Successful implementation of Copilot for Microsoft 365 (M365) means paying attention beyond how to on-board your users, according to migration tools company ShareGate.
In a webinar and posts targeting M365 users, ShareGate community engagement manager Shaylyn Gimby and one of Microsoft’s ‘most valuable professionals’ (MVPs), Drew Madelung, explained how many organisations can reduce risks and boost productivity from the generative AI tool.
“Copilot for M365 has access to any files in SharePoint Online tenant that you have access to via the Microsoft Graph,” said Madelung, here.
“Two billion documents a day are added to M365.”
According to ShareGate and Madelung, organisations must evolve their content governance to truly be ready to use Copilot, especially in key M365 applications such as SharePoint to reduce potential risk.
For example, from “day one”, according to Madelung, users will likely be quietly using Copilot prompts to find information – including questions about wages, organisational changes, product plans, financials and other potentially sensitive or proprietary data.
Strong data access governance could deliver insight into what’s being shared and when, usage patterns, and links, helping organisations discover, for example, which users are exposing specific sites, files or folders over time, according to ShareGate.
“Find which sites have files classified with higher priority than the site [where] it is located,” Madelung suggested, adding that new reports based on ‘state’ data and other features were coming soon for preview.
Overall strategy should cover risk reduction, productivity enhancement, and compliance assurance, according to a checklist available from ShareGate.
“Before enabling Copilot for your users, make sure to do a readiness check across the M365 stack. This check will help you spot and fix potential issues or gaps in your architecture and governance, such as endpoints, licensing, information architecture, and adoption,” the vendor noted.
A project team should include stakeholders from affected applications, reviewing data, privacy, and security for Copilot as well as building a draft deployment plan that incorporates current usage of, for instance, SharePoint Online and OneDrive.
Organisations should also ensure they have internal approval to deploy generative AI technologies, it added.
( Image by Joseph Mucira from Pixabay )
 means paying attention beyond how to on-board your users, according to migration tools company ShareGate.){kind=link}