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Overview

4MINDS Assistant is a Microsoft 365 Copilot Declarative Agent that surfaces your 4MINDS custom AI models inside Microsoft 365 Copilot. Ask a question in the Copilot chat pane and the agent routes it to a model fine-tuned on your organization’s documents, specifications, playbooks, and integrations — returning an answer grounded in your own data, not a generic web summary. The agent runs as a first-class M365 Copilot extension, so nothing new to install for the day-to-day user beyond the agent itself. Sign-in is one-time per user; after that, chat with the agent from wherever you already use Copilot.
Direction: This integration puts 4MINDS inside Copilot — the reverse of most Microsoft integrations, which bring Microsoft data into 4MINDS. If you’re looking to import content from Microsoft Fabric or Microsoft Foundry into your 4MINDS datasets, see the Microsoft Fabric or Microsoft Foundry guides instead.

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Where the agent appears

Once installed, 4MINDS shows up in the Microsoft 365 Copilot agent list in every host where your organization has enabled Copilot: Mobile availability (iOS / Android) follows the same tenant rollout as the desktop and web surfaces.

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Prerequisites

Before installing the agent, confirm the following are in place:
  • A 4MINDS account on the tenant you plan to connect. If your organization has SSO with 4MINDS enabled, this is the email you already use to sign in.
  • At least one 4MINDS model available to your account. The agent can only answer from models you have access to — if your workspace has none trained yet, see the Quickstart to publish your first one.
  • A Microsoft 365 Copilot license on the same Microsoft account. The agent surfaces inside Microsoft 365 Copilot; without a Copilot license, the agent won’t appear in the picker.
  • Tenant admin approval for the 4MINDS agent. Declarative Agents require admin consent for the first user who signs in from your tenant — see Admin: approving the agent for your tenant below.
License clarification: Using the 4MINDS Copilot agent requires both an active 4MINDS subscription (for the model inference) and a Microsoft 365 Copilot license (for the host). Neither one on its own is sufficient.

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Installing the agent

There are two install paths depending on how your tenant governs agents:

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Option 1: Install from the Microsoft 365 Copilot Store

For end-users on tenants where the store is open:
  1. Open the Microsoft 365 Copilot Store — reachable from the agent picker in any Copilot surface, or directly at m365.cloud.microsoft.
  2. Search for 4MINDS.
  3. Click Add on the 4MINDS Copilot — Custom AI Assistant for Microsoft 365 listing.
  4. Accept the permission prompt (the agent needs to call the 4MINDS API on your behalf to fetch model responses).
  5. The agent is now available in the agent picker across every Copilot host — no page refresh needed.

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Option 2: Admin sideload for your tenant

For organizations that keep the Copilot store restricted, or that want to deploy the agent tenant-wide before it appears in each user’s store, an admin can sideload the app package directly:
  1. From your 4MINDS contact, obtain the appPackage.prod.zip artifact for the agent.
  2. In the Microsoft Teams Admin Center, navigate to Teams apps → Manage apps.
  3. Click Upload new app → Upload, and select the appPackage.prod.zip file.
  4. Once the app appears in the list, open its detail page and use Publish to the org’s app catalog so members can install it.
  5. To push the agent out without waiting for users to add it manually, create or edit an app setup policy in Teams apps → Setup policies and add 4MINDS to the Installed apps list for the policy.
  6. Assign the policy to the user groups you want to have the agent by default.
Tenant-wide install takes up to 24 hours to propagate through Microsoft’s app catalog. If the agent doesn’t appear immediately after the sideload, check back the next day before troubleshooting.

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First-time sign-in

The first time a user opens the 4MINDS agent in Copilot, they’ll be prompted to authenticate to their 4MINDS account:
  1. Open Copilot in any host (Teams, Office on the web, Office for Windows).
  2. Select 4MINDS from the agent picker.
  3. Type any message (for example, hello). The agent will respond with a sign-in card.
  4. Click Sign in and complete the OAuth flow with your 4MINDS credentials in the popup window. If SSO is enabled for your tenant, this is the same identity provider you already use for 4MINDS.
  5. Once the popup confirms the connection, return to Copilot and re-send your message — the agent will now respond with a grounded answer from your 4MINDS models.
The sign-in is stored per user and refreshed automatically; you’ll only be prompted again if your 4MINDS token is revoked or your organization changes SSO providers.

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Using the agent

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Conversation starters

The agent ships with three suggested prompts you’ll see when opening a fresh chat: You can of course type any question; the starters are just examples of the shape.

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Switching between models

If your 4MINDS workspace has multiple models (for example, a general knowledge model, a finance model, and a security model), you can point the agent at a specific one:
  1. Ask “What models do I have?” — the agent will list them by name.
  2. In your next message, say something like “Use the finance model to explain the Q3 margin adjustment,” or reference the model by name inline.
The agent tracks the chosen model for the rest of the conversation until you switch again or start a new chat.

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Multi-turn context

The agent maintains conversation context automatically — you can reference earlier answers in the same chat with pronouns (“expand on that”, “show me the numbers behind it”) and the model will pick them up. Starting a new chat resets the context; use the New chat button in the Copilot pane when you want a clean slate.

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Styling of responses

The agent is instructed to lead with the grounded answer, so responses skip generic AI disclaimers. When you ask for code (Excel formulas, VBA, SQL, etc.), the agent formats the code in a fenced block so you can copy it directly into your document.

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Admin: approving the agent for your tenant

The 4MINDS agent’s action plugin calls the 4MINDS API on behalf of the signed-in user. Microsoft 365 requires an Azure AD admin consent for this on the first install per tenant.
  1. When the first user in your tenant signs in to the agent, Microsoft will surface an Admin approval required screen if consent hasn’t been granted yet.
  2. A Global Admin or Cloud Application Administrator opens the Enterprise applications view in the Azure portal, finds the 4MINDS Copilot application, and clicks Grant admin consent for [tenant].
  3. After consent is granted, every user in the tenant can sign in normally — the approval step is one-time per tenant, not per user.
Data governance: The agent only passes the user’s message + the ID of the chosen 4MINDS model to the 4MINDS API. No Microsoft 365 content (documents, emails, calendar entries) is read by the agent — it operates on the models and datasets you’ve already published in 4MINDS.

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Restricting who can install the agent

If you want to limit the 4MINDS agent to a specific department or pilot group:
  1. In Teams Admin Center → Teams apps → Permission policies, create or select a policy that blocks or allows the 4MINDS app.
  2. Assign the policy to the user groups you want to gate.
  3. Users outside those groups won’t see the agent in the store or the picker.

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Troubleshooting

If none of the above resolves the issue, gather the following before contacting support@4minds.ai:
  • The exact prompt you sent
  • Which Copilot host you’re using (Teams / Office web / Office desktop)
  • Your 4MINDS workspace name and email
  • A screenshot of any error card the agent returned