Ready to take your Microsoft 365 experience to the next level with Copilot for Microsoft 365? Great decision! Before you start, it’s important to prep your data and tenant first.

Think of Copilot as your digital assistant. Just like any assistant, it needs a clear, organized workspace to be effective. By sorting out your data, you’re setting the stage for Copilot to deliver spot-on assistance. Before Copilot steps in, make sure your security and compliance settings are tight. It’s all about keeping your digital environment secure while leveraging AI’s power.

By investing time to get your Microsoft 365 data and tenant in order, you’re paving the way for a successful Copilot for Microsoft 365 integration. Of course you can do a lot of things manually and if you have resources enough to do this, it could be a good choice. On the other hand, Microsoft provides a lot of services to help you on this.

Some context

Many organisations are making the move to the cloud, and the approach they take can significantly impact their readiness for Copilot for Microsoft 365. A number of them are taking proactive steps, establishing a robust information architecture, cleaning up legacy data, and implementing solid governance strategies. If this resonates with you, chances are you’re in a great position to integrate Copilot for Microsoft 365 seamlessly.

On the flip side, there are those who opt for a direct ‘lift and shift’ approach, migrating their on-premises file shares to SharePoint and Teams to leverage enhanced collaboration features. While this method brings immediate benefits, it often results in transferring outdated, unorganized, and poorly governed data into the new environment. Consequently, when using an assistant like Copilot, it may generate outcomes based on this less-than-ideal data, leading to inaccuracies.

Furthermore, if the security settings from your local file shares haven’t been fully transitioned to your Microsoft 365 setup, there’s a risk that users could access more data than intended. It’s crucial to address these issues to ensure that Copilot works effectively and securely within your organisation.

How to prepare?

Preparing your data for integration with Microsoft 365 is an endeavor that requires considerable effort. Many organizations find themselves at a crossroads, uncertain of the initial steps to take. A common starting point is the development of scripts to delve into data insights. Alternatively, engaging with a Microsoft Partner can provide valuable guidance and facilitate the organization of data. Microsoft also offers an increasing array of services aimed at assisting organizations in this endeavor. Often, the most effective approach combines the use of Microsoft’s services with the expertise of a trusted Microsoft Partner.

There are several services specifically designed to help with data organisation within your tenant:

Microsoft Purview: This suite includes tools for information protection and governance, helping you classify, manage, and protect data across your Microsoft 365 apps and services.
SharePoint Premium (Syntex): SharePoint Syntex uses advanced AI and machine teaching to help you structure data, automate content processing and govern your data.
SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM): now part of SharePoint Premium, but offered as a separate add-on, giving content owners and IT admins the tools, insights, and controls you need to manage content at scale throughout its lifecycle.
Microsoft 365 Archive: a new long-term, cost-effective tier storage solution for your inactive or aging content that is still essential for records and compliance. Because your content is archived in place, it retains Microsoft 365’s valuable security, compliance, search, and rich metadata.

In the context of this blog post, I would highlight two of the above services and how they could help: SharePoint Advanced Management and Microsoft 365 Archive.

SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM)

Microsoft SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM) is a Microsoft 365 add-on that enhances the management and governance of SharePoint and OneDrive, as well as secure collaboration capabilities within Microsoft 365. Here are some of the key features included in SAM:

  • Advanced Access Policies: These policies help secure content collaboration by restricting access to SharePoint sites and OneDrive content to specific Microsoft 365 or security groups. Users who aren’t in the specified groups won’t have access to site content even if they previously had site access permissions or a file sharing link.
  • Data Access Governance Reports: These reports identify SharePoint sites with potentially overshared or sensitive content, allowing for better security and compliance policy application.
  • Conditional Access Policy: With Microsoft Entra authentication context, SAM enforces stricter access conditions for SharePoint sites.
  • Secure Document Libraries: SAM enables sensitivity labels for SharePoint, allowing for default labeling of document libraries to enhance document security.
  • Content Lifecycle Management: SAM includes policies to manage the lifecycle of sites and content, such as blocking downloads from SharePoint sites and OneDrive without needing Microsoft Entra Conditional Access policies. With the inactive site policy, you get insights into inactive sights, inform site owners and decide to take actions on these sites.

These features are administered by SharePoint administrators in the SharePoint admin center and some can be used by site owners as well. For organisations dealing with content sprawl and oversharing, SAM provides a robust set of tools to manage and govern their digital estate effectively.

Microsoft 365 Archive

Microsoft 365 Archive offers cost-effective storage for inactive SharePoint sites. Microsoft 365 Archive allows you to retain this inactive data by moving it into a cold storage tier (archive) within SharePoint. Any data archived with Microsoft 365 Archive will have the same searchability, security, and compliance standards applied automatically at a much reduced cost.

Some advantages of using Microsoft 365 Archive are:

  • Speed – Ultra-fast archive of sites of any size and any number of sites.
  • Cost savings – A lower list price on storage consumption beyond your license-allocated Microsoft 365 storage quota.
  • Lossless metadata – A site will retain all of its metadata and permissions upon reactivation.
  • Decluttering – Explicit separation between active and inactive content to help you manage your site’s lifecycle.

Your organisation might need to keep inactive or aging data for a long period of time. In most cases for compliance reasons, but it also could be the case you moved your data to the cloud and you are not aware which sites are inactive or outdated. I think combining SAM’s Content Lifecycle Management inactive site policies in combination with Microsoft 365 Archive could really help organisations. Archived data is not is not taken into account in the Semantic Search Index, which is used by Copilot for Microsoft 365. This means your Copilot gets only fresh and up to date data.

At the moment only site-level archiving is supported. As you can read on the Microsoft 365 Archive FAQ page, file-level archiving is released later in 2024. This means archiving will not be an all or nothing thing, but you can also archive on a file-level and keep the accurate data in the site.

Conclusion

As numerous organizations transition to cloud-based solutions, the importance of a solid information architecture, thorough data cleanup, and robust governance cannot be overstated. These elements are crucial for success in the cloud, and they become even more critical when integrating Copilot for Microsoft 365. The accuracy of Copilot’s AI-driven results heavily relies on the quality of your data.

Tackling data cleanup and identifying inactive sites can be a daunting task if approached solely through scripting. However, Microsoft’s latest offerings, such as SharePoint Premium, SharePoint Advanced Management, and Microsoft 365 Archive, provide valuable assistance in modernizing your tenant and ensuring your data is current and well-organized. These services simplify the process, making it more manageable to prepare your environment for the advanced capabilities of Copilot.

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