You can use an enterprise account to manage licenses for GitHub Copilot Business, without adopting GitHub Enterprise.
This article describes the setup for an enterprise with personal accounts. If you haven't chosen an enterprise type, see About enterprise accounts for Copilot Business.
Prerequisites
- To pay for licenses, you will need a Microsoft Azure subscription, which you will connect to your enterprise account.
- Before you enable Copilot, ensure you have reviewed the GitHub Copilot Product Specific Terms.
Requesting an enterprise account
To create an enterprise account, request access from your account team by contacting GitHub's Sales team.
Adding users to the enterprise
After you invite someone to join the enterprise account, they must accept the emailed invitation before they can access the enterprise account. Pending invitations will expire after 7 days.
- In the top-right corner of GitHub, click your profile photo.
- Depending on your environment, click Your enterprise, or click Your enterprises then click the enterprise you want to view.
- On the left side of the page, in the enterprise account sidebar, click People.
- Under "People", click Members.
- Click Invite member.
- Search for the user you want to invite, then click Invite.
Inviting an enterprise owner
You can also invite a user as an enterprise owner. Enterprise owners can grant access to GitHub Copilot and set policies for the enterprise. See Inviting people to manage your enterprise.
You can also invite a user as a billing manager. A billing manager can view the assigned licenses for an enterprise, but cannot assign licenses or manage enterprise teams.
Configuring SAML authentication
You can configure SAML single sign-on to require users to authenticate to an external identity management system in addition to their personal account. See Configuring SAML single sign-on for your enterprise.
Linking an Azure subscription
To pay for licenses, you must connect your enterprise to an Azure subscription. For instructions, read the following sections in the "Connecting an Azure subscription" article:
If you prefer a visual overview of the process, watch Billing GitHub consumption through an Azure subscription on our YouTube channel.
Enabling Copilot for the enterprise
Before you can assign licenses, an enterprise owner must enable Copilot for the enterprise and select policies for certain features.
- In the top-right corner of GitHub, click your profile photo.
- Depending on your environment, click Your enterprise, or click Your enterprises then click the enterprise you want to view.
- On the left side of the page, in the enterprise account sidebar, click Policies.
- In the " Policies" section, click Copilot.
- Under "GitHub Copilot policies", click Allowed, then click Save.
- Review the policies for suggestions matching public code and Copilot Chat, and update the dropdown menus to enable or disable the features as required.
Assigning licenses to users
When Copilot has been enabled for the enterprise, an enterprise owner can create teams in the enterprise and assign licenses to a team.
- You will grant or remove licenses for users by managing membership of the teams, either in GitHub or with the REST API.
- You cannot assign licenses to individual users or to an entire enterprise.
The same user can be a member of multiple teams. You will only be charged once per user.
Creating a team
Note
You can create teams and manage membership using the REST API. For endpoint documentation, please contact your account manager.
- On the left side of the page, in the enterprise account sidebar, click People.
- Under "People", click Enterprise teams.
- Click New enterprise team.
- Enter a name for the team.
- Click Create team.
- To add users, click Add a member, then search for and select the user.
Assigning licenses to a team
When you have created a team in the enterprise, you can assign licenses to all members of the team.
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On the left side of the page, in the enterprise account sidebar, click Billing & Licensing.
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Under Billing & Licensing, click Licensing.
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In the "Copilot Business" section, click Manage seats.
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Click Add teams.
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In the dialog, select the teams you want to add, review how your bill will be affected, then click Add teams.
You can add or remove users from a team at any time. After you remove a user from a team, the user's license and access to Copilot will be removed the next time the user attempts to authenticate. This can take up to 30 minutes.
Managing your enterprise
For next steps that apply to any enterprise using Copilot Business, see "Setting up GitHub Copilot for your enterprise." The step for granting access to organizations does not apply.
The following sections contain specific information for your enterprise.
Automate license management
You can use the REST API to automate license management. For example, you can list assigned licenses and latest activity, then remove access for users who haven't been using their license.
To do this in your enterprise, you can use the "List all Copilot seat assignments for an enterprise" endpoint, then use the API to manage access to enterprise teams. To request documentation for the API endpoints for enterprise teams, please contact your account manager.
Manage billing
Your enterprise has access to the enhanced billing platform, which allows you to estimate upcoming spending, control overspending with budgets, and track spending changes over time.
See "Using the new billing platform."
Configure content exclusions
You can prevent specified files or repositories from being used to inform code completion suggestions made by GitHub Copilot. GitHub Copilot will not be available in excluded files.
- On the left side of the page, in the enterprise account sidebar, click Policies.
- Click the Content exclusion tab.
- Use paths to specify which content to exclude. See "Excluding content from GitHub Copilot."