Before you begin
Most businesses buy the licence first and only then think about who gets it and what the assistant should reach. With a chat tool that only sees what you type into it, that is a small mistake. With Copilot it is a large one, because on day one the assistant finds everything that lies open in your business. Five decisions belong before that. Together they take half an hour and spare you the clean-up.
1.1 Who gets a licence?
Not "everyone" and not "just me, let's see". Write down two or three functions: the office manager and me. Every licence is a person who can reach everything they are allowed to see with one question — and whom you have to take out again on their last working day.
Copilot is an add-on per person, not a switch for the whole business. That is convenient: you can start with one licence, on your own account, and extend once the shares are in order. Whoever starts small can grow. Whoever starts wide has to collect again.
1.2 For what?
Two or three concrete tasks, not a wish list. Summarise long e-mail threads. Prepare quotation texts from the enquiry. Turn meetings into tasks. That is not bureaucracy but the yardstick by which you measure in three months whether the licence has paid off. Without it, only a feeling remains.
1.3 Where are your files?
This question does not exist with other tools, and here it decides almost everything. Copilot in Word works with files that are stored in OneDrive or SharePoint and that the person has access to; files that only sit on the computer or on an old server it does not see.
Source: Microsoft Support, "Draft and add content with Copilot in Word", support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/draft-and-add-content-with-copilot-in-word-069c91f0-9e42-4c9a-bbce-fddf5d581541 (search excerpt, accessed 14 September 2026) · Microsoft Support, "Frequently asked questions about Copilot in Excel", support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/frequently-asked-questions-about-copilot-in-excel-7a13758f-d61e-4a56-8440-f2c9a07802ec (search excerpt, accessed 14 September 2026).If your files are not yet in the cloud storage, introducing Copilot is at the same time introducing the cloud storage — and that is the larger of the two decisions. It has nothing to do with the assistant and should not depend on it: first the filing, with order and shares (Section 4), then the assistant on top. If your files are already there, then this applies: what is shared today is findable for Copilot tomorrow. Section 4 shows how to check.
1.4 With which data?
Here this guide stops being an operating manual. What may go into an AI tool and what may not is not decided at the interface but by your business and by what applies to you. With Copilot the question sharpens, because "going in" no longer means only what somebody types, but also what sits in a filing area the assistant searches. Personnel files in a folder that three people can access used to be a folder. With Copilot they are an answer to a question.
What to consider is set out in Volume 1, Section 12.3 — where data leakage through inputs is described as a risk — and in Section 2.4, where the contractual checkpoints stand. For a start, one line you draw yourself is enough: What you would not send to an external service provider without a contract does not belong in a filing area Copilot sees either — nor in an input. Section 6 turns that into a list.
1.5 Who tidies up?
One person, by name. Once a month they check who has a licence, which shares have been added, and whether what was decided three months ago still holds. In a one-person business that is you — so put an appointment in your calendar, otherwise it will not happen. Section 8 says what this person looks at.
What Copilot sees, everyone with the share sees. Copilot grants no rights; it uses them. Whoever has the shares in order has Copilot in order.
No picture in this section. That is deliberate: whoever sees screenshots here starts clicking instead of deciding.