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Why SharePoint Readiness Matters

Checks for IT Managers & Microsoft 365 Administrators

Checks for Site Owners & Business Users

Checks for ALL Users

The Bottom Line

Introduction

Microsoft 365 Copilot has the potential to dramatically improve productivity by helping users find information, summarise content, generate documents, analyse data, and automate routine tasks. However, the quality of Copilot’s responses is directly related to the quality, security, and organisation of the information stored within Microsoft 365. For most organisations, that means SharePoint.

SharePoint has become the primary knowledge platform underpinning Microsoft 365, and many of Copilot’s most valuable responses are generated using content stored in SharePoint sites, Teams, and OneDrive

The good news is that if your SharePoint environment is already well-governed, Copilot adoption will be significantly easier. The challenge is that many organisations have accumulated years of unmanaged content, excessive permissions, duplicated information, and outdated sites. While these issues may have gone unnoticed in the past, AI has a way of exposing information management problems very quickly. As Microsoft continues to position SharePoint as the content foundation for Copilot and AI agents, ensuring that information is secure, accurate, and discoverable has never been more important.

Why SharePoint Readiness Matters

Copilot only presents information that users already have permission to access. However, many organisations struggle with oversharing, where users have access to content they should not necessarily see. If permissions have been granted too broadly, Copilot may surface information that was previously hidden in obscure folders or forgotten sites. Likewise, poorly structured content can result in inaccurate or incomplete responses.

Preparing your SharePoint environment for Copilot should therefore be viewed as both an information management exercise and a security initiative

Checks for IT Managers and Microsoft 365 Administrators

Before rolling out Copilot, IT teams should perform the following checks:

• • Review SharePoint and Teams permissions for oversharing and excessive access.
  • Audit external sharing settings and identify sites that expose information too broadly.
  • Identify inactive, duplicate, or abandoned SharePoint sites and archive or remove them where appropriate.
  • Ensure site ownership is clearly assigned and that every site has an active owner.
  • Review lifecycle and retention policies to ensure outdated content is appropriately managed.
  • Implement a governance framework covering site provisioning, permissions, content management, and ownership.
  • Assess Microsoft Purview policies for sensitivity labels, compliance requirements, and data protection.
  • Identify sites containing highly sensitive information and ensure access controls are appropriate.
  • Review metadata strategies, content types, and information architecture to improve search quality and discoverability.
  • Develop user education plans so staff understand how Copilot accesses and uses organisational information.

You may want to check out this blog post, where I talk about a common mistake that SharePoint administrator make…

Checks for Site Owners and Business Users

Copilot readiness is not solely an IT responsibility. SharePoint site owners and content creators also play a critical role in ensuring information is accurate, useful and secure.

Site owners should consider the following:

• • Remove outdated, duplicated, and superseded documents.
  • Review site permissions and confirm all SharePoint site members genuinely require access.
  • Check document libraries are organised logically and consistently.
  • Use meaningful document names and folder structures (where folders are appropriate).
  • Apply metadata where available instead of relying solely on folders.
  • Ensure important business documents are stored in SharePoint rather than local drives or personal storage locations.
  • Review pages and content regularly to ensure information remains accurate.
  • Clearly identify authoritative versions of policies, procedures, and templates.
  • Ensure key business knowledge is documented rather than remaining locked in emails or personal notes.
  • Consider whether a new employee or colleague would be able to locate and understand important information without assistance.
  • Regularly audit your SharePoint lists and libraries to check for files, folders and list items with “unique” (non-inherited) permissions:
    1. Within each SharePoint site in which you’re a site owner/administrator, go to:  [site URL]/_layouts/15/user.aspx
    2. If the message highlighted below is shown, select Show these items to view all lists, libraries, folders, documents and list items currently not inheriting their permissions from the site.

1. 1. 3. Evaluate whether the unique permissions of each object are still required, and it not, re-establish permission inheritance between that object (e.g. document) and its parent (e.g. library or folder)

TOP TIP: You can use Power Automate to re-establish permission inheritence en-masse within your lists and libraries!

Checks for ALL Users

Every user is responsible for ensuring files and data which they own are appropriately secured…

Even if you’re not an IT administrator or SharePoint Site Owner, that doesn’t mean there’s no information for which you’re responsible – you are the owner of your OneDrive library, and everything within it!

EVERY user should do the following:

• • Within OneDrive, which can be access in a web browser, through Microsoft Teams, or via Microsoft Outlook, appraise the files and folders in your OneDrive which are currently available to someone other than just you: