Use Microsoft Copilot in the M365 Admin Center

What This Does

Microsoft Copilot built into the M365 Admin Center and Azure portal lets you query your tenant in plain English — finding users, licenses, usage reports, and configuration status without building queries or navigating deep menus. For routine admin tasks like finding inactive licenses, reviewing user permissions, or generating usage reports, this cuts through the complexity of the Admin Center's navigation.

Before You Start

• You have Microsoft 365 admin privileges (Global Admin or appropriate role)
• Your organization has Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 licensed (requires M365 Business Standard or higher + Copilot add-on, or E3/E5 with Copilot)
• You're logged into admin.microsoft.com

Steps

1. Access Copilot in the M365 Admin Center

1. Go to admin.microsoft.com and log in with your admin account
2. Look for the Copilot icon in the top-right corner of the Admin Center (a blue sparkle or chat icon)
3. Click it to open the Copilot chat panel on the right side of the screen

What you should see: A chat interface where you can type questions about your M365 tenant.

Troubleshooting: If you don't see the Copilot icon, your organization may not have Copilot for M365 licensed. Check Billing → Licenses to verify.

2. Ask natural language questions about your tenant

Type a question in plain English. Copilot queries your tenant and returns a direct answer with context.

Examples of effective queries:

• "Show me all users who haven't signed in for the last 60 days"
• "Which users in the Finance department have guest access enabled?"
• "How many E3 licenses are we currently using vs. assigned?"
• "Show me all shared mailboxes larger than 10GB"

What you should see: A direct answer with a table or summary, often with a link to the relevant Admin Center page to take action.

3. Generate usage reports on demand

Instead of navigating to Reports → Usage, ask Copilot directly:

• "Show me Teams adoption rates for the last 30 days by department"
• "Which users have never activated their Office apps?"
• "What's our OneDrive storage utilization across the tenant?"

What you should see: A summary with the key metrics and a link to the full report if you need more detail.

4. Get help with admin tasks

Copilot can explain how to do things, not just report on current state:

• "How do I set up conditional access to require MFA for all external users?"
• "What's the recommended process for offboarding a user from M365?"
• "How do I configure a shared mailbox to have an auto-reply?"

What you should see: Step-by-step instructions with links to the relevant Admin Center settings pages.

Real Example

Scenario: Your quarterly license audit is due and you need to identify which M365 licenses can be reclaimed (inactive users, over-licensed, or unactivated).

What you type in Copilot: "Show me all users assigned E3 licenses who haven't signed in to any Microsoft service in the last 90 days."

What you get: A list of users with their last sign-in date, the licenses assigned to each, and their department. Ready to review and take action — reclaim licenses from verified inactive accounts.

Time saved: What would require running PowerShell queries or navigating through the Admin Center's User reports → Last sign-in → Export → filter → takes 5 seconds as a Copilot query.

Tips

• Be specific about time ranges and criteria — "inactive users" is vague; "users with no sign-in in 90 days across any M365 service" gets a precise answer
• Ask follow-up questions: after getting a list of inactive users, ask "Which of these users have shared mailbox delegates that are still active?" to identify accounts that can't simply be deleted
• Copilot works best for reporting and navigation; for bulk changes (assigning 50 licenses at once), you still need PowerShell or the Admin Center UI

Tool interfaces change — if a button has moved, look for similar AI/magic/smart options in the same menu area.