Agent Co-worker Overview

Written by Uday Kumar Updated September 17, 2026 05:09

Who this is for. Super Admins setting up or maintaining an Agent Co-worker. See the Roles and Access.

The Agent Co-workers page groups agents by the autonomous process they belong to, and shows a running count beneath each one. This article explains the two levels, the agent and the instance, and what a single instance is bound to.

Figure 1. The Agent Co-workers page. Each agent groups its running instances.

Agents, and instances of them

The distinction matters as soon as you open the Agent Co-workers page.

Table 1. Agent versus instance

Term	Means
Agent	The kind of worker. AP Helpdesk and AP Invoices are functions of SmartVendor, which the Agent Co-workers page groups under Autonomous Procure To Pay.
Instance	One configured, running copy of that agent, bound to a specific system of record and a specific mailbox.

A tenant runs one instance per mailbox. Several instances of the same agent can work different mailboxes side by side. The Agent Co-workers page therefore shows a count such as 7 instances running beneath a single agent name.

What an instance is bound to

Two bindings, both set at creation and both decisive: the system of record it reads and writes, and the mailbox that feeds it. Everything the agent can see or do follows from those.

The system of record binding cannot be changed afterwards. An instance pointed at the wrong system of record has to be recreated, not reconfigured.

Why the distinction matters in practice

Numbers on any console belong to one instance, not to the agent as a whole.
Two analysts comparing dashboards must confirm they have the same instance selected.
A configuration change affects one instance. Running the same change across several mailboxes means repeating it.
An instance can be paused independently. A quiet queue may mean one paused instance, not a quiet day.

Agent Co-worker components

Every Agent Co-worker is built from the same four parts. Three of them are steps in the setup wizard: Work scope, Choose functions and Define capabilities. The fourth, autonomy, is not a step of its own. It is set inside Define capabilities, on the capability rail.

Four parts

The Fixed after creation column is the one to check before you commit. Work scope cannot be changed once the agent exists.

Table 2. The model

Part	What it settles	Fixed after creation
Work scope	Which system of record the agent reads and writes, and the boundary it operates in.	Yes
Functions	Which capabilities the agent has: AP Invoices and AP Helpdesk.	No
Capabilities	How each function behaves in detail.	No
Autonomy	How far the agent may act without a person.	No

Work scope is the one that cannot be revisited. If the system of record is wrong, the agent has to be recreated.

Why order matters

Capabilities operate on whatever the previous stage produced. Extraction has nothing to work on until intake is configured; rules have nothing to match until categories exist. Configuring out of order means configuring twice.

Autonomy sits above all of it as a ceiling. However permissive a capability setting is, the autonomy level decides whether the agent may act on it unaided. Widening a capability setting can therefore have no effect.

Use the model to place a screen

When you open a configuration screen you have not seen before, ask three questions in this order:

Which function does it belong to? The tab tells you: AP Invoices or AP Helpdesk.
Which stage within that function? Intake, extraction, rules and write-back for AP Invoices; senders, categories, rules and replies for AP Helpdesk.
What does it depend on? Whatever the stage above it produces. If that is not configured, this screen cannot do anything yet.

Read the model against a symptom

When something behaves unexpectedly, find the closest symptom and go straight to the part it names.

Table 3. Which part explains what

Symptom	Look at
The agent cannot see a record type at all	Work scope. It cannot be changed.
A whole capability is absent from the wizard	Functions. It was not selected.
A setting exists but has no effect	Capabilities. Check the stage above it.
Everything is prepared but nothing is sent or written to the system of record	Autonomy. The level caps what the agent may complete unaided.

Three of the four are changeable. The first is not, so the work scope decision requires the most care.

Table 4. Out-of-order configuration

Function	If you configure this first	Before this	What happens
AP Helpdesk	Processing rules	Email categories	Rules reference categories that do not exist yet, so they never fire.
AP Helpdesk	Response guidance	Sender classification	Guidance is written for senders the agent will not act on.
AP Invoices	Field extraction	Document intake	Extraction has no documents to read.
AP Invoices	Write to SOR	Business rules	Documents post before the checks you intended are applied.

The pairs are per function and do not cross. Processing rules and response guidance belong to AP Helpdesk; field extraction and Write to SOR belong to AP Invoices. An agent that runs only one function meets only that function’s pairs.

The last row is the expensive one. The other three cost you rework; that one can post a document your rules were written to stop.

How to tell it happened to you

A rule exists, is enabled, and has never fired.
Response guidance is written for a sender type the agent never acts on.
A field extraction setting appears to have no effect.

In each case the setting named in the Before this column of Table 5 is the one to correct, on the Define capabilities step for that function.

The six-step wizard bar, with Exception treatment and Try out coworker greyed out.

Figure 2. The setup wizard steps.

AP Helpdesk Agent Co-workers

An AP Helpdesk Agent Co-worker triages vendor email, answers it, and routes tasks that need human intervention to the correct person.

There is no agent called “AP Helpdesk”. AP Helpdesk is a function selected on an instance of SmartVendor, which sits under Autonomous Procure To Pay. The Agent Co-workers page therefore lists SmartVendor rather than AP Helpdesk.

For what the agent produces, the four processing stages, and what decides each outcome, see How an AP Helpdesk Agent Processes Email.