What it does

Restricted Content Discovery (RCD) lets you flag SharePoint sites so their content is excluded from Copilot's tenant-wide search and grounding, without changing the underlying permissions.

Key facts

• Setting RCD on a site keeps items out of organisation-wide Copilot answers and Copilot-driven search, while users with direct access can still open them normally.
• It's a blunt, site-level control aimed at sites you can't clean up fast enough before go-live.
• Managed through SharePoint admin, and works alongside SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM) reporting on oversharing and access.
• Licensing for the wider oversharing toolset (data access governance reports, restricted access control) sits under SharePoint Advanced Management.

When to use / skip

Use it as a holding measure for high-risk sites during a Copilot rollout, HR, legal, finance, board material. Skip it as a permanent fix, it hides the problem rather than solving the permissions.

Configuration decisions

• Which sites get flagged, and who signs off the list.
• Whether you pair RCD with SAM's data access governance reports to find the sites that need it.
• How you'll eventually remediate permissions so the flag can come off.

Gotchas

• RCD hides content from Copilot, not from a determined user with direct access. Don't sell it as a security boundary.
• There can be a lag between setting the flag and Copilot honouring it during indexing. Set it well before you widen the pilot.
• People forget to review flagged sites, so they sit restricted forever and users quietly complain Copilot "can't find" things.

Consultant notes

• Oversharing is the single biggest reason Copilot pilots go wrong. Run the SAM data access governance reports before anyone touches a prompt.
• RCD buys you time, nothing more. Pair it with a real remediation plan: sensitivity labels, site clean-up, and Restricted Access Control policies for the worst offenders.
• Get the business to own the site list. Security can spot the sprawl, but only the data owners can say what's genuinely sensitive.

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Review when SharePoint Advanced Management oversharing controls change.