Governance, cost, lifecycle and enterprise automation
Use this section when AI or automation has moved beyond individual experimentation and become something the organisation needs to manage, monitor, fund and retire responsibly.
Typical products and features
- Agent 365
- Copilot Credits
- Copilot Cowork
- Purview
- Entra
- Power Platform admin centre
- Unattended automation
Best-fit users
- IT, security, governance, operations and senior process owners
Extra cost risk: High; usage-based billing, premium licensing and operational controls may apply
Watch-outs
- Keep detailed governance here rather than repeating it on every beginner capability.
- Track ownership, access, cost, lifecycle and exceptions once services are shared or business-critical.
- AI Redlines remain separate from normal governance and should be treated as hard boundaries.
Example use cases (18)
Run unattended validation checks
Run scheduled or unattended checks against records and flag exceptions for review without requiring a person to start the process.
Where: Advanced enterprise guidance
Run periodic access and lifecycle health checks
Periodically review Copilot licences, Cowork access, agents, connectors and automations to remove stale access, confirm owners and retire work that has ended.
Where: Advanced enterprise guidance
Choose between Chat and delegated multi-step work
Use Chat for an interactive question or quick task; consider Cowork or another delegated capability when you have a defined multi-step job with a clear outcome.
Where: Advanced guidance / Copilot
Diagnose a missing Copilot feature
Work out whether a missing feature is caused by licence, rollout, admin policy, permissions, region or billing configuration.
Where: Advanced guidance
Understand what your Copilot access includes
Check which capabilities are included in your current Microsoft 365 setup and which depend on a paid licence, admin enablement or usage-based capacity.
Where: Advanced guidance
Automate repetitive data entry unattended
Use unattended automation for repetitive system entry where APIs or modern connectors are unavailable and the process is suitable for automation.
Where: Advanced enterprise guidance
Continuous document intake
Process submitted documents and route exceptions
Where: Power Automate + AI Builder
Monitor external sources for change
Watch selected external sources, detect changes and alert the relevant owners for review.
Where: Advanced enterprise guidance
Prepare records for downstream processing
Validate, organise and prepare records automatically before they enter a downstream production or operational process.
Where: Advanced enterprise guidance
Build an agent inventory before setting policy
IT first uses the Agent 365 registry to discover the agents already present across the tenant, then records each agent's owner, publisher, purpose, status, usage, data sources and governance state before deciding what to restrict or retire.
Where: Agent 365 / Microsoft 365 admin centre
Review agent access, knowledge sources and permissions
An administrator reviews a shared agent's knowledge sources, connectors, users, owner and effective access before wider publication, and repeats the review when the agent's purpose, owner or source data changes.
Where: Agent 365 / Microsoft 365 admin centre / Entra / Purview
Find and triage unmanaged, ownerless and stale agents
IT uses the Agent 365 registry to identify unmanaged agents, agents without owners and low-activity agents, then checks business purpose and data access before deciding whether to assign an owner, block, retain or retire them.
Where: Agent 365 / Microsoft 365 admin centre
Delegate a multi-step preparation task
Ask Cowork or another delegated capability to gather approved sources, create several draft outputs and prepare a defined deliverable across multiple steps.
Where: Advanced enterprise guidance
Set Cowork spending limits before rollout
IT enables Cowork only for a pilot group, sets user or group-level spending limits and monitors Copilot Credit use before wider adoption.
Where: Microsoft 365 admin / Copilot Cowork cost controls
Maintain an agent register
IT and governance teams keep a live register of every shared agent, its owner, source material, permissions, connectors, review date and retirement status.
Where: Agent 365 / Microsoft 365 admin centre / governance register
Decide when AI transcription and summarisation are appropriate for sensitive meetings
The AO sets a policy for sensitive meetings that distinguishes between permitted, restricted and prohibited uses of Teams transcription, Copilot summaries and meeting agents, based on the data involved, the purpose and the controls available.
Where: Teams admin centre / Purview / governance process
Use Security Copilot for IT/security investigations
An IT/security team uses Security Copilot agents to support investigations across Defender, Entra, Intune or Purview, while monitoring included compute usage.
Where: Defender / Entra / Intune / Purview / Security Copilot
Choose the right Copilot surface
Match the task to Chat, an in-app Copilot experience, automation, an agent or delegated multi-step work.
Where: Advanced guidance