Using Microsoft Agent

Introduction

Microsoft Agent is a computer software technology that is made available to developers to incorporate into the user interface of their applications and Web pages. Considered entirely on its own, Microsoft Agent isn't a complete, integral application that does something by itself — a separate software application or scripting code has to be run first and it is this that actually calls upon the services of Microsoft Agent. Consequently, it may be more accurate for us to consider that we run Microsoft Agent enabled applications rather than Microsoft Agent itself (or directly).

The reason for drawing this distinction is to explain why some newcomers to Microsoft Agent may be baffled initially about how to "run" Microsoft Agent or what it "does". The more correct answers to these questions would be that they actually don't "run" Microsoft Agent (they run applications that in turn call upon Microsoft Agent) and it doesn't "do" anything on its own (it only does whatever applications call upon it to do). The product information introductory page provides a very short list of some possible uses for a Microsoft Agent character within an application.

When you run someone's application that incorporates a Microsoft Agent character, how you use or work with that application will be mostly determined by that application's programming code. Microsoft Agent provides developers with several user interface elements that they can optionally implement in their applications. Documentation is provided that shows how these user interface elements of Microsoft Agent function but bear in mind that not all of these will be necessarily available in the applications that you run.

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