Resources

Glossary

The terms that come up when you govern Microsoft 365, Power Platform, Copilot and AI agents, each defined in one sentence and then put in context: what it means in practice, why it matters for risk, cost or compliance, and where Rencore fits.

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A

Access review: An access review is a recurring check in which the people accountable for a resource confirm who should keep access to it and remove access that is no longer needed.
Agent 365: Agent 365 is Microsoft's control plane for AI agents, giving organizations a registry of agents with their identities, access and activity, in the same admin tools they use for people.
Agent sprawl: Agent sprawl is the uncontrolled growth of AI agents across an organization, created and shared faster than anyone inventories, owns or reviews them.
AI agent: An AI agent is a software system that uses a language model to pursue a goal with some autonomy, combining instructions, access to data or tools, and the ability to act on a user's behalf.
AI agent governance: AI agent governance is the set of policies, controls and monitoring an organization uses to manage the lifecycle, permissions, data access and accountability of the AI agents running in its environment.
AI agent inventory: An AI agent inventory is a central, current record of every AI agent deployed in an organization, with its owner, the data and tools it can reach and the purpose it serves.
AI governance: AI governance is the set of policies, controls and oversight practices an organization uses to keep its AI tools, agents and the models behind them safe, accountable and compliant.
AI governance platform: An AI governance platform is software that helps an organization inventory its AI systems and agents, apply policies to them, monitor their use and produce evidence of control across the AI governance lifecycle.
AI tool sprawl: AI tool sprawl is the uncontrolled growth of AI assistants, agents and LLM tools across an organization, faster than anyone can inventory, own or review them.
Audit trail: An audit trail is the chronological, tamper-evident record of who did what, when, and to which resource across a system.

B

Broken inheritance: Broken inheritance is the SharePoint condition in which a list, library, folder or file stops taking its permissions from its parent and carries its own unique permissions instead.

C

Citizen developer: A citizen developer is a business user without formal software engineering training who builds apps, automations, reports or agents with low-code and no-code tools such as Power Platform and Copilot Studio.
Copilot agent: A Copilot agent is a custom, task-specific assistant built on Microsoft Copilot Studio or the Microsoft 365 Copilot agent builder that combines instructions, knowledge sources and actions to automate a piece of work.
Copilot Control System: The Copilot Control System is Microsoft's name for the set of administrative controls, reports and data protection features that IT uses to manage Microsoft 365 Copilot and the agents built for it.
Copilot governance: Copilot governance is the set of policies, permission controls, monitoring and compliance measures an organization applies to Microsoft 365 Copilot to prevent oversharing, control cost and keep its use of company data secure.
Copilot readiness assessment: A Copilot readiness assessment is an evaluation of whether an organization's Microsoft 365 tenant is ready for Copilot, surfacing oversharing, access control gaps, unlabelled sensitive content and stale data before rollout.
Copilot Studio: Copilot Studio is Microsoft's low-code platform for building custom AI agents that use Microsoft 365 content, Power Platform connectors and external data sources.

D

Data loss prevention (DLP): Data loss prevention (DLP) is the set of policies and technical controls that detect and stop sensitive data from being shared, moved or exposed outside where it is allowed to go.

E

EU AI Act: The EU AI Act is the European Union regulation that classifies AI systems by risk level and sets obligations for each level, from transparency and documentation to human oversight and evidence.
Everyone except external users: "Everyone except external users" (EEEU) is a built-in Microsoft 365 claim that stands for every internal account in the tenant, and granting it access to a site, library or file makes that content readable by the whole organization.
External sharing and guest access: External sharing and guest access are the Microsoft 365 capabilities that let people outside an organization, such as partners, contractors and customers, open files and collaborate in Teams, SharePoint sites and OneDrive.

I

Inactive and disabled user accounts: Inactive user accounts are accounts that have not signed in for a defined period, such as 90 or 180 days, and disabled accounts are accounts that can no longer sign in, typically after an employee has left.
Inactive sites and Teams: Inactive sites and Teams are SharePoint sites and Microsoft Teams with no meaningful activity for a defined period, such as 90 or 180 days, that remain in the tenant with their content, members and sharing intact.

J

Joiner-mover-leaver (JML): Joiner-mover-leaver (JML) is the identity process that grants, changes and removes a person's access as they join the organization, move to another role and leave.

L

License optimization: License optimization is the ongoing practice of matching Microsoft 365 and Copilot license assignments to actual use, so that active users have the right tier and inactive, disabled or duplicate assignments stop consuming paid licenses.

M

Microsoft 365 Copilot: Microsoft 365 Copilot is Microsoft's AI assistant inside Teams, Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and the other Microsoft 365 apps, which answers and acts using large language models grounded on the organization's data through Microsoft Graph.
Microsoft 365 governance: Microsoft 365 governance is the framework of policies, automated controls and oversight processes an organization applies to its Microsoft 365 tenant to keep it secure, compliant, cost-efficient and usable.
Microsoft 365 governance plan: A Microsoft 365 governance plan is a documented set of rules, roles and processes that defines how an organization creates, uses, shares, secures and retires its Microsoft 365 workspaces and services.
Microsoft 365 tenant: A Microsoft 365 tenant is the dedicated, isolated instance of Microsoft cloud services that an organization gets when it subscribes to Microsoft 365, and the top-level boundary for its identities, data and configuration.
Microsoft Entra Agent ID: Microsoft Entra Agent ID is a Microsoft Entra capability that gives AI agents their own identities in the directory, so that they can be authenticated, granted access and governed like users and applications.
Microsoft Entra ID: Microsoft Entra ID, formerly Azure Active Directory, is Microsoft's cloud identity and access management service that signs users in and controls what they and applications can access across Microsoft 365 and connected services.
Microsoft Purview: Microsoft Purview is Microsoft's suite of data security, compliance and data governance tools, covering sensitivity labels, data loss prevention, retention, audit, insider risk and eDiscovery across Microsoft 365 and beyond.
Microsoft Teams governance: Microsoft Teams governance is the set of policies, processes and controls an organization uses to manage how Teams are created, named, owned, shared with guests and retired.

N

Naming policy: A naming policy is a rule set that standardizes the names of Teams, Microsoft 365 groups and sites, typically through prefixes, suffixes and blocked words, so that workspaces are consistent, findable and appropriate.

O

Orphaned apps and agents: Orphaned apps and agents are applications, automations and AI agents, such as Power Apps, Power Automate flows, Entra ID app registrations and Copilot Studio agents, whose owner has left or is no longer responsible for them.
Orphaned workspace: An orphaned workspace is a Team, SharePoint site or Microsoft 365 group that has no active owner, usually because its owners left or their accounts were disabled.
Oversharing: Oversharing in Microsoft 365 is the condition where files, sites or workspaces are accessible to more people than the business intends.

P

Permission drift: Permission drift is the gradual build-up of unintended or excessive access rights as users, roles and resources change over time without matching access reviews or cleanup.
Power BI governance: Power BI governance is the set of policies and controls an organization applies to Power BI workspaces, reports, dashboards and datasets so that they have owners, are shared appropriately, are classified and are removed when no longer used.
Power Platform governance: Power Platform governance is the set of policies and controls an organization uses to keep the apps, flows, reports and agents built with Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI and Copilot Studio visible, owned, secure and within budget.

R

Retention and deletion policies: Retention and deletion policies are rules that decide how long content such as files, emails and chats must be kept and when it may or must be deleted, to meet legal, regulatory and business requirements.
ROT content: ROT content is redundant, obsolete or trivial data: duplicates, outdated versions and files with no business value that stay in storage long after anyone needs them.

S

Sensitivity label: A sensitivity label is a Microsoft Purview classification that marks how sensitive a file, email, site, Team or Microsoft 365 group is and enforces protection such as encryption, access restrictions and visual markings.
Shadow AI: Shadow AI is the use of AI tools, models or agents that an organization's IT and security teams have not approved or do not know about.
SharePoint Advanced Management: SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM) is a Microsoft add-on for SharePoint Online and OneDrive that adds admin controls and reports for oversharing, inactive sites, site access and content lifecycle.
SharePoint agents: A SharePoint agent is a Copilot agent built on selected SharePoint sites, libraries or files that answers questions grounded in that content, giving users a chat with your documents experience.
SharePoint governance: SharePoint governance is the system of policies and processes that keeps a SharePoint Online environment usable, owned and safely shared, covering information governance, operations, access and clutter.
SharePoint permissions: SharePoint permissions are the access rights that decide who can view, edit or manage a SharePoint site, library, folder or file, granted through SharePoint groups, Microsoft 365 groups, direct assignments and sharing links.
SharePoint sprawl: SharePoint sprawl is the uncontrolled growth of SharePoint sites, Microsoft Teams and their storage, faster than an organization can govern them.
SharePoint storage management: SharePoint storage management is the practice of monitoring, limiting and reducing the storage used by SharePoint sites and OneDrive accounts, so that the tenant stays within its quota and does not pay for content nobody needs.
Sharing links: Sharing links are URLs created in SharePoint or OneDrive that grant access to a file or folder, either to anyone with the link, to people in the organization or to specific people.

T

Teams and SharePoint provisioning: Teams and SharePoint provisioning is the controlled creation of Teams and SharePoint sites through a request, a template and, where needed, an approval, so that every new workspace starts with the right settings, owners and structure.
Teams sprawl: Teams sprawl is the uncontrolled growth of Microsoft Teams, channels and the Microsoft 365 groups behind them in a tenant, leading to duplicate workspaces, missing owners and governance, security and compliance risk.

U

User offboarding: User offboarding is the process of removing a departing employee's access and transferring ownership of the cloud resources they owned, such as Teams, sites, files, apps and licenses, so that nothing is lost or left without an owner.

W

Workspace archiving: Workspace archiving is the process of retiring a Team or SharePoint site from active use while keeping its content, either by making it read-only or by moving it to lower-cost archive storage.
Workspace lifecycle management: Workspace lifecycle management is the governance of collaboration workspaces such as Teams, SharePoint sites and Microsoft 365 groups through their whole life, from request and provisioning to renewal, archiving and deletion.
Workspace ownership: Workspace ownership is the assignment of named, accountable owners to every Team, SharePoint site and Microsoft 365 group, usually with a minimum of two owners and a regular confirmation that the owners are still right.