third is governed actions, which let Copilot propose changes, route them through required approvals, and update source records within the user’s permissions. Dataverse stores the semantic models and skills and supports a new Dataverse Ask API.
Microsoft’s example is a sales renewal. An opportunity looks healthy in Dynamics 365 Sales, but Copilot links it to an unresolved case in Dynamics 365 Customer Service. It also finds customer emails that make fixing the issue a condition of renewal. Copilot then applies the company’s renewal skill to recommend next steps.
Where Control and Coverage Sit Today
Control is divided across three roles:
- AI administrators manage who can use AI and set policy in the Microsoft 365 admin center.
- Power Platform administrators decide which environments participate and who has access.
- Makers and developers shape how specific data is exposed within those limits.
Work IQ agents run under Microsoft Agent 365, which Microsoft says makes their use of business data observable to IT.
Coverage spans Dynamics 365 Sales and Customer Service, Power Apps, third-party line-of-business applications, and Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations apps. Microsoft marks the Finance and Operations coverage as rolling out in late October, so ERP scenarios are a planned capability, not a current feature of the preview. Work IQ uses usage-based billing through Copilot Credits.
What This Means for ERP Insiders
Audit configuration before enabling the model. Work IQ learns from existing views, forms, and relationships, including outdated ones. ERP teams that retire unused views and document key terms in the glossary give agents a cleaner starting point and get answers that are easier to trust.
Assign owners for each governance layer. AI policy, environment access, and data exposure sit with different administrators. Agreeing who approves each decision before the preview expands keeps ERP data exposure deliberate and prevents gaps between teams.
Time pilots to the rollout. CRM scenarios are available in preview now, and Finance and Operations support follows in late October. Starting with a cross-application CRM scenario lets ERP teams test governance and usage costs before agents reach financial and supply chain records.
