Your Microsoft 365 Copilot licences are live. Three months in, adoption is flat — and no one can say exactly why.

The licence is the easy part. Whether Copilot delivers isn’t decided on the invoice; it’s decided in the tenant. On 29 May 2026, Microsoft published the ten settings it treats as critical for a working rollout — and noted that tenants left on default tend to stay “at-risk”, while correctly configured tenants show measurable gains in usage and satisfaction. Most organisations enable the licences and stop there. Here is what each group of settings means in business and governance terms — not IT trivia.

Two settings govern whether people actually reach the tool. Pinning the Copilot app to the Windows taskbar gives everyone one visible entry point. Channel Readiness keeps Office on the release track that receives Copilot features on time.

Miss these and half your users never find the tool. Adoption starts with visibility.

Four settings give Copilot real context to work from:

• Web Search — adds current public information, so answers don’t rely only on stale data.
• Teams meeting transcription — turns meetings into structured text: the basis for summaries, action items and “what was decided”.
• Copilot Connectors — reach data in third-party systems beyond Microsoft 365.
• Core 1P Agents — unlock Microsoft-built agents such as Researcher for multi-step analysis.

Without context, answers are generic. With it, they are about your business.

Three settings cover advanced models and preview features. Two are worth attention: Copilot can now also use Anthropic (Claude) models, including directly in Word, Excel and PowerPoint, choosing the right model per task — all within Microsoft’s compliance boundary, with no data leaving the perimeter. For regulated European organisations, that boundary is the point: more capability without losing control.

Copilot Frontier adds governed early access to upcoming features for a limited group. This is where the automation and AI layer sits: power, with a hand on the switch.

The tenth setting, Feedback & Logs, closes the loop — showing where users get stuck and what works, so decisions rest on data, not impressions.

None of these tenant settings appears on the licence invoice. All of them appear in the daily experience of your team. A default tenant produces a weak experience; a weak experience produces weak adoption; weak adoption turns a paid subscription into cost without return — and leaves governance and security gaps unaddressed.

The difference between “Copilot does nothing” and “we don’t work without it” isn’t the AI model. It’s the configuration behind it — the work in the Microsoft 365 admin center that no one sees but everyone feels.

Where does your tenant stand on the ten settings?

We run a short Copilot configuration and governance audit: we show you exactly where you’re on default, what to change, and where the compliance and adoption risks sit — so your licences earn their cost. Factual, no jargon.