Rollout status: Microsoft says Copilot in SharePoint began general availability rollout on September 30, 2026. A rollout date does not guarantee every capability is visible in every tenant immediately.
What Copilot in SharePoint does
Copilot in SharePoint adds natural-language assistance to SharePoint content. Depending on the capability and tenant rollout, users can ask questions, create or organize content, run workflows, and work with sites, pages, reports, and Office files grounded in SharePoint content.
Requirements
- Users need an active Microsoft 365 Copilot license for everyday Copilot in SharePoint capabilities.
- Advanced work uses Copilot Credits through usage-based billing and a spending policy in the Microsoft 365 admin center.
- Site-wide real-time Autofill has additional site-level enablement and usage-based billing requirements.
- SharePoint and Microsoft Copilot language support must overlap for the user experience.
Setup procedure
In the Microsoft 365 admin center, verify that the pilot users have Microsoft 365 Copilot assigned. Allow for normal directory and service propagation before testing.
Select a site with an accountable owner, useful but non-critical content, and permissions that have already been reviewed. Avoid beginning with a tenant-wide content hub or a site containing regulated data.
Use the SharePoint admin center and site settings to determine which AI experience should open from the site’s agent icon. Microsoft’s preview PowerShell availability controls are being retired; existing settings are honored until November 1, 2026, after which administrators should use the documented Site AI settings and Restricted Content Discovery controls.
Have pilot users ask for a summary, locate a known document, and draft a page from approved content. Check whether answers cite the expected files and whether users can open those files directly.
If you need greater scale or advanced agentic operations, create a spending policy, set a budget, assign an owner, and monitor Copilot Credit consumption. Do not treat advanced work as included simply because ordinary Copilot in SharePoint is included with the Copilot license.
Publish a site-by-site rollout list. For each site, record the owner, data classification, pilot result, approved prompts, and rollback or disablement path.
Security and content readiness
Copilot is not a permission repair tool. It works from content the user can access, so overshared libraries and permissive links remain a risk. Before rollout, review sharing links, guest access, site membership, sensitivity labels, retention requirements, and Restricted Content Discovery. Test with ordinary users, not only administrators.
Verification checklist
- Licensed pilot user can see Copilot in SharePoint.
- Answers reference the intended site content.
- Users cannot retrieve content outside their permissions.
- Advanced-work spending is disabled or bounded until approved.
- Site owner knows how to change the AI setting and report a bad result.
Common problems
If the feature is missing, check rollout status, licensing, service health, browser session, and language support. If a site appears to expose too much, stop testing and inspect permissions and sharing links before changing AI settings. If advanced work fails, check Copilot Credits, the spending policy, and site-level enablement rather than repeatedly retrying the prompt.
Sources and rollout notes
This guide reflects Microsoft documentation and release information checked on October 25, 2026. Rollouts can be tenant-, region-, license-, and service-dependent; confirm the feature in your tenant before promising availability.