Insights

If your organisation wants to use Microsoft 365 Copilot, it’s important to make sure you’ve evaluated your Copilot readiness, which largely comes down to how well managed your SharePoint data estate is.

TL;DR: why is SharePoint governance so important for Copilot readiness?

• Microsoft 365 Copilot readiness is largely a SharePoint governance issue, because most of the shared company data that Copilot can access lives in SharePoint Online (including content surfaced through Microsoft Teams).
• Copilot can only access information a user already has permission to see, so poor permissions management, oversharing and unclear ownership increase risk.
• Outdated, poorly governed content also leads to inaccurate and unreliable Copilot responses.
• Strong SharePoint governance improves security, data quality and the usefulness of Copilot across the organisation.

Why do organisations need to consider Microsoft 365 Copilot technical readiness?

If your organisation wants to implement Microsoft 365 Copilot, you should make sure your Microsoft 365 environment is ready for it.

Commonly known as “Copilot readiness” or “Copilot technical readiness”, this involves evaluating the risks of Microsoft 365 Copilot and ensuring you’ve mitigated such risks through the appropriate technical controls within your Microsoft 365 environments.

Most of these risks from a technical perspective are associated with the surfacing of sensitive information to a user because of poor permissions management and oversharing, or stale or incorrect data feeding Copilot bad information which can then lead to incorrect answers.

Copilot technical readiness is therefore largely a data protection and governance exercise within Microsoft 365.

Which data in Microsoft 365 is important to consider for Copilot?

Within Microsoft 365 there are three main areas where your data lives:

• Exchange Online — where your email lives
• OneDrive for Business — where your own files live
• SharePoint Online — where shared files live

Exchange and OneDrive for Business are fairly user-centric. With Exchange, Copilot will have access to emails you’ve sent and received, which is fairly straightforward. With OneDrive for Business, Copilot will have access to your own OneDrive and any files shared with you from other people’s OneDrives.

While Exchange and OneDrive aren’t risk-free, most Copilot technical readiness work will focus on SharePoint Online.

Why is SharePoint Online usually the focus of Copilot technical readiness?

If your organisation is on the Microsoft cloud, most of your content files and unstructured data will be in SharePoint Online — whether directly, or indirectly through platforms like Teams that rely on SharePoint in the background.

There are plenty of advantages to having content in SharePoint from a wider business perspective, as well as giving Copilot easy access to company information. But it’s also where information governance issues typically arise.

That’s why SharePoint Online is where most organisations will want to focus the majority of their Copilot readiness efforts before rolling licences out to users.

NB: Microsoft Purview provides a suite of data protection and governance capabilities that can help with the SharePoint governance steps discussed in this article, as does SharePoint Advanced Management. Read the FAQs at the end of this article to learn more about the capabilities of these tools and licensing considerations.

What does good SharePoint governance look like?

Good SharePoint governance starts with getting the foundations right. In practice, that means moving away from heavily nested, centralised site structures and designing a modern SharePoint architecture built around clear information ownership — one of the most important SharePoint best practices for any organisation preparing for Copilot.

Each site should have a defined business owner who is responsible for the content held there. That ownership model is key, because Copilot will only ever be as reliable as the data it can access. If nobody owns the information, nobody is accountable for whether it’s accurate, appropriate, or still needed.

A flatter, more granular site structure also makes SharePoint permissions management much easier and reduces the risk of accidental oversharing, which is one of the most common Copilot readiness issues we see. Orphaned sites — those with no active owner — are a particular concern, as they tend to accumulate stale content and excessive permissions over time.

Determine the sensitivity of your company data

You also need to understand what information you’re storing.

Good SharePoint governance includes clear data classification and sensitivity labelling so you know which information is public, internal or confidential and genuinely sensitive. This helps apply the right protections automatically.

For highly sensitive information, labels can apply encryption and rights management, and these protections will apply when Copilot accesses that content — not just when files leave SharePoint.

Use policy controls as a safety net

Even with good structure and labelling, mistakes still happen. That’s why strong governance should use policy-based controls as a safety net.

Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies can help prevent files being shared with the wrong people and can intervene if sensitive data is stored in an inappropriate location. Rather than blocking productivity, these controls reduce risk in the background and help enforce consistent standards across the organisation.

This is particularly important in a Copilot-enabled environment, where information can be surfaced easily and quickly.

Manage the full information lifecycle

One of the most overlooked parts of SharePoint governance is information lifecycle management.

Every piece of information should have a defined lifespan. Some data will need to be kept for years for legal or regulatory reasons. Other content, such as CVs or short-term HR files, should be deleted much sooner.

Keeping everything forever increases risk, creates noise for Copilot (and for search experiences), and makes it harder for users to find what matters.

Retention and deletion policies ensure information is only kept for as long as it’s genuinely needed. This improves security, reduces clutter, and helps Copilot return more relevant and reliable results.

Governance reduces risk and improves Copilot’s accuracy

Copilot readiness should focus on improving outcomes as well as reducing risks associated with Copilot.

When SharePoint is well governed, Copilot has access to cleaner, more accurate and better-structured information. That leads to more trustworthy answers, better summaries, and more meaningful insights for users.

In other words, good SharePoint governance is what allows Copilot to work properly in the first place.

FAQs

Do companies need to do all of these SharePoint governance activities before using Microsoft 365 Copilot?

Getting this all in place is a significant undertaking. Data governance, security, and compliance in Microsoft 365 can’t be delivered overnight. For most organisations, it’s a multi-year journey rather than a one-off project.

That said, you don’t need to have everything perfectly in place before you start using Copilot. There are practical steps you can take early on to bring your Microsoft 365 tenant and data into better shape, and to introduce Copilot in a controlled and well-managed way. This allows you to build capability gradually, reduce risk, and avoid an abrupt adoption cliff while longer-term governance work continues.

Read our Microsoft 365 Copilot readiness roadmap for SMBs to learn more, or talk to Chorus today about how we can help you get started with Copilot quickly and responsibly.

How does Microsoft Purview help with SharePoint governance and Copilot readiness, and how can I access it?

Microsoft Purview provides a suite of data protection and governance tools that can help you with SharePoint governance and Copilot technical readiness. The level of functionality available depends on your Microsoft 365 licence. Plans such as Microsoft 365 E3 and Business Premium include the core Purview capabilities, covering baseline compliance and data protection needs. Microsoft 365 E5 extends this with more advanced tools, including enhanced data loss prevention, insider risk management, and more.

For organisations on lower-tier licences, many of these advanced features can also be accessed through add-ons, such as the Microsoft Purview Suite for Business Premium. This provides a cost-effective way to extend core compliance capabilities with more advanced governance and protection features without moving to an enterprise licence. You can learn more in our guide to Microsoft Purview add-ons for Business Premium.

What is SharePoint Advanced Management and how does it help with SharePoint governance and Copilot readiness?

SharePoint Advanced Management is a set of governance tools designed to help organisations better manage and control their SharePoint environment. It focuses on improving visibility, reducing risk, and enforcing consistent standards across SharePoint sites.

The tool allows you to define policies that identify inactive sites, potentially orphaned sites, and sites that do not meet minimum ownership requirements. It can also highlight sites with complex or risky sharing and permission configurations, which can create governance issues and negatively affect tools like Microsoft Copilot. For organisations looking to bring structure and control to their SharePoint sprawl, it is a highly effective capability.

How do customers get access to SharePoint Advanced Management and how much does it cost?

SharePoint Advanced Management is available as a standalone add-on licence, regardless of whether you are on Business Premium, Microsoft 365 E3, or E5. It’s typically licensed on a per-user, per-month basis at around £3 per user per month, with all users needing to be licensed.

However, Microsoft has started bundling most SharePoint Advanced Management capabilities with Microsoft 365 Copilot. When you purchase at least one Copilot licence, around 90% of these advanced management features are unlocked for the entire tenant.

This reflects Microsoft’s recognition that organisations adopting Copilot often need additional support to get their SharePoint data under control. Because the policies used in SharePoint Advanced Management apply at an organisational level rather than being targeted at individual users, you only need one or more Copilot licences to enable these capabilities for the whole environment. For many customers, this makes Copilot one of the most cost-effective ways to access SharePoint Advanced Management functionality.

What is SharePoint governance?

SharePoint governance is the set of policies, processes, and controls that define how SharePoint Online is structured, managed, and maintained across an organisation. It covers site ownership, permissions management, data classification, information lifecycle management, and the standards around how content is created, shared, and deleted. For organisations using Microsoft 365 Copilot, good SharePoint governance is the foundation that determines how safely and accurately Copilot can operate.

What is oversharing in SharePoint, and why does it matter for Copilot?

Oversharing happens when SharePoint sites, libraries, or files are accessible to more people than they should be — usually because of overly broad permission settings or content saved in the wrong location. Because Copilot only surfaces content a user already has permission to see, overshared content can appear in Copilot responses in ways that weren’t intended. Reducing oversharing is one of the most direct and high-value steps in any Copilot readiness programme.

Does my data get used to train Copilot if it accesses SharePoint?

No. Microsoft 365 Copilot accesses your SharePoint data in real time to answer queries, but it doesn’t retain or use that data to train its underlying AI models. See Is my data used to train Copilot? for a full explanation of how Copilot handles your organisation’s data.