Posey's Tips & Tricks
Tracking Microsoft 365 Copilot Adoption and Usage Within Your Organization
Save some money by eliminating what you don't need.
Given the high licensing cost associated with Microsoft 365 Copilot, organizations understandably want to make sure that their users are actually using Copilot. After all, it's impossible to achieve a return on your Copilot investment if your users are not even using Copilot. Similarly, if you discover that some users use Copilot on a regular basis, while others do not, then you may be able to reduce your organization's costs by only licensing those users who actually use Copilot. Fortunately, Microsoft has created some tools that you can use to track Copilot adoption and use within your Microsoft 365 tenant.
You can access these tools by opening the Microsoft 365 Admin Center and then selecting the Copilot tab. This causes the console to display an Overview screen. This screen contains a chart that tracks Copilot adoption on an app by app basis. For example, you can see how many users are using Copilot within Word, Excel and the other Office apps. This chart will also allow you to track the number of users who are using Business Chat.
The Overview screen also displays information related to Copilot licensing. More specifically, you can see how many Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses your organization has purchased, as well as the number of licenses that have not yet been assigned and are therefore available for use. You can click the corresponding Manage License button to access an interface that allows you to assign and remove Copilot licenses on an as needed basis.
As helpful as the information that is presented on the Overview screen might be, there is additional information available. To access this information, click the Learn More in Usage button, found in the Reports section. This will cause the console to open the Prepare Your Organization for Using Microsoft Copilot screen, shown in Figure 1.
[Click on image for larger view.] Figure 1. You can use the Prepare Your Organization for Using Microsoft Copilot screen to assess your organization's Copilot readiness.
As was the case with the Overview screen, this screen displays Copilot license usage, but in a different way. In addition to showing you how many Copilot licenses are available for use, this screen also shows you the number of prerequisite licenses that your organization has purchased (namely, how many Microsoft 365 licenses you have) and how many users are eligible for Copilot, but are not yet licensed to use Copilot.
At the bottom of the screen, you can see a list of your users, although the actual user names are obscured by default (but can be revealed, if necessary). For each user, you can see whether or not the user is licensed to use Copilot, as well as what specific apps the user typically uses within the Microsoft 365 eco system.
The middle portion of the screen contains a chart that lists various Microsoft 365 activities, such as Teams meetings, Teams Chat and Office Docs. The chart shows you the number of users who typically participate in such activities.
By default, the Microsoft 365 Usage screen displays the Readiness tab. However, additional information is displayed on the Usage tab, which you can see in Figure 2.
[Click on image for larger view.] Figure 2. The Usage tab provides more detailed Copilot usage information.
There are three main things that this screen shows you. First, you can see the number of users who are licensed for Copilot as compared to the number of users who are actually using Copilot. The console displays an active user rate, which is essentially the percentage of those licensed for Copilot who are using Copilot.
The second piece of information shown on this screen is adoption by app. Here you will find a chart comparing the number of users who are licensed to use Copilot within each app, as compared to the number of users who are using Copilot within the given app. By using this chart, you can get a really good feel for where your users are and are not using Copilot.
Finally, the screen shows you the number of users who are using business chat. This information is broken down into Business Chat Web, Business Chat Work, and Business Chat as a whole.
Interestingly, the Microsoft 365 Copilot Usage screen can also display usage trends. You will notice in the previous figure that the Adoption by App section is configured to display summary information. However, clicking the Trend button changes the display to look more like what you see in Figure 3. Here you can track Copilot usage over time to see how often users are engaging with Copilot and whether users are using Copilot more or less frequently over time.
[Click on image for larger view.] Figure 3. You can track Copilot usage over a period of time.
About the Author
Brien Posey is a 22-time Microsoft MVP with decades of IT experience. As a freelance writer, Posey has written thousands of articles and contributed to several dozen books on a wide variety of IT topics. Prior to going freelance, Posey was a CIO for a national chain of hospitals and health care facilities. He has also served as a network administrator for some of the country's largest insurance companies and for the Department of Defense at Fort Knox. In addition to his continued work in IT, Posey has spent the last several years actively training as a commercial scientist-astronaut candidate in preparation to fly on a mission to study polar mesospheric clouds from space. You can follow his spaceflight training on his Web site.