Microsoft Copilot Data Boundary in Japan East: Service Coverage Notes

Microsoft Copilot processes and stores data in the region tied to your Microsoft 365 tenant. For tenants hosted in the Japan East Azure region, Copilot now adheres to a local data boundary. This means your prompts, responses, and associated metadata stay within Japan. Many business users need to confirm this boundary is active before rolling out Copilot to comply with regional data residency policies. This article explains what the Japan East data boundary covers, how to verify it, and what features are still subject to global processing.

What the Copilot Data Boundary in Japan East Covers

The Copilot data boundary in Japan East is a regional storage and processing commitment. When your tenant is configured for this boundary, Copilot stores all customer data at rest in Japan East Azure datacenters. Customer data includes the text of your prompts, the generated responses, any uploaded files used for grounding, and the metadata that links a conversation to your user identity.

Processing also occurs within the same region. When you send a prompt in Copilot for Microsoft 365, the AI model hosted in Japan East processes the request. The model itself may be a multi-region deployment, but the inference workload for your tenant runs on compute resources located in Japan East. The boundary applies to Copilot in Microsoft Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and the standalone copilot.microsoft.com experience when signed in with a work or school account.

What Is Not Covered by the Japan East Boundary

Not all Copilot features respect the Japan East boundary. Web grounding, which lets Copilot retrieve live information from the Bing search index, sends queries to Bing services that may operate outside Japan. Bing does not have a dedicated Japan East data boundary for Copilot web queries. If your compliance policy requires all data to stay within Japan, disable the web grounding plugin in the Copilot settings.

Copilot Studio agent interactions also fall outside the boundary. When you build a custom agent in Copilot Studio and connect it to third-party data sources or external APIs, those connections route data based on the third-party service location, not your tenant boundary. The Copilot boundary only covers the Microsoft Graph data and the Copilot model inference layer.

Steps to Verify Your Tenant Is in the Japan East Data Boundary

You must be a Microsoft 365 Global Administrator or a Privileged Role Administrator to check and change data residency settings. The boundary is not automatic for all tenants. You must opt in through the Microsoft 365 admin center.

1. Open the Microsoft 365 admin center
   Go to admin.microsoft.com and sign in with an account that has Global Administrator permissions. The admin center loads the dashboard.
2. Navigate to Org settings
   In the left navigation panel, select Settings then Org settings. A list of organization-wide configuration pages appears.
3. Open the Copilot tab
   Scroll down and click the Copilot tab. This page shows the current data residency status for your tenant.
4. Check the Data residency section
   Look for a line labeled Data residency. If it reads Japan East, your tenant is already enrolled. If it shows Global or another region, you can click Change and select Japan East from the list of available regions.
5. Confirm the change
   Click Save and wait up to 24 hours for the boundary to take effect. Copilot conversations started after the change will be stored and processed in Japan East. Existing conversations remain in their original region.

If Copilot Still Uses a Non-Japan Region After Enrollment

Copilot Returns a Region Mismatch Warning

A user may see a warning that Copilot is processing data outside Japan East even after you enable the boundary. This usually happens when the user is signed in with a personal Microsoft account instead of a work or school account. The data boundary only applies to Microsoft 365 tenants. Ask the user to sign out of Copilot and sign in again using their organizational account.

Copilot Studio Shows Data in a Different Region

Custom agents built in Copilot Studio store their knowledge sources in the region you selected when you created the agent. The Copilot data boundary does not override the Copilot Studio region. To keep all data in Japan East, create your Copilot Studio agents in an environment that uses the Japan East Azure region. Check the environment region in the Power Platform admin center under Environments.

Web Grounding Still Returns Global Search Results

Web grounding is a separate service that connects to Bing. Bing does not have a Japan East data boundary for Copilot queries. If your data residency policy requires all data to stay in Japan, disable web grounding. In the Copilot pane, open Settings, select Plugins, and turn off the Web grounding toggle. Without web grounding, Copilot will only use your Microsoft Graph data and uploaded files to generate responses.

Item	Japan East Data Boundary Active	Japan East Data Boundary Not Active
Prompt and response storage	Stored in Japan East Azure datacenters	Stored in the tenant’s default region or globally
Model inference processing	Compute resources in Japan East	Compute resources in the nearest available region
File uploads for grounding	Stored in Japan East	Stored in the tenant’s default region
Bing web grounding queries	Routed to global Bing services	Routed to global Bing services
Copilot Studio custom agents	Depends on agent environment region	Depends on agent environment region

The Japan East data boundary covers the core Copilot experience for Microsoft 365. Bing web grounding and Copilot Studio agent data follow their own regional rules. Verify each service separately to maintain full compliance with your organization’s data residency requirements. After confirming the boundary, test Copilot in Teams and Word to confirm that new conversations list the Japan East region in the compliance audit logs.