Learn how to make sure you are ready to implement and get the most out of Microsoft Copilot in your own organization. When you’re finished with this course clip, you’ll have knowledge of Microsoft Copilot needed to get ready to use it in your own organization.
Video Summary
Here are the key points from the transcript:
- Copilot Licensing: Different Copilot products have specific licensing requirements, with some included in existing subscriptions and others requiring additional licenses.
- Environment Preparation: Before deploying Copilot, ensure users have appropriate access permissions to avoid data leaks and use tools like SharePoint restricted access and Microsoft Purview for security.
- Data Integration: Copilot performs better with more data in Microsoft Graph. Use Microsoft Graph connectors to bring in data from various sources, enhancing Copilot’s usefulness.
- Metadata and User Profiles: Adding metadata to documents and keeping user profiles updated improves Copilot’s accuracy and functionality, benefiting other Microsoft cloud solutions as well.
- Semantic Index: Microsoft offers a free Semantic Index tool for organizations with Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 licenses to help Copilot better understand and map company data, improving search results and overall performance.
For more information, read the transcript blog below, or watch the video above!
Video Transcript
In this module, we will learn how to get ready for Microsoft Copilot. We will start by covering Microsoft Copilot licensing and learn how we can license the different Copilots inside our organization. Next, we will learn how to get our environment ready for Copilot and some of the things that we need to plan before we even deploy Copilot inside our organization. By the end of this module, you will know what you need to get your environment Copilot-ready.
Let’s start by learning how to license Microsoft Copilot inside our organization. There is no global Copilot license that covers all the different Copilots. Instead, the Copilot licensing will depend on the product. At the time of recording this course, Microsoft had not released licensing plans for all the different Copilots since many of them are still in preview, and Microsoft usually only announces licensing when products go into general availability. Also, remember that licensing always changes, so make sure to always check with your licensing professional to get the most up-to-date information.
Let’s start with the Power Platform Copilot licensing. The Power Virtual Agents Copilot is included with the Power Virtual Agents subscription, so as long as you use the paid version, you will have the Copilot. However, it is not included if you use the Power Virtual Agents in Teams plan that’s included with certain Microsoft 365 subscriptions. You really need to have that paid Power Virtual Agents license. For the rest of the Power Platform, the licensing requirements for Copilot have not been announced yet. Again, at the time of recording this course in August 2023, you will find the most up-to-date Power Platform licensing information at the link inside the slides.
Next up, we have Microsoft 365 Copilot. First of all, for Microsoft 365 Copilot, we have the requirement of a base user license, which needs to be either Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 for enterprises, and for small and medium businesses, it can be Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Microsoft 365 Business Premium. On top of that, Microsoft 365 Copilot will be an add-on license, so you need both the Microsoft 365 license and the Copilot license. The Copilot license add-on will cost $30 per user per month, and the prices are in US dollars. It’s important to note that the Microsoft 365 Copilot license does not include the Teams meeting recap functionality, which is part of the Teams Premium license, a separate add-on.
For Viva Copilot, as the Copilot offering is still in private preview, licensing has not yet been announced at the time of recording this course. Next, let’s talk about Dynamics 365 Copilot. For Sales Copilot, it’s included with Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise or Dynamics 365 Sales Premium licenses. Other Dynamics 365 licenses will be able to buy it as an add-on if they want to. For other Dynamics 365 Copilots, Microsoft did not give any specific information but said it would follow the same pattern where it’s included in their respective premium Dynamics 365 licenses and will be available to other licenses as an add-on.
For Security Copilot, as the Copilot offering is still in private preview, licensing has not been announced at the time of recording this course. For Windows Copilot, it will be included with Windows starting with the Windows 11 23H2 update that will be available in the fall of 2023. If your organization has Bing Chat Enterprise, Windows Copilot will be able to use that as well. For GitHub Copilot, Copilot for Business has a licensing cost of $19 USD per user per month, and you can find out more on the GitHub pricing page in the slides. Last but not least, Bing Chat Enterprise is on by default and included with Microsoft 365 E3 and E5, as well as Microsoft 365 Business Premium and Business Standard for small and medium-sized companies. Microsoft said that a standalone subscription will be available in the future for $5 per user per month, but that is not yet available at the time of recording this course. Remember that especially with preview products like this, licensing can change, so always check the most up-to-date information with your licensing professional.
Now that we have covered licensing, let’s talk about how to get your environment Copilot-ready. Turning on Copilot will be easy once available; you simply need to have the required licenses, and you’re ready to go. However, turning it on without first preparing your environment can have bad consequences on your deployment. Imagine if a user has permissions to documents they shouldn’t; Copilot might suggest or rely on that data to provide information, which can leak data to the user. The first thing you need to do is to make sure that users have just enough access in your environment, and you should check every SharePoint site and team site to make sure that permissions are correct. You can also use SharePoint restricted access control for sensitive sites and use the Microsoft Purview suite of products to classify and secure your environment. Remember that Copilot will have access to the same information that users have in search as it uses the same security trimming, so you can always use that as a test. Even if you’re not going to get Copilot right away, securing your environment is always a good thing to do.
Next, remember that Copilot thrives on data, and the more data available in the Microsoft Graph, the more accurate and useful Copilot will be. However, for most organizations, not all of their data is in Microsoft 365, but luckily, you can bring data into Microsoft Graph with Microsoft Graph connectors. You can bring data from file shares and databases from third-party products, and you can even build custom connectors for where your data lives to bring it inside the Microsoft Graph, and from there, Copilot can use it to be even more useful. Microsoft has specific documentation on how to optimize Microsoft Graph connectors for Copilot at the link in the slides. Every data you bring—documents, customer information, product information—will make Copilot more useful to you.
To continue with data, Copilot will do a really good job at understanding the information in documents even if they have no metadata applied at all. However, having the correct metadata will increase the quality of information inside your tenant. From simple things such as the title of the document to all of the other columns that you add information in, it will confirm to Copilot the relevance of that document, and it will be even more sure to use it or not in the prompts. If you have a lot of files with no metadata applied, consider checking out Microsoft Syntex, which enables you to tag documents by using AI. Another task you can do to improve Copilot is to make sure that your user profiles are filled and up to date. Since Copilot uses information from the Azure AD user profile, such as the user’s department, location, and more, this is something that will benefit Copilot as well as many other Microsoft cloud solutions, such as Microsoft Power Automate. For example, having your profile filled and having your manager in there will make Power Automate manager approval flows even more useful and functional.
Next, we have the Semantic Index for Copilot, which is a tool that Microsoft will make available for free to help organizations get Copilot-ready, but only for organizations with Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 licenses. The Semantic Index is a sophisticated map of your users and your company data, and the tool will allow you to improve how Microsoft 365 and Copilot understand your data. Improving that will also benefit enterprise search results, whether you are using Copilot or not.
