In this post we look at ways in which Microsoft 365 admins can run reports to check on activity and usage of users with a Copilot license.
If you are a Microsoft 365 admin you are no doubt getting asked all the time to provide your users with a Copilot license. Now, I know how hard it is to justify the additional cost of a Copilot license, which is what led me to write this post. After purchasing a small number of Copilot licenses, I now need to be able to find out what the usage is like for those privileged few are that have the license, as the saying goes “use it or lose it!”.
Here’s a few ways you can report on Copilot activity and usage, plus a detailed look at the method I used.
#1 From the M365 admin center
The M365 admin center offers reporting capabilities out-the-box, which in my case met my needs. You get a choice of verticals including: readiness, usage and agents that show graphs related to the vertical, as well as lists of users based on the selection. I chose the usage vertical for my reporting needs, more on this later.
- Readiness reports: Check which users are eligible for Copilot licenses based on prerequisites like app usage and license assignments.
- Usage reports: View adoption metrics, including how many users are actively engaging with Copilot features.
- Agent reports: View the adoption of agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot in your org. For agent activity on a given day, the report becomes available within 72 hours of the end of that day (in UTC).
#2 Copilot dashboard in Viva Insights
Viva Insights contains a Copilot dashboard that provides actionable insights to help you get ready to deploy Copilot, drive adoption based on how it is being used in your organisation, and measure the impact of Copilot. The official Microsoft documentation states that the dashboard is available for anyone with a Microsoft 365/ Office 365 subscription for business or enterprise, but to access the full capabilities you need at least 50 Copilot or Viva Insight licenses.
In my example, I had the right base licensing (E3), but did not have at least 50 Copilot or Viva Insight licenses so this option wasn’t much good for me.
#3 Using the Graph API (Preview) + PowerShell
For the developers out that, there is a Graph API endpoint that allows you to get access to granular, per-user interaction data, such as retrieving all Copilot interactions for a specific user and analyzing prompts and AI responses using PowerShell.
EXAMPLE
GET /copilot/users/{id}/interactionHistory/getAllEnterpriseInteractionsExample: downloading usage reports for Copilot
- Navigate to the M365 admin center > reports > usage
- Select the Microsoft 365 Copilot usage report
- Select the usage vertical
From here you can download the data behind each visual by pressing the ellipsis next to each one. I wanted to get a report that contained a list of each licensed user, their last activity time overall, plus their last activity per app using Copilot. To do this I exported the Copilot usage details table at the bottom of the page.
Once in Excel, I needed to filter some of my users out as the report includes users who’s Copilot license is active or inactive within the last 180 days. After that, I was able to use my report to determine whether there were users actively using Copilot, or not!
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