Governing Feedback Data Sharing in Microsoft 365 Apps and Copilot

Microsoft treats user feedback as confidential and uses it to improve the product experience. That does, however, involve real people reading what’s submitted. For many organizations that’s fine; for others it’s something they want to control—particularly when feedback is sent from Copilot chat, where a message might contain sensitive business context.

Good news: you can govern what can (and cannot) be sent in the feedback dialog.

Note: Prompts and responses used inside a Copilot conversation are not viewed by Microsoft. What I’m covering here is only the optional feedback form users can submit.

Where to configure Feedback policies

These settings live in the Microsoft 365 Apps admin center as Cloud Policy:

• Go to config.office.com → Customization → Policy Management.

• Create or edit a policy configuration for Microsoft 365 Apps and scope it to the users/groups you want.

• Search for Feedback to find the policies below.

Official docs for Cloud Policy: https://learn.microsoft.com/microsoft-365-apps/admin-center/overview-cloud-policy.

These policies apply to apps and web experiences that use the standard “Send feedback to Microsoft” UX from Microsoft 365 Apps (including Copilot surfaces that use that dialog). Teams uses its own policy model for feedback, so manage Teams separately.

Also important: these settings are not “restrictive by default.” If you don’t explicitly disable them, users can include logs and content samples by default.

See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/manage/manage-feedback-ms-org for a list of products covered by feedback policies set at config.office.com

The four knobs that matter (set to Disabled to restrict)

I’m listing them in the order I recommend you evaluate them.

1) Allow Microsoft to follow up on feedback submitted by users

• What changes: the small text at the bottom of the dialog that says Microsoft may contact the user.

• Why it matters: disables the consent for follow-up (no contact back). Many orgs prefer no outbound follow-ups to end users.

2) Allow users to include screenshots and attachments when they submit feedback to Microsoft

• What changes: hides the Include a screenshot control in the form.

• Why it matters: screenshots often contain customer content.

• Gotcha: this does not cover log/content attachments (that’s the next policy).

3) Allow users to include log files and relevant content samples when feedback is submitted to Microsoft

• What changes: removes the option that shares the prompt, generated response, relevant content samples, and additional log files with the feedback.

• Why it matters: this is the big one for Copilot. When enabled, users can (and by default will) include parts of the conversation and context data. Setting it to Disabled prevents those from being sent.

4) Allow users to submit feedback to Microsoft

• What changes: blocks the feedback dialog from appearing at all.

• Why it matters: the nuclear option. If you don’t want any feedback sent from the product UI, turn this off.

What users will see

Here’s how the UI shifts as you apply the policies:

• With default settings, users can add a screenshot and (by default) include prompt/response + logs/content samples.

  

• Disable follow-up → the small “Microsoft may contact you…” text is removed/changed.       

  

• Disable screenshots → the screenshot checkbox/button disappears (users cannot attach images), but log/content sharing may still be available unless you disable it too.

  

• Disable log files and content samples → the “Share prompt, generated response, … and additional log files” option is removed, so no conversation context is shared.

  

• Disable submit feedback → the dialog doesn’t show.

Recommended approaches

Pick the level that matches your risk tolerance:

• Leave as is: The default behavior allows Microsoft to capture valuable feedback to adjust products and experiences to the better for those using them.

• Balanced: Disable screenshots and log files/content samples, allow feedback, and optionally disable follow-ups.

• Strict: Disable screenshots, log files/content samples, and follow-ups.

• Locked down: Disable submit feedback entirely.

If you do allow feedback, you may want to consider disabling the log files and relevant content samples option for Copilot users. While this data is handled securely by Microsoft, turning it off can help ensure that no conversation snippets or contextual information are included in feedback—something some organizations prefer for peace of mind or to align with their internal data handling practices.

Final thoughts

I work at Microsoft, and I know there are actual people reading feedback to make our products better. That’s a feature, not a bug—but each organization has different requirements for customer data. With Cloud Policy you can decide what’s appropriate for your tenant, from light filtering to full lockdown.

Again, this doesn’t change how Copilot processes prompts during normal use—those aren’t viewed by Microsoft. We’re only talking about the separate, optional act of sending product feedback according to your level of comfort, and is why the options are there.

If you’ve got a mixed environment (e.g., Teams), remember to set feedback controls where that app expects them.

Happy governing!

Taming the Context-Switch Hydra: How an AI Sidekick Saved My Sanity

TL;DR:

GitHub Copilot (in Agent mode with Codespaces) dramatically cuts down the cost of context switching, perfectly fitting my chaotic, multitasking workstyle. It lets me stay productive and in flow, even as I juggle coding, helping others, and specs—all while being 51 and still loving the craft.

For Those Who Prefer the Director’s Cut …keep on reading

One small step for SharePoint intranets, one giant leap for news roll-up

..well, not really, but it’s an improvement which makes news roll-up match multiple information architecture scenarios. I’ll leave it up to those setting up intranets to gage the usefulness, and I know there has been demand for this feature.

A shoutout to my old peeps at Puzzlepart for wanting this feature – adding to many other customers who have asked for this feature.

So, what am I talking about? In the news web part, when you use “Select sites” or “Recommended for the current user”, a new option to either show or hide the site title will show below the sites you pick.

When displaying news from one site, the site title is already hidden as you are on that one site anyways. If you pick more sites, you may want to hide the site title because content authoring happens in multiple sites because of information architecture, not because you need to show the site title.

Here’s an example with and without site titles.

Happy intranet authoring!

What’s great at Microsoft, is that anyone can contribute anywhere. The above feature was implemented by yours sincerely as part of one of the yearly hackathons we have at Microsoft. It allowed me to look more closely at how web parts are built in SharePoint, and also solve a customer pain. Win-win!

Search nugget: The beauty of SharePoint Site Columns

The scenario I’m sharing is not a new one, but (somewhat) recent changes to SharePoint indexing of items may make the scenario easier to solve.

Before we dig into the details, let's talk about Microsoft Syntex, as it has bearing on the nugget I will share. Microsoft Syntex is a service that uses AI and machine learning to automatically sort and classify documents across SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, OneDrive for Business, and Exchange.

Or simply put in terms for SharePoint: Pulling structured data out from unstructured data and store it as metadata for easier use and retrieval. Something we have done manually or via customized processed for the longest time in SharePoint lists and libraries.

Microsoft Syntex is licensed via a pay-as-uou go model, where you pay for items processed. See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/syntex/syntex-pay-as-you-go-services and  for more details and the offering currently includes these features:

• Prebuilt document processing
• Structured and freeform document processing
• Unstructured document processing
• Autofill columns
• Content assembly
• Image tagging
• Taxonomy tagging
• SharePoint eSignature
• Document translation
• Optical character recognition (OCR)
• Microsoft 365 Archive
• Microsoft 365 Backup (Preview)
• Microsoft 365 Backup Storage (Preview)

A Microsoft Syntex enabled library also enable a better context query user experience. See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/syntex/metadata-search for details.

Let's get to it!

Say you have a library where you add a new column. In this case a number column.

In a search scenario for the library you want to filter results based on the number value. One example being all items with a value above 100.

In my case the column has an internal name of PnPNumberColumn. If the column was manually created at the library it would output a crawled property named ows_PnPNumberColumn. This crawled property could be mapped to RefinableInt00 and after re-indexing you could use the below KQL query to list all items with a value above 100. If you add an alias to the managed property you could use this instead.

RefinableInt00>100

Now, let us go back to the site column scenario. Site columns will in addition to the default crawled property, create an additional crawled property and an automatic managed property. This is described at Automatically created managed properties in SharePoint Server which also apply to SharePoint Online despite what the article is tagged as.

The caveat of the automatically created managed properties is that they are of type text, which is not very useful when it comes to numbers. The example column above yields an automatic managed property named PnPNumberColumnOWSNMBR. This means I can query with:

PnPNumberColumnOWSNMBR:500 or PnPNumberColumnOWSNMBR=500 and get a match, as it matches on text. PnPNumberColumnOWSNMBR>500 would however be invalid KQL.

And here is the nugget. In addition to PnPNumberColumnOWSNMBR we now also get an additional property PnPNumberColumnOWSTNMBR. Note the extra T.

A word from our sponsor: This tip was brought to you by indexing advancements made for Microsoft Syntex. Microsoft Syntex greatly automates creation of site column for the average user. What are you waiting for?

And don’t be fooled by the schema admin page saying the property is of type text, as it is indeed of type number. A fact somewhat called out in a notice when you view the property settings, so you just have to trust me.

Below is screenshot showcasing the behavior where the query PnPNumberColumnOWSTNMBR>499 return the sample document. Easy as pie!

PS! The property is not refinable so you can not use it as refinement filter. If this is your case keep on as you always have and map to e.g RefinableInt00

00000101

How time flies! I have now been 5 years at Microsoft. I started as a Program Manager, which changed into Product Manager, and now I’m an Engineer.

Despite the title changes the work I do has not changed much over these five years. I have always been a jack of many trades, and I enjoying doing many things at once. When everything is interesting and challenging, it is hard to cut something out. And I have been lucky to be allowed to work to my strengths while still learning – and I love to learn!

What has changed over the years is that I have learned to appreciate process and governance more than before. Which is why I have onboarded to internal roles as privacy champ, compliance champ and responsible AI champ – the last one becoming increasingly important as Microsoft focus all energy on Copilot. Luckily for me loving search as a function and search tech, is that Microsoft Search plays an important role also in Copilot.

What the next one or five years will bring I have no idea, and it’s not important. I’m still a day to day kind of person, with no long term plans. If what I do is fun, challenging and benefits Microsoft customers, I will keep doing it. And for those who know me, I’m not giving up om my long term mission to cut ties from classic SharePoint search features still having dependencies in the modern world of Microsoft Search. Some cuts are hard but still important to ensure the success of future experiences.

Cake time!

Copilot Productivity Tip – Structured formatting in Word

Time spent per day before: 15 minutes per document
Time spent with Copilot: 5 minutes per document

Resources

• Transform your content with Copilot in Word
• Copilot in Word | Locate key information

Taking my previous post about re-writing text in Word, we can prompt to have key points from the text pulled out and as an example formatted as a table for easier consumption.

The prompt used is “Extract key points into a table with two columns for key point header and details”, and the output is the table below.

Key point	Details
Copilot can rewrite the content	Copilot can check and improve the tense, the passive voice, the readability, and the personal tone of the content.
Copilot may or may not respect the writer's style	Copilot's suggestions may vary depending on the instructions given by the writer. The writer can try to specify the style they want and see what Copilot does.

Copilot Productivity Tip – Word re-write

Time spent per day before: 30-60 minutes per document
Time spent with Copilot: 5-10 minutes per document

Resources

• Transform your content with Copilot in Word
• Copilot in Word (video)

Writing in a language that is not one's own can be challenging. That is why Copilot can help rewrite the content to make it more consistent and clear. Copilot can correct the tense, the passive voice, the readability, and the personal tone of the content. This way readers can enjoy the content more and understand the main points better.

Some writers may have a specific style that they want to use. Copilot in Word may or may not respect that style, depending on the instructions given. But one can always try to tell Copilot what kind of style they want and see what happens. Maybe Copilot will surprise them with some creative suggestions. Or maybe Copilot will ignore them and do whatever it wants. Who knows?

Original draft

Here’s the original blog-post I started out with before throwing Copilot at it.

Not everyone is a native writer of the language they produce content in. Thus, using Copilot to rewrite your content for consistency in terms of tense, passive language, readability, and personal flavor will ensure those consuming the content have a better experience and more clearly pick up on the points you want to come across in your argumentation.

If you have a particular writing style, then Copilot in Word may or may not be able to assist, but you can try to add this as part of the prompting instructions and verify the outcome.

Automatic rewrite

When using the auto rewrite feature this is what I ended up with.

Sometimes, people write content in a language that is not their native one. Therefore, using Copilot to edit your content for consistency in grammar, voice, clarity, and tone will help those who read the content have a better experience and understand the messages you want to convey in your reasoning.

If you prefer a specific writing style, then Copilot in Word may or may not help you, but you can attempt to include this in the prompting instructions and check the result.

Manual prompt for rewrite

This time around I wanted to give more instructions to simplify my writing.

“Rewrite the text using shorter sentences and language understood by an audience with little experience in Copilot or Word. Make instructions concise and relatable for beginners.“

Do you write in a language that is not your first one? Then Copilot can help you make your writing better. It can fix grammar mistakes, make sentences easier to read, and use the right words for your message.

Do you have a favorite way of writing? Copilot in Word might be able to copy it. Just tell it what you want and see what it does. You can always change it if you don't like it.

Manual prompt with styling

And this is the prompt I ended up with for the final post, as it reflects some of my personal writing style. Maybe this will makes it way into Word eventually using writing samples for style.

“Rewrite the text using shorter sentences and language understood by an audience with little experience in Copilot or Word. Make the text longer than the original, write in third-person tense and **DO NOT** use *I*, *You*, *Your* and *We*. Throw in some subtle irony and sarcasm.”

Copilot Productivity Tip – Teams Message Rewrite

Time spent per day before: 10 minutes, rethinking the words to use
Time spent with Copilot: 1-2 minutes, letting Copilot do the work

Resources

• Rewrite and adjust your messages with Copilot in Microsoft Teams

One of the challenges when writing is to convey feelings or emotion on what you type. I like to be short and concise in my messaging, but sometimes this may not be the best way to communicate when talking to people you don't know, or even people you know.

Let’s take the message “I don’t agree with your points” and run it thru Copilot to make it longer and Enthusiastic.

The output can be something like: “Thank you for sharing your perspective. However, I have a different view on the matter and I would like to explain why I disagree with some of the points you made.” which is less likely to piss Vesa off :)

You can even do a customized prompt for formatting: “Make it sound like it was written by Super Mario”. The above prompt is actually a prompt hack to overcome Responsible AI to add some Paolo Italian flavor into the message.

Copilot Productivity Tip – Teams Chat Catchup

Time spent per day before: 30-60 minutes
Time spent with Copilot: 5-15 minutes

Resources

• Use Copilot in Microsoft Teams chat and channels (video)

My workday at Microsoft involves communication with multiple teams spread around the globe, which means in-person communication is not always possible. This is why Teams has become the go-to tool for many conversations and discussions. When I start my day at 8am in the morning I know chats has happened in other time zones, and instead of reading everything right away I can use Copilot catchup for a summary, and then decide if I need to read it all.

I typically use the “Summarize what I've missed” Copilot suggested prompt inline in the chat which opens the Copilot pane, or I open the pane manually as seen below with prompts such as “Highlights from the past day” or “Highlights from the past 7 days”.

Copilot Productivity Tip – Teams Meeting Insights

Time spent per day before: 0-120 minutes

Time spent with Copilot: 0-15 minutes

Resources

• Get started with Copilot in Microsoft Teams meetings
• Copilot in Teams and Intelligent recap | After the meeting (video)
• Copilot in Teams | Catch up on meetings (video)

The beauty of online meetings with transcripts is the ability to quickly go back and find key points later without having to watch the recording or read thru the full transcript. 

By default Teams provides an AI notes section with a quick summary, and using the Copilot pane you can ask more direct questions such as summarizing your talking points, or ask what your action items were for the meeting.

My best example is a late night meeting where I forgot to take notes and the next morning I knew I was supposed to contact an “Andrew”, but had forgotten the full name. Requesting the name in the meetings Copilot quickly gave me the name, saving me around 15 minutes and some grief.