The Microsoft Copilot Dashboard is a free report in Viva Insights that shows how ready your organisation is for Copilot, how many people use it and what difference it makes. As of October 2026 you don't need a Copilot licence or a paid Viva Insights licence to view it, but the full feature set, including benchmarks, agent insights and trendlines, needs 50 or more Copilot licences or 50 or more Viva Insights licences.
The gap between viewing it and getting everything from it decides how useful it'll be for you. A business with a handful of Copilot seats gets the core adoption numbers. A business with 50 seats or more gets the comparisons, the trends and the manager views. Here's what each group sees, how long data takes to appear, and where to find the dashboard, all from Microsoft's own documentation as of October 2026.
Who can open the Copilot Dashboard
Microsoft says the dashboard is available to any customer with a Microsoft 365 or Office 365 subscription for business or enterprise and an active Exchange Online account. Neither a paid Viva Insights licence nor a Copilot licence is needed just to view it.
Viewing and having data in it are two different things, though. Data processing only starts once your tenant has at least 50 assigned Viva Insights licences, or at least 1 assigned Copilot licence that includes the Viva Insights service plan. So a business that hasn't bought any Copilot seats can open the dashboard, but there won't be anything to measure until those licences are in place.
The four things it measures
Microsoft frames the dashboard around three jobs: getting ready for Copilot, driving adoption and measuring impact. The metrics fall into four groups:
- Readiness: whether your organisation is set up to use Copilot.
- Adoption: who's using Copilot and Copilot Chat.
- Impact: the difference that use makes.
- Sentiment: how people feel about it, drawn from Pulse and Glint surveys.
Depending on your licences, those metrics are aggregated at tenant level or at user level. Sentiment is one of the extras that only appears for bigger tenants, which I'll come to below.
What you get by licence count
This is the table that matters most. It's based on the licence tiers in Microsoft's documentation as of October 2026.
| Your tenant | Dashboard features |
|---|---|
| 50+ Viva Insights licences (any number of Copilot licences), or 50+ Copilot licences | Everything: Readiness, Adoption and Impact with tenant-level and group-level metrics and HR filters, Copilot and Copilot Chat insights, agent insights including the Agent Dashboard, benchmarks, intelligent summaries, Pulse and Glint sentiment, week-level and month-level trendlines, a group view for managers with delegation, and an All licence type view |
| 1 to 49 Copilot licences, no Viva Insights licence | Readiness, Adoption and Impact with tenant and group metrics and HR filters, and Copilot and Copilot Chat insights |
What smaller tenants miss out on
If you've got between 1 and 49 Copilot licences and no Viva Insights licences, Microsoft lists seven things you won't get:
- agent insights and the Agent Dashboard
- benchmarks
- intelligent summaries
- Pulse and Glint sentiment metrics
- week-level and month-level trendlines
- the group-level view for managers
- the All licence type view
Losing trendlines is the one I'd feel most. Without them you're looking at where adoption stands rather than which way it's moving, so you'll want to export the numbers on a regular schedule and track the trend yourself. Losing the manager view means team leads don't get their own group view, so someone with access has to pull their numbers for them.
How long before data shows up
Don't expect numbers the day you assign licences. Here's the order things happen in, as Microsoft describes it:
- Assign at least 1 Copilot licence that includes the Viva Insights service plan, or at least 50 Viva Insights licences.
- Data processing starts, and can take up to seven days after licence assignment.
- Once it's processed, the dashboard fills in for the features your licence tier includes.
- If you change licences later, wait two days before taking a day-level export, because exports made within two days of a licence change won't reflect it.
That two-day rule is easy to trip over. If you add 20 seats on a Monday and export day-level metrics on the Tuesday, your report won't show those new seats, so plan your reporting dates around licence changes.
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Where to find it
- Open the Viva Insights web app.
- Select Copilot Dashboard in the left menu.
If you can't see it, the likely reason is access rather than licensing: admins control who can open the Viva Insights web app, so ask your Microsoft 365 admin to add you. Microsoft also notes that many dashboard features are available in GCC (Government Community Cloud) as well as in the worldwide multi-tenant service.
Measuring agents like Researcher and Analyst
If your team uses the Researcher and Analyst agents, Microsoft's Researcher FAQ says there's no separate admin report for that usage. The place to read agent adoption is the dashboard's agent insights, and those sit in the full feature set, so you'll need 50 or more Copilot or Viva Insights licences to see them. For the governance side of agents, who can build and run them, my guide to Agent 365 goes further.
My verdict
If you've bought Copilot seats, open this dashboard. It's free to view, it's built by Microsoft for exactly this job, and even the smaller tier shows you readiness and who's using Copilot and Copilot Chat. I'd check it a week after any rollout and then on a fixed schedule.
If you're under 50 seats, don't buy extra licences just to get benchmarks. Use the core numbers to find the people who aren't using Copilot, and fix that with training first. Low adoption is usually a skills gap, not a reporting gap, which is why Microsoft Copilot training tends to move the numbers more than any report will.
If the dashboard shows seats nobody's using, getting your team confident with Copilot is where I'd start. I run AI training and workshops for teams, and help businesses with AI enablement, AI automation and GEO, which is about getting your business seen and cited in AI answers. Most of that work is with SaaS marketing teams, telecom companies and small businesses. Here's how we can work together.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Copilot Dashboard free?
Yes. As of October 2026 Microsoft says any business or enterprise Microsoft 365 or Office 365 customer with an active Exchange Online account can view it without a Copilot licence or a paid Viva Insights licence.
How many licences do I need for the full Copilot Dashboard?
You need 50 or more Copilot licences, or 50 or more Viva Insights licences, for features such as benchmarks, agent insights, sentiment and trendlines.
Why is my Copilot Dashboard empty?
Data processing can take up to seven days after licence assignment, and it only starts once you have at least 1 Copilot licence with the Viva Insights service plan, or 50 Viva Insights licences.
Is there a separate usage report for the Researcher agent?
No. Microsoft's Researcher FAQ says there's no separate admin report, so agent adoption is read through the dashboard's agent insights where your licences include them.
