The finance director of a provincial government stops by the administrator's desk. Six hundred Copilot licences were bought last year; how many are being used? The administrator opens the admin center and has a number within a minute: in the past thirty days, just over a third of licensed users have used Copilot in at least one app. The second question follows straight away: and what is everyone else doing?
The report cannot answer that second question. So you measure Copilot adoption in two layers: what Microsoft shows about the licences, and what AI use is taking place in the organisation, with Copilot as one of the tools. The first layer you already have. The second you have to organise, and that works without tracking a single person.
What does the Microsoft 365 admin center show?
The admin center has usage reports for Microsoft 365 Copilot. They show, per period, how many users hold a licence, how many of them used Copilot, and in which apps that happened: Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Copilot Chat. There is a per-user detail view with the last activity per app; whether it shows names or concealed values depends on a setting in the admin center. Microsoft rearranges these reports regularly, so the exact columns you see can shift.
For three questions that is enough. How many of the licences were used in a period, and what does the unused part cost? Which apps carry the use, and has Copilot landed in Teams but not in Excel? And does use grow after a training session, or slide back afterwards? Those are licence questions, and the report is good at them.
What does it not show?
Everything that is not Copilot. The report covers one service in your own tenant, and by definition can say nothing about ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gamma or the transcription tool a department found on its own. The consumer version of Copilot, opened without a work account, also falls outside it, because it does not belong to the tenant.
On top of that, "active" only says that someone used Copilot in the period. Not what for, not whether it helped, and not whether that same person opened another tool for the same work an hour later. The two thirds without Copilot use from the opening scene are therefore not necessarily people without AI use. The report simply does not know.
| Question | Microsoft usage report | Observation of all AI use |
|---|---|---|
| How many licences were used? | Yes | No |
| In which Microsoft app? | Yes | No, only the domain |
| Which AI tools are in use next to Copilot? | No | Yes |
| Is the consumer version of Copilot being used? | No | Yes, as a separate row |
| What share of AI use runs through allowed tools? | No | Yes |
| Who was it? | Per user, unless concealed | Never |
Why are an unused licence and an unknown tool the same problem?
Back to the province. The observation laid next to the report shows that ChatGPT in the browser is opened on more devices than Copilot, that Perplexity is open daily in the legal team, and that a meeting transcription tool is in use that nobody has ever decided on. A good part of the sixty-odd percent without Copilot use turns out to be using AI after all, just somewhere else.
That is one finding, seen from two sides. Whoever looks at the licences sees under-use. Whoever looks at the tools sees use without a decision. Both say that the preferred route is not the route in practice, and why people pick other tools next to Copilot is the question that comes next. Another round of Copilot training does not fix that if Perplexity does something Copilot does not do for the lawyers.
How do you put the two side by side without tracking people?
With three agreements you make in advance. First: the observation of AI use counts per tool and per day, with no user id. "This domain was opened on this device today" is enough to know how many tools there are and how use shifts, and too little to point at anyone. Which figures that leaves you with, and which you can leave alone, is in measuring AI use.
Second: you use the Microsoft report at organisation level, with names concealed. The licence question needs no names, and a per-person overview of who used Copilot when quickly becomes employee monitoring, with requirements on purpose and necessity and a role for the works council. The distinction between those two kinds of measurement is in AI monitoring versus employee monitoring.
Third: the purpose is on paper before you measure. "Knowing whether the Copilot licences are used and whether Copilot has become the preferred route for AI use" is a purpose the figures fit. "Seeing who is not following the policy" is not, and that is also what the figures cannot do.
BeeSensible provides the second layer. The extension notices when someone opens an AI tool and reports only the domain, at most once a day per device, with no user id and no content; Copilot sits in it as an ordinary row, and the consumer version and Microsoft 365 Copilot are separate entries in the catalogue with their own risk score. The Risk screen shows the share of AI use that runs through allowed tools, with its trend, and which tools still have no decision; nowhere in the dashboard is there a breakdown per employee. What else the module does is on the product page.
