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Copilot Chat is the conversational AI assistant built into Teams, Outlook, Word, and Excel. You ask it questions, request drafts, and pull summaries. Copilot Cowork is the agentic workspace that takes multi-step actions across email, files, Teams, and calendar with per-step approval from you. Copilot Chat is personalized through settings and custom instructions. Copilot Cowork is personalized through skill files stored in your OneDrive. The two surfaces do not share custom instructions, saved memories, or chat history, so ABT configures each one separately for your institution.

Microsoft 365 Copilot is safe to use at a regulated financial institution when it is configured correctly. The risks come from gaps your institution creates: over-permissioned files that Copilot will surface, missing Microsoft Purview sensitivity labels that leave Copilot without guidance, and governance gaps in Copilot memory that are not yet covered by Purview retention policies or the Purview audit log. ABT closes those gaps before you go live, documents each one in writing, and delivers a runbook that answers the exam question. An unconfigured Copilot rollout carries real risk. A properly configured one is audit-ready.

The Copilot readiness assessment covers five areas. First, license posture: confirming which users have active Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses and which Copilot features those licenses unlock. Second, permission model: identifying over-shared files and folders that Copilot would surface to users who should not see them. Third, Microsoft Purview sensitivity label coverage: checking whether documents and emails are classified so Copilot knows what it can and cannot do with each one. Fourth, admin center settings: reviewing the Enhanced Personalization posture, Frontier program status, Cowork enablement, and agent governance policy. Fifth, memory governance gaps: documenting in writing the four areas where Copilot memory falls outside current Purview retention and audit coverage. You receive a written gap report at the end of the assessment.

ABT configures Copilot memory governance by first documenting the four current gaps in writing: Purview retention policies do not apply to Copilot memory, memory actions do not appear in the Purview audit log, custom instructions are not yet eDiscovery-discoverable, and data subject requests for memory must be handled manually using Graph Explorer and eDiscovery tools. ABT then sets the Enhanced Personalization posture in the admin center to match your institution's risk tolerance, either confirming it is on or intentionally disabling it for a stricter posture. ABT defines the manual data subject request process for memory and documents the agent-approval policy so your team knows exactly what happens when an employee asks to clear or review Copilot's memory of them.

You do not need to move your entire Microsoft 365 subscription to ABT to start the Copilot configuration engagement. ABT can assess your tenant and deliver the gap report under a project arrangement. However, for the full configuration and ongoing governance service, ABT needs delegated admin access to your Microsoft 365 tenant. The most complete and cost-effective path is for ABT to manage your Microsoft 365 tenant as your Tier-1 Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider. Institutions that manage their Microsoft 365 through ABT get the Copilot configuration, quarterly governance reviews, and, on certain plans, Copilot included at no extra cost or at a bundled rate.

The readiness assessment typically takes one to two weeks depending on the size of your tenant and how quickly your team can complete the permission review. The configuration phase, which covers Copilot Chat custom instructions, Cowork skill installation, Microsoft Purview sensitivity labels, and admin center governance settings, takes two to four weeks for a mid-sized institution. Champion training can run concurrently with configuration. The full assess-configure-train-govern engagement typically completes in four to eight weeks. Institutions that add the premium personalization tier, including custom agents or the MortgageGuide Loan Guidelines Agent, should plan for additional time depending on the scope of the agent build.