WorkBoard Announces General Availability of Its Digital Chief of Staff and Leadership Coach Agents, and Expanded Capabilities for Microsoft 365 Copilot Agent

Business Wire

27-05-2025

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--WorkBoard Inc., provider of the leading enterprise strategy execution and OKR platform, WorkBoardAI, today announced general availability of its Chief of Staff and Leadership Coach agents, expanded functionality in its Microsoft 365 Copilot agent, and broader integration with next-generation agentic ecosystems from Microsoft and Workday.
'The digital Chief of Staff and Leadership Coach agents are a force multiplier that helps managers operate at a more strategic level and marshal company resources more effectively,' said Erik Huddleston, CEO, Aprimo.
WorkBoardAI's Digital Chief of Staff and Leadership Coach Agents Now Generally Available
WorkBoardAI's Digital Chief of Staff and Leadership Coach agents are now generally available to enterprise customers, marking a paradigm shift in driving predictable and profitable strategy execution. Effective managers are the lynchpin in strategy execution and how organizations align efforts on the most important outcomes, sustain focus, and create performance accountability. While the top 2% of leaders often have a chief of staff and executive coach to elevate their effectiveness, the other 98% of managers have less skill, capacity, and resources for peak performance. With these agents, enterprises can afford to extend these resources to all managers, tripling their competency and productivity.
Built to help managers perform at their best, the digital Chief of Staff proactively drives strategic alignment, creates team operating rigor, and reinforces accountability on behalf of the manager they serve. The Leadership Coach agent helps managers navigate difficult conversations, be better coaches themselves, and lead more skillfully.
Unlike ChatGPT, WorkBoardAI agents have deep context on company strategy, ever-changing strategic priorities, the org structure, team member responsibilities, current objectives and historical performance. With this continuous context, agent insights and actions are grounded in company and manager reality as they:
Orchestrate OKR alignment and accountability for managers and teams, reinforcing habits many managers have not yet built
Manage the operating, meeting and reporting cadence for managers, freeing them to do more meaningful, nuanced work that requires their judgment
Suggest crucial follow through and take follow up actions at the manager's direction to improve execution quality and speed
Identify where feedback is needed, suggest messages, and guide managers through difficult conversations so team friction is quickly addressed
Prepare managers with the facts, issues and talking points ahead of every 1on1 and operational meeting to maximize time and progress
Thought partner on OKRs, operational issues, and team dynamics with the context of team members and responsibilities
'The digital Chief of Staff and Leadership Coach agents are a force multiplier that helps managers operate at a more strategic level and marshal company resources more effectively,' said Erik Huddleston, CEO, Aprimo. 'Unlike chatbots, WorkBoardAI agents behave proactively and, because they are embedded in our strategy execution system, they know the ever-changing strategic priorities which makes them a powerful way to scale the workforce.'
New Features in Microsoft 365 Copilot Agent
WorkBoardAI also released two new capabilities in its Microsoft 365 Copilot agent, bringing strategy execution into daily workflows with even more intelligence and actionability:
OKR Suggestions: Based on the teams you manage or co-manage, the agent now proposes relevant OKRs to kickstart the goal-setting process. This makes it easier for managers to draft aligned and impactful objectives.
Update Key Results: The agent highlights overdue key results and provides one-click access to update them directly in WorkBoard. This helps managers stay on track and reduce slippage without switching context.
These additions make it even easier to align and drive OKRs directly from Copilot in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, reducing friction and accelerating execution across the organization.
Modern Architecture in the Agent Ecosystem: A2A, Workday, and Microsoft Ecosystem
WorkBoardAI continues to lead in open, interoperable AI by adopting the Agent-to-Agent (A2A) protocol and supporting the Multi-Agent Communication (MCP) protocol – both vendor-neutral standards embraced by Microsoft and Google that enables agents to discover, communicate, and collaborate securely across platforms. While A2A facilitates secure cross-platform communication, MCP adds orchestration capabilities, allowing agents to coordinate complex, multi-step workflows across distributed systems. With these protocols, WorkBoardAI agents can participate in multi-agent workflows. This enables actions to be chained across HCM, CRM, ERP, ITSM, and more; the WorkBoardAI Chief of Staff and Leadership Coach agents will incorporate information from Microsoft Teams and Slack channels, Jira, and Salesforce in their actions, suggestions, and responses.
By combining conversational AI, agentic orchestration, and deep integration across enterprise platforms, WorkBoardAI makes it easier for organizations to align on strategy, drive progress, and adapt faster in a rapidly evolving world.
'Our agents learn from their managers and become more helpful over time, just like a human team member would,' said Daryoush Paknad, WorkBoard's CTO and Co-founder. 'Combined, the WorkBoardAI architecture and agent capabilities bridge skill gaps, save time, and connect disparate enterprise systems to profoundly improve how organizations operate.'
WorkBoard is an inaugural design partner with Workday on its Agent System of Record. With unique digital Chiefs of Staff and Leadership Coaches for each manager in the enterprise, customers will be able to see and manage the thousands of WorkBoardAI agents as part of their digital workforce via Workday's Agent System of Record.
WorkBoardAI is available for purchase via the Azure Marketplace and its Copilot agent is rapidly increasing its skills to bring strategic priorities into day-to-day work across M365 applications people use daily. The Copilot agent was included in Satya Nadella's keynote at Microsoft Build 2025 and is available in the new Microsoft Agent Store.
Availability and More Information
The digital Chief of Staff and Leadership Coach agents are available to WorkBoard customers who have purchased or upgraded to the WorkBoardAI platform. Pricing is based on usage.
See a demo of the Chief of Staff agent and Leadership Coach agent and learn more about WorkBoardAI's capabilities, architecture and impact at https://www.workboard.com/agents/. Get the M365 Copilot agent in the new Copilot Agent Store, the full WorkBoardAI solution in the Azure Marketplace and in the Workday AI Marketplace.
About WorkBoard
WorkBoard is the leading provider of enterprise strategy execution and OKR software. The platform enables high alignment, accountability, and transparency across global organizations. Enterprises have trusted WorkBoard with their strategic ambitions and the actions to achieve them for a decade. WorkBoard counts 3M, AstraZeneca, Boeing, Cisco, Elevance, Ford, Humana, Renault, State Street, UBS, Unilever, UnitedHealth, and their peers as customers. Its investors include M12 Microsoft's Venture Fund, Workday Ventures, SoftBank, Andreessen Horowitz, Notable Capital, and others.