Microsoft Copilot: Start thinking about Content Governance today!

There’s a lot of noise right now about Microsoft Copilot. And rightfully so, because it is truly going to revolutionise the way all of us work, large and small. Assuming it delivers on its promises and there are a lot of promises but from what I have seen myself, it is going to deliver.

I am seeing an important difference between this launch and the many other, massive launches that I have seen, and been a part of from Microsoft over the years. I see more substance in the previews and promotional videos and demos. There is a lot more variation in features and functions shown and that indicates that the product is solid. I get the sense there more product truth, and less vapourware in what we have been shown already. Possibly because this launch cycle has been much shorter than usual. The lid has been kept on much tighter, and much closer to General Availability, this time. And those are good signs.

On the flip side this means that we all have less time to prepare, and this product will require a lot of preparation, if we are going to be able to reap the full benefits of it. That means we need to start doing some work ourselves that neither Microsoft, nor Copilot will automagically do for us. And we need to think about the end user experience from day one. If we invest in expensive Copilot licenses and unleash the power of Copilot, without doing the groundwork the end users are not going to be impressed once we flick that switch.

Anyone who’s worked with user adoption and change management knows that first impressions tend to last. If you haven’t prepared right, your users will be disappointed and the journey to turn a negative experience around is ten times harder than doing the prep work right. So don’t underestimate the value of preparing for Copilot.

For starters, we need to think about user behaviours and the culture in our organization, from several different perspectives. Governance and access controls become important now and I want to start by thinking about creation, lifecycle management and access rights of SharePoint sites, because that is where most of our content sits. Let’s start by looking at something we all use, every day: Teams. ?

How are Teams and SharePoint related?

Every Team that gets created means a SharePoint site (Teams-connected site) is created, and for every private or shared channel within that Team, yet another SP site (channel site) is created. Let’s say you create 10 Teams, with 10 channels (private or shared) in each Team, then you automatically end up with anything between 10 or 110 new SP sites. 10 Teams-connected sites and 10x10 channel sites = 110 SP sites. That’s a lot of sites that may be unmanaged, depending on how well defined our governance model is regarding who can create Teams and how you allow Teams and channels to be shared by members or owners of those Teams.

As the same permissions apply to the auto-generated SharePoint sites and the content within them, if we don’t have governance principles defined and put in place, we will have a lot more than 110 SP sites to worry about, very quickly. This is what we commonly refer to as SharePoint (site) sprawl and it drives content volumes to grow exponentially.

How and for what purpose do we create Teams?

In terms of teams, there are two types: public and private Teams.

·?????? Public teams are open to anyone in the organization, and users can join them directly.

·?????? Private teams are restricted to team members approved by the team owner(s). This is a typical setting for project teams and virtual teams in a large organization.

Similarly, there are three different types of channels:

·?????? Standard channels – available to all team members in Teams. They are open for all team members, and anything posted is searchable by others.

·?????? Private channels – intended for discussions that shouldn’t be open to all team members, so you must be invited to join one to view it within a team.

·?????? Shared channels – intended for collaborating with people inside and outside your team or organization.

If we go back to our simple math example in the above, we could end up with as many as 110 new SP sites. If we create all channels within the Teams as standard channels, we end up with only 10 SP sites (Team-connected sites), but the default Documents library in each of those Teams, will have as many folders as we have (standard) channels in them. And we are back at what type of (sharing) culture we have in our organisation to begin with!

Once members of those Teams and channels, start sharing the content within them or sharing the folders (channels), not only does the content quickly grow but we end up with an organically grown permissions tree, that can become almost impossible to oversee.

How do we manage Team lifecycles?

Many of us, me included, are very good at planning and structuring our work, when we start a new activity or project but not so good at managing these plans and structures over time. Especially not towards the end of the lifecycle. As people move in and out of projects, job roles or even in or out of the organization, we end up with a lot of SP sites and tons of content in them, that eventually become abandoned. These are what we usually refer to as inactive, or orphaned sites. Having a governance model in place also means thinking about the lifecycle of our content, so stale content, duplicates and forbidden content is locked down or deleted when it should be.

Confusing? Yes, it absolutely can be! Unless you think these things trough. Therefore, my number one pro tip when preparing for Copilot, is to define a Content strategy and governance model, across at least three dimensions of Content:

·?????? Structure

·?????? Roles & Responsibilities

·?????? Lifecycle management

I will continue to address these three dimensions, and ways to manage them smartly using existing SharePoint features and tools like e.g. SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM) and Microsoft Syntex , to automate processes, policies and security for your Content and help you ready your organization for Copilot in my newsletter: KM Strategy put to work .

For a heads-up around some of those, I recommend that you take a listen to the IntraZone podcast and especially the Yosemite Syntex SAM episode, where Mark Kashman and co-host Chris McNulty , talks to Sesha Mani about the impact of SP sprawl and (poor) lifecycle management of your SP sites.