- High-level overview of Conditional Access: [What is Conditional Access?](overview.md)
- Guide to managing agent identities across your organization: [Manage agent identities in your organization](../../agent-id/manage-agent-identities-admin.md).
- [Configure policies for autonomous agent access](policy-autonomous-agents.md)
## How Conditional Access evaluates agent access requests
> [!NOTE]
> The on-behalf-of flow is also known as delegated access. Agents using this type of access are sometimes called interactive agents or assistive agents, as they involve a user interface for human interaction.
:::image type="content" source="media/agent-id/on-behalf-of-agent-flow-diagram.png" alt-text="Diagram showing the OBO flow for agents accessing resources on behalf of a user." lightbox="media/agent-id/on-behalf-of-agent-flow-diagram-expanded.png":::
In this flow, the agent can't reuse the user's original token because it was issued for a different audience. Instead, the agent uses the OBO flow to exchange tokens with Microsoft Entra ID, obtaining a new token scoped to the target resource. This token exchange is also evaluated by Conditional Access, letting admins enforce granular controls over which resources agents can access on behalf of the user.
Because the user is the subject in this flow, Conditional Access policies target **users and groups**, not agent identities. For step-by-step policy configuration, see [Conditional Access for agents operating on-behalf-of a user](policy-on-behalf-of-agents.md).
Agents might access resources without a signed-in user. In this case the agent accesses the resource with its own identity. This flow is also known as client credentials flow, or app only access. All types of agents might use this flow. For more information about how agents authenticate with their own identity, see [Agent OAuth flows: Autonomous apps](../../agent-id/agent-autonomous-app-oauth-flow.md).
The following diagram shows the application only access authorization flow.
:::image type="content" source="media/agent-id/application-only-flow-diagram.png" alt-text="Diagram showing the application only access flow for agents accessing resources with their own identity." lightbox="media/agent-id/application-only-flow-diagram-expanded.png":::
- High-level overview of Conditional Access: [What is Conditional Access?](overview.md)
- Guide to managing agent identities across your organization: [Manage agent identities in your organization](../../agent-id/manage-agent-identities-admin.md).
- [How to target agent identities in Conditional Access](howto-target-agent-identities.md)
- [Configure policies for autonomous agent access](policy-autonomous-agents.md)
## How Conditional Access evaluates agent access requests
> [!NOTE]
> The on-behalf-of flow is also known as delegated access. Agents using this type of access are sometimes called interactive agents or assistive agents, as they involve a user interface for human interaction.
In this flow, the agent can't reuse the user's original token because it was issued for a different audience. Instead, the agent uses the OBO flow to exchange tokens with Microsoft Entra ID, obtaining a new token scoped to the target resource. This token exchange is also evaluated by Conditional Access, letting admins enforce granular controls over which resources agents can access on behalf of the user.
Because the user is the subject in this flow, Conditional Access policies target **users and groups**, not agent identities. For step-by-step policy configuration, see [Conditional Access for agents operating on-behalf-of a user](policy-on-behalf-of-agents.md).
Agents might access resources without a signed-in user. In this case the agent accesses the resource with its own identity. This flow is also known as client credentials flow, or app only access. All types of agents might use this flow. For more information about how agents authenticate with their own identity, see [Agent OAuth flows: Autonomous apps](../../agent-id/agent-autonomous-app-oauth-flow.md).
This flow applies in the following common scenarios:
- **Autonomous agents that operate independently** run in the background, respond to events, or run on a schedule.
- For example, an agent that generates a daily report and sends the result to a group of employees.