Microsoft 365 E7: What It Is, What’s In It, and How to Get Your Tenant Ready
You’re not alone. Microsoft 365 E7 — branded as “The Frontier Suite” — became generally available on May 1, 2026. It’s a big deal, and if you’re running an enterprise M365 environment, you need to understand what’s in the box before your next licensing renewal conversation.
Let me walk you through it, step by step.
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What Is Microsoft 365 E7?
tl;dr: E7 is a new top-tier enterprise SKU that bundles four major Microsoft product families into one license.
Microsoft 365 E7 bundles Microsoft 365 E5, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Entra Suite, and Agent 365 to serve customers who are ready to scale AI with governance and security. That’s the whole pitch in one sentence.
Customers told Microsoft that E5 alone is no longer enough — they don’t want multiple tools stitched together, they want one trusted solution. At $99 per user per month, E7 is priced below purchasing these capabilities à la carte.
Microsoft 365 E7 is available with and without Teams, so if your org already has Teams licensed separately (common in some EA structures), you’re not forced to double-pay.
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Step 1: Understand the Four Pillars
Before you touch a single admin portal, you need to know what you’re actually getting. E7 has four distinct components.
Microsoft 365 E5
This is the foundation. Everything in E5 comes along for the ride — all the productivity apps, advanced compliance, Defender XDR, Purview, Intune, and the full identity stack. Microsoft 365 E7 includes Microsoft 365 E5 with advanced Defender, Entra, Intune, and Purview security capabilities to help secure users, delivering comprehensive protection across users and agents.
Microsoft 365 Copilot
Agentic capabilities are embedded directly into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Copilot Chat, bringing multi-model intelligence into everyday workflows. This is Wave 3 of Microsoft 365 Copilot, and it’s included. Microsoft 365 Copilot is model diverse by design — rather than betting on a single model, Microsoft built a system that makes every model useful at work, giving customers choice, performance, and flexibility in an open, heterogeneous environment.
The intelligence layer underpinning all of this is called Work IQ. Work IQ amplifies an individual’s IQ by tapping into your organization’s IQ — it’s the intelligence layer that enables Microsoft 365 Copilot and agents to know how you work, with whom you work, and the content upon which you collaborate.
Microsoft Entra Suite
The Entra Suite simplifies your Zero Trust security model with a complete cloud-based solution for workforce access. This covers things like Microsoft Entra Private Access, Internet Access, ID Governance, and ID Protection — capabilities that previously required a separate Entra Suite add-on purchase.
Microsoft Agent 365
This is the genuinely new piece. Agent 365 is the control plane for agents, extending the visibility, control, and trust that organizations rely on for users to the agents they deploy.
As agents become part of everyday work, Agent 365 provides a consistent way to: Observe — gain visibility into agents in your environment, understand how they’re used, and act quickly on performance, behavior, and risk signals; Govern — establish guardrails for agents and people, onboard agents with IT oversight, and govern agent access to resources and data.
Agent 365 provides management and protection for agents built across platforms and runtimes, including SaaS, cloud, and local agents. It also supports agents with both their own access and delegated access, helping to ensure a consistent approach across all agent scenarios.
One thing worth noting: an Azure subscription is required to use agents, priced on a metered basis. So E7 doesn’t eliminate Azure consumption costs for agent workloads — keep that in your budget model.
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Step 2: Check Your Current Licensing Position
Before you can evaluate an upgrade, you need to know what you’re on today. Run this in PowerShell against your tenant to pull your current SKU inventory:
# Connect to Microsoft Graph (requires Microsoft.Graph module)
Connect-MgGraph -Scopes "Organization.Read.All", "Directory.Read.All"
# Get all subscribed SKUs and their display names
Get-MgSubscribedSku | Select-Object SkuPartNumber, CapabilityStatus,
@{Name="ConsumedUnits"; Expression={$_.ConsumedUnits}},
@{Name="EnabledUnits"; Expression={$_.PrepaidUnits.Enabled}} |
Sort-Object SkuPartNumber |
Format-Table -AutoSizeLook for SKUs like SPE_E5 (Microsoft 365 E5), Microsoft_365_Copilot, ENTRA_SUITE, or AAD_PREMIUM_P2. If you’re already paying for these separately, E7 at $99/user/month is almost certainly cheaper than your current stack.
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Step 3: Understand the Packaging Changes Coming in CY26 Q3
Here’s a wrinkle worth knowing about. Microsoft 365 E7 pricing is not changing as part of the July 2026 pricing update. However, packaging changes introduced to Microsoft 365 E5 will also apply to Microsoft 365 E7.
The following features will be fully rolled out by August 1, 2026: Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 1, Intune Remote Help, Intune Advanced Analytics, Intune Plan 2, Intune Privilege Management, Microsoft Cloud PKI, and Intune Application Management.
Customers will receive a 30-day notice in Message Center before the update becomes available in their tenant. Watch your Message Center. Seriously — don’t let this catch your helpdesk off guard when new Intune capabilities suddenly appear.
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Step 4: Purchase E7 Through the Right Channel
Beginning May 1, 2026, Microsoft 365 E7 is available to transact in Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) channels on monthly, annual (one-year), and triennial (three-year) terms.
Microsoft 365 E7 CSP promotions are available through December 31, 2026. If you’re buying through a partner, ask about those promos now — they won’t last forever.
For EA customers, work with your Microsoft account team. For direct tenants, you can initiate a purchase from the Microsoft 365 Admin Center.
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Step 5: Assign E7 Licenses to Users
Once you’ve purchased seats, assign them via PowerShell or the Admin Center. Here’s the Graph-based PowerShell approach:
# Connect to Graph with license management scope
Connect-MgGraph -Scopes "User.ReadWrite.All", "Organization.Read.All"
# Get the E7 SKU ID from your tenant
$e7Sku = Get-MgSubscribedSku | Where-Object { $_.SkuPartNumber -like "*E7*" }
$e7SkuId = $e7Sku.SkuId
# Assign the E7 license to a single user
# Replace <user-upn> with the target user's UPN
$userId = "<user-upn>"
$licenseParams = @{
AddLicenses = @(
@{
SkuId = $e7SkuId
}
)
RemoveLicenses = @()
}
Set-MgUserLicense -UserId $userId -BodyParameter $licenseParams
Write-Host "E7 license assigned to $userId"For bulk assignments across a group, use group-based licensing in the Entra admin center — it’s far more manageable at scale than scripting individual users.
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Step 6: Enable and Configure Agent 365
This is the new piece most admins won’t have touched before. The Agent Registry provides an inventory of agents in your organization, including agents built with Microsoft AI platforms, ecosystem partner agents, and agents registered through APIs — and this agent inventory is available to IT teams in the Microsoft 365 admin center.
Security teams see the same unified agent inventory in their existing Microsoft Defender and Purview workflows.
Agent 365 enforces least privilege access, secures agent access to resources, protects sensitive data, and includes advanced threat protection and vulnerability management. These controls are managed by security professionals in the admin centers for Microsoft Entra, Microsoft Purview, or Microsoft Defender.
To get started with Agent 365 governance, navigate to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center → Settings → Agent 365, then review the Agent Registry for any agents already running in your environment. You may be surprised what’s already there.
An Agent 365 license is recommended for all users who interact with, own, manage, or sponsor Agent 365-managed agents — so think carefully about your license assignment scope. Not every user necessarily needs E7; some may only need the standalone Agent 365 SKU at $15/user/month.
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Step 7: Extend Agent Visibility to Third-Party Platforms
If your org is running agents on non-Microsoft platforms, there’s good news. Microsoft has announced the public preview of Agent 365 registry sync with AWS Bedrock and Google Cloud connections, enabling IT teams to automatically discover, inventory, and perform basic lifecycle governance — for example, start, stop, delete agents — across these platforms.
Agent 365 also extends Microsoft Entra network controls to Microsoft Copilot Studio agents and agents running on user endpoint devices, including local agents. These controls can help identify unsanctioned AI usage, restrict connections to only approved web destinations, filter risky file movement, and help block malicious prompt-based attacks.
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A Note on the Standalone Agent 365 SKU
Not every org needs to go full E7 on day one. In addition to being included with Microsoft 365 E7, Agent 365 is available as a standalone license at $15 per user per month. If you’re already on E5 + Copilot and just want the agent governance layer, the standalone route is worth evaluating before committing to the full E7 bundle.
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What to Watch Next
- Agent 365 context mapping in Microsoft Defender — starting in June 2026, Microsoft Defender will provide asset context mapping for each agent including the devices they run on, MCP servers configured for those agents, the identities associated with them, and the cloud resources those identities can reach, giving security teams the context needed to assess exposure and potential blast radius.
- CY26 Q3 packaging rollout — the Intune and Defender additions landing by August 1, 2026 will change what your E5/E7 users see in their managed devices. Test in a pilot ring first.
- Copilot Cowork — built in close collaboration with Anthropic, Microsoft is bringing the technology that powers Claude Cowork into Microsoft 365 Copilot to enable long-running, multi-step tasks. This is still in research preview but is included in the E7 Frontier program access.
The practical takeaway: if your org is already paying for E5 + Copilot + Entra Suite separately, run the math on E7. The $99/user/month bundle price is almost certainly below what you’re paying today, and you get Agent 365 governance thrown in on top. That’s the actual story here — not just new features, but a consolidation play that makes financial sense for most enterprise tenants already deep in the Microsoft stack.
