Feature availability when GitHub Copilot policies conflict in organizations
Learn how delegating Copilot policy decisions to organizations affects users granted a license by organizations with different policies.
In this article
Section titled “In this article”- About delegating policy decisions to organizations
- How availability is determined
- Availability for members with Copilot from multiple organizations
- Availability for members with Copilot from multiple enterprises
- Next steps
About delegating policy decisions to organizations
Section titled “About delegating policy decisions to organizations”Policies can be defined for a whole enterprise, or set at the organization level. See GitHub Copilot policies for enterprises and organizations.
When an enterprise owner delegates control of a policy to organization owners by setting “No policy,” some organizations may enable a feature while others disable it. Users may be granted a Copilot license by organizations with different policies for the same feature.
How availability is determined
Section titled “How availability is determined”Feature, model, and privacy settings for users are set according to the least restrictive or the most restrictive policy defined by any of the organizations where they are granted a Copilot license.
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Least restrictive: if any of the organizations has enabled a feature, this feature is enabled for the user everywhere. This applies to all but the more sensitive Copilot features.
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Most restrictive: if any of the organizations has disabled a feature, this feature is disabled for the user in all their organizations. This applies only to the most sensitive Copilot features, for example: access to Copilot metrics using the API.
Availability for members with Copilot from multiple organizations
Section titled “Availability for members with Copilot from multiple organizations”| Policy | Availability matches | More information |
|---|---|---|
| Copilot Metrics API | Most restrictive organization | Not applicable |
| Semantic indexing for non-GitHub repositories | Most restrictive organization (only available when all organizations explicitly set Enabled; Unconfigured behaves as disabled) | Indexing repositories for GitHub Copilot |
| Suggestions matching public code (privacy policy) | Most restrictive organization | GitHub Copilot code suggestions in your IDE |
| Allow members without a Copilot license to use Copilot code review in GitHub.com | Most restrictive organization | Application card: GitHub Copilot Agents |
| Copilot can search the web | Least restrictive organization | Application card: GitHub Copilot Chat |
| Copilot Chat in GitHub Mobile | Least restrictive organization | Application card: GitHub Copilot Chat |
| Copilot Chat in the IDE | Least restrictive organization | Application card: GitHub Copilot Chat |
| Copilot Chat agent mode in the IDE | Least restrictive organization | Application card: GitHub Copilot Chat |
| Copilot code review | Least restrictive organization | Application card: GitHub Copilot Agents |
| Copilot cloud agent | Least restrictive organization | Application card: GitHub Copilot Agents |
| Spark | Least restrictive organization | Application card: GitHub Copilot Agents |
| Copilot in GitHub.com | Least restrictive organization | Application card: GitHub Copilot Chat |
| Copilot in GitHub Desktop | Least restrictive organization | Application card: GitHub Copilot Chat |
| Copilot CLI | Least restrictive organization | Application card: GitHub Copilot Agents |
| Editor preview features | Least restrictive organization | GitHub Pre-release License Terms |
| GitHub Models, one policy per model | Least restrictive organization | Managing your team’s model usage |
| MCP servers in Copilot | Least restrictive organization | Configure MCP servers for your repository |
| Copilot-generated commit messages | Least restrictive organization | Application card: GitHub Copilot Chat |
Availability for members with Copilot from multiple enterprises
Section titled “Availability for members with Copilot from multiple enterprises”If a user receives a license from multiple different enterprises, the most restrictive policy usually applies. The exceptions are:
- AI credit paid usage (this applies to each enterprise, not the user)
- GitHub Spark