Can I roll out Microsoft 365 Copilot to only some users?
Yes. Copilot licences are assigned per user (directly or through a security group), and a pilot group is the recommended starting point rather than a tenant-wide switch-on. Restricting the rollout to a pilot group is standard practice, not a workaround.
What a pilot rollout needs first
- An identity and permissions baseline — overshared SharePoint sites and OneDrive folders become visible to Copilot exactly as they were before, just faster to find.
- A pilot group chosen for a mix of roles and content types, not just the most enthusiastic team.
- A measurement plan (the Copilot Dashboard in Viva Insights) set up before the pilot starts, so there's a baseline to compare against.
Read next
- How to enable Microsoft 365 Copilot for a pilot group— How to enable Microsoft 365 Copilot for a pilot group: licence prerequisites, the oversharing check, group-based assignment, Teams settings, what to measure.
- Microsoft 365 Copilot rollout prerequisites— What you need to have in place before deploying Microsoft 365 Copilot — identity, data hygiene, labels, and pilot strategy.
- Microsoft 365 Copilot pilot best practices— How to run a Copilot pilot that actually generates useful learnings before broader rollout.