Standalone Copilot

[sba_ur]

The following message is being shown in the admin portal: Standalone Copilot will be enabled by default. This will happen on or after Sept 7, 2025. To opt-out of this automatic rollout, turn the standalone Copilot setting on, then off again before then. 

Power BI tenant is in Canada and the Copilot tenant is in USA. From the documentation that I read, it seems like the Azure OpenAI Service used to power Fabric Copilot is available only in US datacenters and on one EU datacenter. 

If this feature is not turned off and if users are allowed to interact with this service, would it violate the data residency of Power BI data on the Canada tenant when being ingested by Copilot/Azure OpenAI Service? What impact does it have on the data flow?

Thanks!

[AmiraBedh · Accepted solution]

Hello !

Thank you for posting on Microsoft Fabric community !

The admin portal message indicates that Standalone Copilot will be enabled by default on or after September 7, 2025, unless the setting is toggled off in advance since it is managed in the Fabric admin portal under Copilot and Azure OpenAI Service tenant settings.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/admin/service-admin-portal-copilot

Your Power BI tenant residing in Canada means all internal customer data is stored in the Canadian Azure geography, unless configured otherwise via multi-geo options.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/guidance/white-paper-powerbi-security

Fabric Copilot is backed by Azure OpenAI Service, which is typically available in a limited set of regions primarily the US and certain EU datacenters (and not yet in Canada). https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/create-reports/copilot-enable-power-bi

Microsoft allows cross-region data processing for Copilot, but only with an explicit opt-in via admin-configured consent. Without consent, Copilot features will not operate if they would require endpoints outside your resident region. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot-service/copilot-data-movement-geos

[v-dineshya · Accepted solution]

Hi @sba_ur ,

Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Community Forum.

Please refer below Microsoft official documents.

Copilot in Power BI tutorial - Discover data and ask questions - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Move data across regions for Copilots and generative AI features - Power Platform | Microsoft Learn

Standalone Copilot experience in Power BI (preview) - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Overview of Copilot for Power BI - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

I hope this information helps. Please do let us know if you have any further queries.

Regards,

Dinesh

[v-dineshya]

Hi @sba_ur ,

We haven’t heard from you on the last response and was just checking back to see if you have a resolution yet. And, if you have any further query do let us know.

Regards,

Dinesh

[v-dineshya]

Hi @sba_ur ,

We haven’t heard from you on the last response and was just checking back to see if you have a resolution yet. And, if you have any further query do let us know.

Regards,

Dinesh

[AmiraBedh · Accepted solution]

Hello !

Thank you for posting on Microsoft Fabric community !

The admin portal message indicates that Standalone Copilot will be enabled by default on or after September 7, 2025, unless the setting is toggled off in advance since it is managed in the Fabric admin portal under Copilot and Azure OpenAI Service tenant settings.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/admin/service-admin-portal-copilot

Your Power BI tenant residing in Canada means all internal customer data is stored in the Canadian Azure geography, unless configured otherwise via multi-geo options.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/guidance/white-paper-powerbi-security

Fabric Copilot is backed by Azure OpenAI Service, which is typically available in a limited set of regions primarily the US and certain EU datacenters (and not yet in Canada). https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/create-reports/copilot-enable-power-bi

Microsoft allows cross-region data processing for Copilot, but only with an explicit opt-in via admin-configured consent. Without consent, Copilot features will not operate if they would require endpoints outside your resident region. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot-service/copilot-data-movement-geos

[sba_ur]

Thank you for your reply.

Could you please help me understand if the Standalone Copilot is a separate instance of Copilot? Or does it create an agent within my tenant's Copilot that will be used by Power BI?

[AmiraBedh]

It is not a separate tenant or environment. Microsoft isn’t spinning up a brand-new parallel Copilot service. It is more like a shared experience of Copilot, independent of a specific app like Word, Excel, or Power BI...
That's why it's called standalone, it's a web based/chat-style Copilot experience available in the Fabric/M365 portal, where users can interact with Copilot directly instead of only inside Power BI or Excel and it uses the same Copilot service instance already tied to your tenant.

[sba_ur]

Ah I see - so it would be tied to my current Copilot tenant. 

I do have another question. How does data access work? Currently in my Power BI tenant, under Discovery settings, Discover content setting is enabled (allows users to find and request access to content they don't have access to if it was made discoverable by its owners). Are other users able to interact with/discover data/reports from data they don't have access to? Would my user base potentially expose data to Copilot which may come up in Copilot searches done by other users in the tenant?

Thanks in advance. 

[AmiraBedh]

Hi again !

Copilot won’t show or use anything a user doesn’t already have access to. The discover content setting only makes metadata for endorsed items visible in the OneLake/Data Hub (so users can request access). It does not grant data access, and standalone Copilot searches do not include discoverable only items.

Standalone Copilot scope can find and analyze only reports/semantic models/data agents the signed in user already has permissions for. It explicitly doesn’t return items the user can’t access.

Discover content lets owners mark promoted/certified semantic models as discoverable so others can see them listed in the OneLake hub and request access.

Copilot search does not surface a semantic model just because it’s marked discoverable, users must already have direct access for it to answer questions. Copilot interactions are per user, it can only access data the current user can access, and outputs are visible only to that user unless they share them.

[GeraldGEmerick]

@sba_ur Yes, this was announced August 4th, 2025. Standalone Copilot in Power BI will be turned on by default in September | Microsoft Power BI Blog |...

What you are saying is correct except that Azure OpenAI is available in the EU and US. 

Copilot admin settings - Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn

You can turn off the setting "Data sent to Azure OpenAI can be stored outside your capacity's geographic region, compliance boundary, or national cloud instance" to prevent data residency issues.

[sba_ur]

Thank you for your reply.

Could you please help me understand if the Standalone Copilot is a separate instance of Copilot? Or does it create an agent within my tenant's Copilot that will be used by Power BI?