Microsoft Frontier Puts Prerelease Copilot in Your Tenant. Scope It to a Pilot Group First.

Someone posts a new Microsoft Copilot feature, you open your own tenant to try it, and the feature is not there. No amount of refreshing or app switching produces it. There is a good chance that person is running Microsoft Frontier, Microsoft's early access channel for new AI features in Microsoft 365, and you are not.

Frontier is a tenant-level switch, not a race for the newest toy#

Think of Frontier as a test track for Microsoft Copilot. Rather than waiting for a capability to reach general availability, selected users get access early, try the experience, and work out what it means for the organization.

The part that matters for IT teams and MSPs is the control model. Frontier is managed at the tenant level, and administrators decide which users or groups receive access. That turns it into a working tool for:

• Internal IT teams testing new Copilot capabilities
• AI champions inside the organization
• MSP teams that want hands-on experience before customers start asking questions
• Building documentation and training ahead of a wider rollout

These are prerelease features, so treat them that way. The interface, the functionality, and even the licensing or billing model can change before general availability.

Enabling Frontier in the Microsoft 365 admin center#

You need an eligible Microsoft Copilot subscription and the right administrative permissions. A Global Administrator can configure the settings, and Microsoft also provides more limited administrative roles for managing AI and Copilot capabilities, which are worth using instead if you want to keep Global Admin assignments tight.

From the Microsoft 365 admin center:

1. Open the Copilot section.
2. Go to Settings.
3. Select View all.
4. Find Frontier.
5. Choose which users or groups should receive access.
6. Save your changes.

In a test tenant, enabling Frontier for everyone is fine. In production, we would start with a smaller group of admins, AI champions, or pilot users and grow from there.

Then wait. Not every feature appears instantly. Microsoft may indicate a short configuration time, but in testing some Frontier features took closer to 24 hours to show up for users. If a feature is missing an hour after you save, that is expected behavior rather than a broken setting.

Frontier alone will not deliver every early feature#

There is one more setting worth checking, and it is the one that quietly blocks people.

Under the Agents section of the Microsoft 365 admin center, make sure your organization allows apps and agents built by Microsoft. Some early access Copilot experiences are delivered as Microsoft agents, and if Microsoft agents are disabled, enabling Frontier on its own will not make those experiences available.

Individual agents can also be controlled separately, which gives you two dials instead of one. You could enable Frontier for a broader pilot group while allowing a specific experimental agent to be installed by only a handful of users. Microsoft provides user and group targeting at the individual agent level as well.

The real return is preparation, not early access#

Frontier earns its keep as a preparation channel. Instead of learning about a major Copilot change when users start asking about it, your team tests it first, understands how it behaves, writes the documentation, and decides how the rollout should go.

For MSPs the advantage compounds. Your own tenant becomes the proving ground for capabilities that will land in customer environments weeks later, which means the first client conversation about a new Copilot feature starts from experience rather than a release note.

If your organization is actively adopting Microsoft Copilot, build a small Frontier pilot group covering IT, AI champions, and other technical users. Give them early access, have them test the new capabilities, and use what comes back to prepare everyone else.