Copilot: Self-Service Purchase coming soon

According to the message center Microsoft will roll out the new license request feature and self-service purchase option for Microsoft 365 Copilot by the end of March. These features will be available to users with various Microsoft 365 plans, including E1, E3, E5, and standalone products. Both features will be integrated within Microsoft 365 apps, such as Copilot Chat. The License Request feature I find quite beneficial, as it empowers end-users to justify their usage and request access. At least as long as the organization is already rolling out Copilot to their employees. However, the Self-Service Purchase option may raise concerns for organizations that are not yet prepared to deploy Copilot. It is advisable for all organizations to review their self-purchase settings and make decisions to allow or deny access based on their readiness state. License Request: This feature allows users to request a Microsoft 365 Copilot license directly from their admin. It helps efficiently assign ...

Prepare for: Multiple account access to Copilot in Microsoft 365

There is a new (As of January 30, 2025) policy setting is available in Cloud Policy, which will enable multiple account access to Copilot in Microsoft 365 desktop and mobile apps, allowing users to utilize Copilot across different signed-in accounts. 

The feature itself will allow a user to use a fully licensed Copilot feature from one tenant on "any" document available to them in a tenant they have access to. No matter if the user has Copilot in any of the other tenants. The feature will be rolled out globally from early March 2025 and is expected to be completed by late March 2025, but organizations might want to look into this policy and understand how it may or may not impact their existing security policies.

I recommend reading up on the following article, where details about what the user can access in different scenarios are described.

Here are some of the things to take into consideration: 

  • Copilot's data protection is based on the identity used to access the file, ensuring enterprise data protection regardless of the account used. 
  • The setting for web grounding in Copilot is also identity-based. If web grounding is disabled for a particular identity, it will remain disabled even when accessing Copilot from another account.
  • If a user is accessing a document in a different tenant, work grounded data from the home tenant will NOT be available
  • The feature will be available in most of the major apps. 
For organizations considering to restrict this behaviour, Microsoft has provided the following Learn Article.