4.2.1. License Assignment and Access Control

💡 First Principle: Copilot license assignment works the same way as any M365 license — individual assignment in the M365 admin center, or group-based licensing for scale. But controlling which features within Copilot are available requires additional configuration in the Copilot settings section of the admin center.

Assigning Copilot licenses:

1. Navigate to Microsoft 365 admin center → Billing → Licenses
2. Select the Microsoft 365 Copilot license
3. Assign to individual users, or use group-based licensing to assign to a security group

Controlling Copilot feature access: In the Microsoft 365 admin center → Copilot → Settings, admins can:

• Enable or disable specific Copilot features per user group (e.g., disable Copilot in Teams for a subset of users)
• Control whether users can use pay-as-you-go features
• Manage which agents are available in the tenant
• Configure Copilot access for guest users

Features that can be individually enabled or disabled:

• Copilot in specific M365 apps (Teams, Outlook, Word, etc.)
• Web grounding (Copilot's ability to search the web for responses)
• Copilot in meetings (real-time assistance during Teams meetings)
• Researcher and Analyst agents
• SharePoint Copilot (pay-as-you-go)

⚠️ Exam Trap: Disabling a Copilot feature for a user doesn't revoke their Copilot license. The license remains assigned; the specific feature is disabled through policy. You can have a licensed user with some Copilot features disabled.

Reflection Question: You want all users in your tenant to have the Copilot license but want to disable web grounding (Bing search) for compliance reasons. What two things do you need to do, and where are each of those settings managed?