Find the policy. That doesn’t mean rewrite the policy.

Microsoft’s new Work IQ Retrieve tool separates finding evidence from delegating work. That is a useful distinction for anyone commissioning an internal AI assistant.

“Find the current policy” and “change the policy” are two very different assignments. We generally expect employees to know that. An AI agent deserves equally clear instructions.

Microsoft’s October 20 Work IQ Retrieve announcement makes a useful distinction: collecting evidence is separate from handing work to another agent. The new developer tool returns source material and citations for an agent to use. It is not a new button that every Copilot user should go looking for.

Show your work before doing more work

Imagine HR wants to answer a question about the organization’s leave policy. A plausible paragraph is easy. The useful answer needs to point to the approved policy, distinguish it from an old draft and admit when the sources disagree.

Here is an illustrative requirement to give the team building that assistant, not a tested configuration:

Find the approved policy relevant to this question. Show the source link and any effective date stated in the document. Identify conflicting or draft guidance. If you cannot establish which version applies, say so. Do not change documents or send messages.

Then test it with a question whose answer you already know. Include an outdated document in the approved test material. Does the assistant recognize the difference, or confidently explain last year’s rules?

That is a more useful acceptance test than whether the answer sounds like HR wrote it. HR already has enough trouble with things that sound like HR wrote them.

This is a building block, with a bill and permissions

Microsoft’s implementation guide labels Retrieve public preview. It requires tenant enablement, Copilot Credits usage-based billing and a spending policy covering Work IQ API, plus client application registration, delegated permission and connection setup. An organizational account alone does not establish access.

The guide says retrieval runs as the signed-in user and cannot unlock information that person cannot otherwise access. It returns cited context and source metadata rather than the final answer. Developers can narrow the sources searched; they still need to handle missing results and access failures honestly.

Citations give the reviewer something to inspect. They do not prove a document is current, approved or correctly interpreted. Keep the person responsible for the decision in the process.

Before celebrating an agent that can do more, make sure it can show you why.