Here’s something spicy: most organizations think Copilot is underused… not because users hate it, but because no one’s checking the right dashboard. Subscribe at m365.show if you want the survival guide, not the PPT bingo. We’ll check which Copilot telemetry matters, where users actually click, and how prompts reveal who’s using it for real work. Often the signals you need live in a different pane—let’s show you where to look in your tenant. This isn’t a pep rally; it’s a reality check with the data points that count. And once you’ve seen that, we need to talk about the reports leadership is already waving in their hands.The CFO’s Report Doesn’t LieEver had that moment when the CFO barges in, waving a glossy admin report like it’s courtroom evidence, and asks why the company shelled out for a Copilot license nobody seems to use? Your stomach drops, because you’re not just defending an IT budget line—you’re defending your job. And here’s the kicker: the chart they’re holding isn’t wrong, but it’s not telling the story they think it is. The leadership bind is simple: licenses cost real money, so execs want hard proof that Copilot isn’t just another line item in the finance system. Microsoft does provide reports, but what those charts measure isn’t what most people assume. Log into the admin center and you’ll see nice graphs of sign-ins and “active users.” Sounds impressive until you realize it’s basically counting how many times someone opened Word, not whether they actually touched Copilot once they were in there. This is where the data trips people up. That report showing 2,000 Word sign-ins? Leadership reads that as 2,000 instances of Copilot lighting up productivity. Reality: it just means 2,000 people still have Word pinned to their taskbar and clicked it once. No one tells them that Copilot activity is captured in separate telemetry. So while the chart says “adoption,” in truth Copilot might be sitting unused like an expensive treadmill doubling as a coat rack. Now, to be fair, Entra AD does exactly what it promises. It focuses on identity and sign-in telemetry—it tells you who walked through the door and which app they technically opened. What it does not do, by default, is surface the action-level data that proves Copilot adoption. Put simply: it’ll show you that John launched Word, but it won’t show you that John asked Copilot to crank out a three-page summary to save himself an afternoon. Always check your tenant’s docs or Insights pane for what’s actually available, because the defaults don’t go that far. Here’s one clean metaphor you can safely use with leadership: those reports are counting swipes of a gym membership card. They don’t show whether anyone touched the treadmill, lifted weights, or just grabbed a chocolate bar from the vending machine. That one line paints the picture without drowning in analogies. So what do you say when finance is breathing down your neck with pretty graphs? Here’s the leadership-ready soundbite: “Sign-in counts show who opened the apps. Copilot adoption means showing who actually used prompts and actions. I can pull behavioral reports for that—if our tenant has telemetry enabled.” That’s a safe, honest line that doesn’t oversell anything but tells executives you can provide a real answer once you’ve got the right data enabled. And this is where your action item comes in. Don’t waste time trying to prove adoption from identity numbers. Instead, verify whether your tenant has Copilot Insights or usage reports that surface prompts and actions. If it does, prep a side-by-side demo for the CFO or CIO: slide one shows a bland graph of “sign-ins,” slide two shows actual prompts being used in Outlook, Word, or Teams. The contrast makes your point in about 30 seconds flat. Because at the end of the day, raw sign-in and license charts will always frame the wrong narrative. They’re a door count, not a usage log. What leadership really needs to see are the actions that prove value—the moments where Copilot shaved hours off real workflows, not just opened an application window. And that sets up the bigger story. Because Microsoft doesn’t give you just one way to see Copilot activity—they give you two different dashboards. One is the guard at the door. The other is the camera inside the building. And only one of them will tell you whether Copilot is actually changing how people work.Entra AD vs. Insights: The Tale of Two DashboardsMicrosoft gives you two main dashboards tied to Copilot adoption: Entra AD and Insights. At first glance they both look polished enough to screenshot into a slide deck, but they don’t measure the same thing. If you confuse them, you’ll end up telling execs a story that sounds great but falls apart the minute someone asks, “Okay, but did anyone actually use Copilot to get work done?” Here’s the split. Entra AD primarily records identity and sign‑in events. It’s useful for security and access checks—who got in, from where, on what device, and at what time. That’s its lane. It doesn’t go deep on what happens after the app opens. Think of it as the entry log. Helpful? Yes. Proof of adoption? Not really. Insights, on the other hand, is where you start seeing behavioral patterns. Depending on what your tenant exposes, it can surface things like prompt counts, app‑level activity, and even departmental usage. That’s the level you need if the conversation is about ROI. Here’s the trap admins fall into. You’re on the spot in a meeting, leadership asks, “How many people used Copilot this week?” Under pressure, you run a quick Entra AD report and point to a chart showing thousands of Word users. But what you’ve proved is that people still open Word every week. Copilot activity might be a fraction of that, but Entra won’t show it. It’s the classic “stadium is full” headline when the team never left the locker room. A better way to frame it is like this: Entra AD tells you John opened Word at 9 a.m. on Monday. Insights, if enabled, might show John used Copilot to generate a draft report in those same three minutes. Which one of those slides convinces a CFO that the product is paying for itself? Exactly. So what should you actually do here? Step 1: in your admin center, confirm whether Copilot/Insights telemetry is visible and that you have the right permissions to view it. Don’t assume it’s just on. Depending on your role assignment, you might not be able to see adoption data at all. Step 2: if telemetry is available, check what categories are exposed. Non‑definitively, you’re looking for at least three dimensions—activity by app, prompt/use counts, and departmental breakdowns. Step 3: keep in mind privacy. Avoid dropping user‑level detail into leadership slides. Aggregate it by team, anonymize where needed, and stay compliant. Finance might want a name‑and‑shame list, but resist that urge, or you’ll create more HR tickets than Copilot tasks. This is the part that kills a lot of adoption projects. You can’t design smart training or change campaigns if the only metric you have is “they opened Word.” Insights, when surfaced, shows where work is really happening—or not happening. Maybe Marketing fires off prompts all day, while Legal never touches the thing. That department‑level picture is the difference between targeted adoption efforts and yet another generic, hour‑long training no one remembers. Bottom line: Entra AD is valuable, but it’s a door count. It makes sense for identity, security, and blocking attackers. It doesn’t measure whether Copilot replaced busywork. Insights, if wired into your tenant, is the view you need to argue for ROI, improve adoption, and spot which groups need support. Always check role permissions first, respect privacy rules, and don’t oversell what the data shows. Now that you know which pane matters, the next step is to examine where inside the apps that Copilot usage actually shows up—and that picture looks very different from the marketing demos you’ve been shown.Where Copilot Clicks Actually HappenWhen you strip away the dashboards, the real story sits in the apps themselves—where people actually click Copilot. And here’s the surprise: those clicks aren’t happening in the flashy scenarios from Microsoft’s keynote clips. They’re landing in the everyday tools people touch constantly, and that pattern matters more than any marketing reel. A common pattern we see in many tenants is heavier Copilot usage in communication apps like Outlook, Teams, and Word, compared with apps like PowerPoint or Excel. It makes sense if you think about it—email triage happens every morning, chat replies pop up all day, and quick edits in Word are a constant grind. Slide decks or complex models? Those only hit the calendar once in a while. But don’t take my word for it. Validate it yourself against your tenant’s Insights reports. And this brings us to a key point: Copilot adoption grows fastest where the tool reduces friction in small, repetitive tasks. Think cleaning up an email, fixing awkward grammar, or smoothing a Teams message before you hit send. Those are quick, safe interactions that don’t require perfect prompts or lengthy context dumps. Users try it once for a throwaway email, it works, and then they start leaning on it every day. That’s “sticky adoption”—not glamorous, but reliable. Here’s your actionable step: pull app-level activity from your tenant and rank the top three apps by prompt count. Start your training and success stories in the top two. Don’t waste budget blasting universal sessions when you already have evidence of where your people click. Adoption always follows need, not wishful thinking. Let’s hold up PowerPoint as an example. In a lot of tenants, its Copilot numbers look weak compared to Outlook and Teams. That doesn’t mean abandon it. It means test smarter. If reports show low activity, don’t fund broad “Copilot for PowerPoint” rollouts to the whole company. Instead, pick two teams that live and die by de

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/m365-fm-modern-work-security-and-productivity-with-microsoft-365--6704921/support.

If this clashes with how you’ve seen it play out, I’m always curious. I use LinkedIn for the back-and-forth.