Which Copilot does each attendee have?
Microsoft now uses two main names: Microsoft Copilot for the licensed product, previously Microsoft 365 Copilot, and Microsoft Copilot Chat for the experience included with eligible Microsoft 365 licences. Microsoft says older names may still appear during the transition. The two behave differently. Copilot Chat is mainly grounded in the web and whatever the user provides, with extra grounding in Outlook for eligible users. The licensed product can reason across a user's emails, meetings, chats and files. Ask IT for a list of attendees showing which they have, and ask attendees to check the label in their own apps before the session.
- Microsoft 365 Copilot (Premium) or (Pro): the user has the add-on licence.
- Microsoft 365 Copilot (Basic): no add-on licence, standard access to Copilot in the Office apps.
- Copilot Chat (Basic): no add-on licence and no Copilot chat in Word, Excel, PowerPoint or OneNote.
Why do file permissions matter before training?
Microsoft's documentation states that Copilot only surfaces organisational data to which individual users have at least view permissions, and advises using the permission models in services such as SharePoint so the right people have access to the right content. Copilot does not grant new access. It does make existing access easier to find. A finance spreadsheet shared with the whole organisation years ago may never have been opened by most staff, yet a licensed user asking about budgets could see it cited. Training exercises that ask Copilot to find or summarise information are where this tends to surface.
Microsoft publishes a deployment blueprint for securing and governing Copilot built around three areas: remediating oversharing, setting up guardrails and meeting regulations. It notes that SharePoint Advanced Management, which helps manage sharing and access across SharePoint, is included with the Microsoft Copilot licence.
Which admin settings change what attendees see?
Several administrator settings decide whether a feature the trainer plans to demonstrate will exist on the day. Microsoft's documentation describes the main ones, listed below. Check them from an ordinary attendee account as well as an administrator's, because a trainer who rehearses on an IT account can find the room sees something different. Settle each one before exercises are written so that nobody designs a task around a feature the organisation has switched off.
- Optional connected experiences: turning these off can remove web search from Copilot.
- Connected experiences that analyse content: turning these off removes Copilot features from Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote.
- Agents: administrators choose which agents are allowed, and users only get allowed agents they have installed or been assigned.
- Third-party models: administrators decide whether models from providers such as Anthropic and OpenAI are used, and extra terms may apply.
What should staff be told about their data?
Staff often ask whether Microsoft reads or trains on what they type. Microsoft's documentation says prompts, responses and data accessed through Microsoft Graph are not used to train foundation models, and that eligible work and school accounts receive enterprise data protection. It also says each interaction is stored as the user's Copilot activity history, which administrators can search and retain through Microsoft Purview and which users can delete through the My Account portal. Tell staff all of this plainly. Then explain that your own policy still decides what information may go into Copilot, because the vendor's terms do not settle every internal rule.
How should exercises differ for licensed and unlicensed staff?
In a mixed room, design two versions of the key exercises. Copilot Chat users work from text or files they paste or upload, such as drafting a client update from fictional notes or summarising an uploaded procedure, plus Outlook tasks where their account supports them. Licensed users can practise work that crosses sources, such as asking for a summary of one project across their mail, meetings and documents, which is where reviewing the cited sources matters most. Both groups should practise checking outputs against the source, because Microsoft's own documentation says generative AI responses are not always factual.
How will you know whether Copilot is used after training?
Record a baseline before the session. The Microsoft Copilot usage report in the Microsoft 365 admin centre, under Reports and then Usage, shows enabled users, active users and the active users rate, along with prompts submitted to Copilot Chat, over 7, 28, 90 or 180 days. Microsoft says data for a given day usually appears within 48 hours. Compare the same period after training. Usage figures show activity and say nothing about quality, so pair them with a look at a few pieces of work produced with Copilot and a conversation with team leaders about what changed.