What is the Powell Governance governance score?
The governance score is the amount of followed recommendations based on the most important Microsoft 365 governance best practices.
We created this score to help our customers to have better control over their Microsoft Teams environment and SharePoint environment. Setting those governance rules is not necessarily innate at the beginning. Thanks to our experience and one of our customers and partners, we wanted to guide this process of setting up Microsoft Teams governance with this governance score.
This score is based on our recommendation that we advise following. It has been designed to correspond to the most organization possible. However, we know that some of the criteria could not be aligned with your particular company context.
Powell Governance score is calculated depending on the recommendations that have been completed.
How the governance score is calculated?
The Powell Governance score is determined based on how well teams and sites adhere to recommended governance practices. Specifically, if fewer than 10% of teams or sites fall within the scope of a particular recommendation, that recommendation is considered complete
For administrators, this process is made efficient through the recommendations page, which not only provides personalized insights but also enables immediate action. This functionality allows administrators to quickly understand and rectify any issues directly from the recommendations page, ensuring rapid correction and improved governance compliance.
AI Readiness Score
The AI readiness score helps administrators assess how prepared their Microsoft 365 environment is for Microsoft 365 Copilot. Copilot surfaces content based on user permissions, which means any governance gaps — such as over-permissioned sites, stale content, or missing ownership — become amplified when Copilot is enabled.
The score is computed using cross-entity properties across Teams, SharePoint sites, OneDrive, documents, and users. It reflects common governance signals such as:
- Data exposure — workspaces or documents shared too broadly (e.g., sites accessible to everyone in the organization, documents with "Anyone" sharing links)
- Stale data — inactive workspaces and outdated documents that Copilot could surface in responses, reducing the quality and relevance of AI-generated answers
- Ownership — ownerless workspaces or workspaces with disabled owners, where nobody is accountable for the content Copilot may access
The AI readiness score uses the same gauge component as the existing Teams and SharePoint scores, ensuring a consistent dashboard experience.
It also comes with dedicated recommendations that explain the risk, suggest actions to improve readiness, and provide direct links to the related Powell Governance reports so administrators can investigate and remediate quickly.