Ongoing since April 2026
Copilot adoption from 4% to 50%+ since April 2026, with no new licenses
A major New York City university had licensed Microsoft 365 Copilot, and almost nobody was using it. Preeminent Solutions built and still runs the program that changed that: a champions community, self-service guides, and department assessments, with a dashboard that shows where Copilot is used.
- 4%Copilot adoption before the program
- 50%+Copilot adoption since April 2026
- 12xincrease in active use among staff with assigned licenses
- 0additional licenses or tools purchased
- Client
- Major New York City university
- Size
- Thousands of staff and faculty across schools and campuses
- Industry
- Higher Education
- Year
- 2026
- Duration
- Ongoing since April 2026
- Area of expertise
The challenge
The university had assigned Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses to 239 staff. Then usage stalled. Staff didn’t know where Copilot showed up in the apps they used, couldn’t tell the web tab from the work tab, and weren’t sure what was safe to type into it.
With student records in scope, that last gap carried real risk: when the sanctioned tool is invisible, people reach for consumer AI tools instead.
What we did
A champions community, not a class
A champions community that meets regularly: Copilot on real university work, open questions, and Show & Tell, where staff demo what they’ve built. Sessions are recorded for anyone who can’t attend.
Self-service
An onboarding kit: a plain-language overview, a toolkit guide, prompts written against the university’s own tasks, a learning path, and the SCOPE prompting framework (Source, Context, Objective, Parameters, Expected output).
Department assessments
Assessments in Human Resources, Student Aid, and several schools found the workflows where Copilot and automation return the most time.
A dashboard in the university’s tenant
Our Copilot adoption dashboard is a Power BI report we built on Power Platform and run in the university’s tenant. It baselines adoption against assigned licenses, tracks it by application and department, and refreshes daily. It shows interactions, users grouped from power users to inactive, and the cost of seats nobody uses. The next round of enablement goes where use is flat. When dashboard data and session feedback showed the first prompting framework wasn’t sticking, the framework was rebuilt.
Results
Paid-for seats in use
Adoption counts staff with assigned licenses, not the larger number of licenses bought.
Use inside the rules
Staff work in the sanctioned tool, inside the university’s tenant and data protections.
Evidence for renewal
Usage data by department to decide where seats are renewed, expanded, or reassigned.
A pipeline of automation
Department assessments produced agent and workflow projects, in build or testing as of October 2026.
Read about the service: Microsoft 365 Copilot Adoption and AgentsPower Platform
