The Village and Microsoft 365
What connects, what does not, and what leaves your tenant
Version 1, 10 November 2026 · My Digital Sovereignty Ltd
This page is for small organisations that run Microsoft 365 and have been invited to the Alongside Microsoft Beta Village. It sets out, tool by tool, what the Village does with Microsoft today, what it asks of your Microsoft 365 tenant, and what leaves it.
The state of each part uses one of three labels:
- Available by arrangement: built, and can be turned on for your Village.
- Built, off by default: built and tested; its switch is off until we set it up with you.
- Not available: the Village does not do this.
At a glance
| Tool | What the Village does today | State |
|---|---|---|
| ToolOutlook | What the Village does todayThere is no Outlook add-in. The server groundwork for one is built and turned off. | StateNot available |
| ToolExchange Online mail | What the Village does todayIt does not sit in your mail flow. An email your agent proposes is sent through your own mailbox once your policy allows it or a person approves it. | StateBuilt, off by default |
| ToolMicrosoft sign-in (Entra ID) | What the Village does todayThere is no sign-in to the Village with a Microsoft account. | StateNot available |
| ToolCopilot and your own AI agents | What the Village does todayThere is no Copilot integration. Agents that your own code runs can ask Village Gateway before they act. | StateCopilot: not available. Your own agents: available by arrangement |
| ToolSharePoint / OneDrive / Teams | What the Village does todayThere is no connector. You can download a file and upload it to Village Documents yourself. | StateNot available |
| ToolMicrosoft Graph | What the Village does todayUsed for one thing: sending an approved email from your own mailbox. It asks for no permission to read mail. | StateBuilt, off by default |
Does the Village sit in my Exchange mail flow?
No. The Village is not a relay or a smart host. It needs no connector, no journaling and no transport rule in Exchange, and your mail keeps flowing as it does now.
The Village works on the email your AI agent wants to send. The agent proposes the email to the Village first. Your policy then allows it, holds it for a person to approve, or refuses it. When an email is allowed or approved, the Village sends it through your own mailbox, so it goes out from your own address.
You connect that mailbox in one of two ways:
- Microsoft Graph: a person in your Microsoft 365 tenant signs in once and agrees to let MDSL's app send mail as them.
- SMTP: you give the Village your mail server's address and port, and the mailbox's username and password, where your mail server still accepts a password. For a Microsoft 365 mailbox, Microsoft Graph is the route built for it.
What does the Village ask of my Microsoft 365 tenant?
Permission to send, and to know which account it is sending from. Through Microsoft Graph the Village requests exactly these permissions: Mail.Send, offline_access, openid and email. It never asks to read mail. The only Graph call it makes sends an email that your policy has allowed or a person has approved.
A user in your tenant gives that consent to MDSL's multi-tenant app. Consent by an administrator on behalf of your whole tenant is not offered.
State: Built, off by default.
The Village can also record incoming mail, as a separate option. It reads new messages from one mailbox folder over IMAP, read-only, and never marks them as read. It signs in with a username and password only, and has no Microsoft sign-in, so do not plan on this option for a Microsoft 365 mailbox. State: Built, off by default.
What leaves my tenant, and where is it kept?
When your agent proposes an email, it sends the Village the message: sender, recipients, subject, body and up to 20 attachments of 8 MiB in total. Through Microsoft Graph the Village reads nothing from your mailbox: when the mailbox is connected it learns only the connecting person's account and address, and after that it can send, not read.
The Village keeps the proposed message, attachments included, encrypted under a key made for that message alone. Each decision gets a signed receipt that holds a SHA-256 fingerprint of the message, not the message itself.
If you turn on the recording of incoming mail, its signed record holds fingerprints and pseudonyms, not addresses, display names or subject lines.
Your Village is hosted in New Zealand or the European Union, on servers we rent from Catalyst (New Zealand) and OVH (European Union). Your Order Schedule states which applies to you.
For Village Gateway receipts, an outside time-stamping authority (Certum) sees only a SHA-256 fingerprint of the signed receipt, never the receipt itself.
Can Copilot or my Microsoft agents be governed by the Village?
Not Copilot. The Village has no Copilot integration, so it does not see or govern what Copilot does.
Agents that your own code runs can ask Village Gateway before they act. They reach it through a machine API, or through an MCP endpoint with three tools: ask for a decision, read a decision, and take a permit for an allowed decision. Your policy answers allow, hold or deny. An agent cannot approve anything: approval needs a signed-in Village owner or moderator who is not the person behind the agent's key.
State: Available by arrangement. Village Gateway is turned on Village by Village.
Is there an Outlook add-in?
Not available: the server groundwork (a compose service and a check of Microsoft sign-in tokens) is built and turned off, and no add-in can be installed today.
What we do not do
The Village does not:
- ask Microsoft for permission to read your mail
- sit in your Exchange mail flow as a relay, a connector or a journaling target
- sign people in with a Microsoft account
- connect to SharePoint, OneDrive or Teams
- govern Copilot
Back to Stepping outside the ring, the guide, or read about Village Gateway.