AB-900 lesson 10: Administering Copilot
Day-to-day Copilot administration comes down to four jobs: give the right people a licence, keep metered usage under control, check whether anyone is actually using Copilot, and understand how prompts are kept and shared. A licence is assigned in the Microsoft 365 admin center under Billing > Licenses (or on a user’s page under Users > Active users) by someone who is at least a License Administrator or User Administrator. Adoption is read from the Copilot usage report, which breaks results down over 7, 28, 90 or 180 days.
Assigning licences without waste
On the Licenses page, pick the Copilot product, select Assign licenses, and type users or groups; up to 20 can be added in one pass. Assigning to a group means the group name appears in the list instead of each member, and members are visible under Teams & groups. If a user gets no licence, the product’s Errors & Issues tab explains why (no free licences, conflicting plans, a missing usage location) and offers Reprocess after the cause is fixed.
A licensing recommendations setting, enabled by default, suggests candidates based on Microsoft 365 activity. Self-service purchase is the opposite risk: admins choose whether users may buy a licence themselves, try one, or neither.
Pay-as-you-go billing policies
Pay-as-you-go has two steps, and both matter: create a billing policy, then connect it to a Copilot service such as Copilot Chat or SharePoint agents. The policy links a set of users to an Azure subscription. A budget can be added with email notifications at percentage milestones. Roles that can view and manage it include Global Administrator, Billing Administrator and AI Administrator; Global Reader is read-only.
Disconnecting a policy removes metered access for its users, deleting it disconnects every attached service, and a user-specific policy cannot be connected while an all-users policy is still connected.
Spend is monitored on the Cost Management page for each pay-as-you-go service in the Microsoft 365 admin center, and in more detail in the Azure portal.
Reading usage and adoption
Open Reports > Usage in the admin center, then choose Microsoft Copilot. Three numbers carry the story:
| Metric | What it counts |
|---|---|
| Enabled users | Users who hold a Copilot licence in the period |
| Active users | Enabled users who took an intentional Copilot action in an app |
| Active users rate | Active users divided by enabled users |
Opening the chat pane does not count; sending a prompt does. User names are hidden in usage reports by default.
Beyond that report sits Copilot Analytics, delivered through Viva Insights. Its Copilot Dashboard covers readiness, adoption, impact and sentiment, and agent-related insights need at least 50 Copilot or Viva Insights licences.
Worked example: a quarterly licence review
A 120-person company licensed 40 people two months ago. The usage report for the last 28 days shows 40 enabled users and 16 active users, an active users rate of 40 percent. The user table shows the licensed people with no recent activity. The admin offers training, then unassigns licences nobody needs and reassigns them to heavy Copilot Chat users flagged by the recommendations. Purview audit data is not the tool here, because it is built for security and compliance, not usage counts.
Managing prompts
Prompts are mostly managed by users, not admins. A prompt can be saved for reuse, shared with colleagues (for example as a team prompt in Teams), and deleted. It can also be scheduled so Copilot runs it at set times; scheduled prompts are reviewed, paused or deleted from the scheduled prompts list in the Copilot app. An admin needs to know these options exist.
Easy to confuse
- Usage report vs audit log. Usage report for adoption counts, audit and DSPM for AI for security and compliance.
- Usage report vs Cost Management. Who uses Copilot versus what pay-as-you-go costs.
- Enabled vs active. Enabled means licensed; active means a real action.
- Unscheduling vs deleting a prompt. Turning off a schedule keeps the prompt.
Key points
- Assign licences under Billing > Licenses or Users > Active users, individually or to groups.
- A billing policy needs an Azure subscription and a connection to a service before it works.
- Budgets in a billing policy send email alerts; spend is visible on Cost Management.
- The Copilot usage report shows enabled users, active users and the active users rate.
- Copilot Analytics and the Copilot Dashboard add adoption and impact views.
- Prompts can be saved, shared, scheduled and deleted by users.
Check yourself
Question 1. A manager asks what share of licensed staff actually used Copilot in the last 28 days. Which figure answers this directly?
- A. The number of enabled users
- B. The active users rate in the Copilot usage report
- C. The monthly spend on Cost Management
- D. A count of audit log events
Show answer
Answer: B
Active users divided by enabled users is exactly the share of licensed people who used Copilot. Enabled users only counts licences, spend says nothing about adoption, and audit counts are not meant for usage reporting.
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Question 2. An admin wants to assign a Copilot licence to the whole product design department and have new members covered later without extra work. What is the most efficient approach?
- A. Assign the licence to each person one by one
- B. Create a pay-as-you-go billing policy for the department
- C. Allow self-service purchases for the department
- D. Assign the licence to the department’s group
Show answer
Answer: D
A group assignment covers current and future members. Individual assignment repeats for each person, a billing policy is for metered use, and self-service purchase makes users buy their own.
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Question 3. A user schedules a prompt to run every Monday and later no longer needs it. The user wants it gone completely, not just paused. What should be done?
- A. Delete the prompt from the scheduled prompts list
- B. Turn off the schedule and keep the prompt
- C. Ask an admin to block an agent for the tenant
- D. Ask an admin to disconnect the billing policy
Show answer
Answer: A
Deleting removes the prompt so it never runs again. Turning off the schedule only pauses it, and the admin actions do not affect one person’s prompt.
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This lesson covers the Copilot administration part of the Copilot and agents domain (25 to 30 percent of AB-900). Review it next to the Copilot and agent admin recap and the cheat sheet.