Microsoft 365 Copilot can transform how your organization works — but only if your data is ready for it.
The quality of Copilot’s output depends directly on how well your data is organized, governed, and secured. Without a solid data foundation, Copilot risks surfacing irrelevant, incomplete, or even sensitive content.
At ProArch, we’ve helped organizations through the journey of preparing their Microsoft 365 environments for copilot adoption.
The common thread? Success starts with data readiness.
Here’s what that means and how to get there.
Why Data Readiness Matters for Microsoft 365 Copilot
Before diving into setup or deployment, it’s important to understand how Microsoft 365 Copilot accesses and uses your organization’s data.
- Copilot pulls insights from Microsoft Graph: Copilot doesn’t just rely on public or generic models. It connects to your organization’s data (emails, calendar, chats, documents, meeting transcripts) via Microsoft Graph. This makes the output highly relevant – If your data is structured and governed well.
- Permissions define what Copilot can show: Copilot only surfaces data to users they already have at least view-level access to. If your Microsoft 365 environment’s permissions are too broad, sensitive content may be unintentionally exposed.
- Interaction data is stored, but not used to train core AI models: Microsoft ensures that prompts, responses, and data accessed via Graph are stored for audit and interaction history, but are not used to train the underlying foundation models. Your data stays within your Microsoft tenant.
- Your organization’s governance, security, and compliance policies still apply: Copilot must operate within your existing regulatory, retention, and privacy boundaries.
If your data is disorganized, inconsistent, overexposed, or unmanaged, Copilot may surface misleading, incomplete, or risky answers or simply frustrate users with irrelevant results.
5 Steps to Prepare Data for Copilot
1. Clean Up Your Data Estate
Start with a data inventory.
- Identify what’s valuable, what’s redundant, and what’s risky
- Archive or delete outdated content
- Remove duplicates and irrelevant files
- Standardize metadata to improve searchability
Think of this as spring cleaning for your digital workspace.
2. Classify and Protect Sensitive Information
- Use Microsoft Purview to label sensitive data
- Apply sensitivity labels consistently across Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams
This ensures Copilot respects your compliance boundaries and doesn’t surface protected content to unauthorized users.
3. Fix Over-Permissioning
Copilot respects Microsoft 365 permissions. But if your environment is over-permissioned, users may see data they shouldn’t.
- Audit access rights
- Remove excessive permissions
- Align sharing policies with Zero Trust principles – least privilege access
4. Enable Semantic Indexing
Copilot uses semantic indexing to understand context and relationships between data. The more connected your data, the smarter Copilot becomes.
- Centralize content in Microsoft 365 apps
- Avoid siloed data sources
5. Review Governance, Compliance & Responsible AI Policies
- Review retention, deletion, and sharing policies
- Implement or update Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies
- Use audit trails to monitor access and usage
- Manage plugins and extensibility with caution
This isn’t just about security, it’s about trust. Your users need to know Copilot won’t compromise compliance.
What success looks like after Data Preparation
Organizations that make the effort to prepare their data usually see:
- Faster, more accurate and relevant results from Copilot
- Fewer surprises or data exposures
- Smoother adoption because users trust the tool
- A Copilot experience that acts as a strategic accelerator
Get Started with ProArch's Microsoft 365 Copilot SmartStart Program
Microsoft 365 Copilot is here. But it’s not plug-and-play. Data preparedness is the foundation and it’s worth getting right.
Want help getting there?
Our Microsoft 365 Copilot SmartStart program helps you go from readiness to deployment in ~6 weeks, covering data cleanup, governance, security, licensing, and adoption.
Get started with ProArch’s Microsoft 365 Copilot SmartStart today.
