Today, we were thrilled to announce availability updates to education audiences for Microsoft Copilot and Copilot for Microsoft 365.
Learn more about:
- Today’s announcement: aka.ms/CopilotExpansionEDU
- Copilot for Microsoft 365 availability for M365 A3 and A5 faculty: aka.ms/MTC/CopilotforEDU
In this blog, we will focus on options and recommendations for managing user access to Copilot with commercial data protection. We launched Copilot to M365 A3 and A5 faculty in August, and starting in early February 2024 we are expanding eligibility to:
- Microsoft 365 A1 and Office 365 A1/A3/A5 for faculty
- Microsoft 365 A1/A3/A5 and Office 365 A1/A3/A5 for higher education students 18+
If you aren’t a Microsoft customer today, you can learn more about our educational plans including Office 365 A1, a simple and free option for students and educators at eligible institutions.
Commercial data protection means user and organizational data are protected, prompts and responses are not saved, Microsoft has no eyes-on access, and chat data isn't used to train the underlying large language models. It also provides seamless, managed access to Copilot using Microsoft Entra ID. Unlike Copilot for Microsoft 365, Copilot has no access to organizational data in the Microsoft 365 Graph. Commercial data protection applies to users with eligible work or school accounts wherever Copilot is available. It is available at no additional cost. Learn more: https://aka.ms/Copilot/Docs
Administrators have the ability to enable or disable commercial data protection for all or select users with the Copilot service plan. Learn more here: Manage Copilot | Microsoft Learn
To block access to Copilot entirely on your network:
- Disable the Copilot service plan for your eligible users
- Update your DNS configuration by setting the DNS entry for www.bing.com to be a CNAME for nochat.bing.com
In late January: the Copilot service plan (part name: Bing_Chat_Enterprise) will be available for you to manage this experience for all eligible licenses indicated above.
In early February: commercial data protection will be available in Copilot for eligible users and turned on by default unless you have disabled the service plan.
We recommend all Education customers take additional steps to manage appropriate deployment:
- Validate your school type as Higher education, Primary/Secondary/K-12, or Other (research institution, academic library, etc.) to help us tailor the search and chat experience for your users. To do this, open the Microsoft 365 admin center and navigate to Search & intelligence, Configurations and then Microsoft Search in Bing for work or school. Learn more: Select a school or work search experience | Microsoft Learn
- Update Age group classifications and Consent provided for minor fields in the Microsoft Entra admin center. Higher education organizations can use these fields to indicate which students should or should not be eligible in their tenant, and all organizations can use these fields to prepare for future offers or to manage access to existing applications. There are multiple ways to update these fields including leveraging School Data Sync, PowerShell, the Graph API, or manually. Learn more: Elevating User Management with Age Group and Consent Provided Fields in Microsoft Entra - Microsoft Community Hub
- Use Microsoft Entra terms of use for any desired additional or custom use policies. Organizations can use terms of use along with Conditional Access policies to require users or guests to accept your terms of use policy before getting access. These terms of use statements can be generalized or specific to groups or users and provided in multiple languages. Note: a working Microsoft Entra tenant with Microsoft Entra ID P1, or trial license, is required and currently available to Microsoft 365 A3 and A5 customers. Learn more: Terms of use in Microsoft Entra ID - Microsoft Entra ID | Microsoft Learn
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