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Keeping Conversations and Improving Copilot Memory Make AI Chat App More Useful
Recently, there’s been a flood of message center notifications to advise tenant administrators about changes to the way that Microsoft 365 Copilot chat works. I’m not sure how much attention that tenant administrators pay to updates for Microsoft 365 Copilot. After all, they cannot affect how Copilot processes user prompts to generate responses. Copilot Chat is very much a client application that works the way it does without any administrator intervention.
I use Microsoft 365 Copilot, so I am interested in the steps Microsoft takes to keep the chat app competitive with the likes of Claude and ChatGPT. MC1174856 and MC1158329 are two recent updates that attracted my attention.
Preserving Conversations
Like Teams chats, interactions with Copilot Chat form conversations or chat threads. The Copilot conversations allow users to understand exactly what happened during an interaction. The conversations also allow users to restart an interaction based on the context of the chats previously exchanged between the user and Copilot. I find this because I often step away from a Copilot conversation to reflect on the AI responses before later restarting the conversation with an intact context.
MC1174856 (last updated 22 May 2026, Microsoft 365 roadmap item 500638) describes a small but critical change to ensure that Copilot Chat generates conversations. The change is to force the creation of a conversation immediately after the first user prompt is submitted to Copilot for processing. Once created, an entry for the conversation appears in the navigation pane and the conversation builds through subsequent user prompts and Copilot responses, just like a Teams chat builds through the messages exchanged between users.
The update has been delayed significantly from its original dates, but the latest information is that users in all commercial and government tenants should have it by the end of June (now).
Updating Copilot Memory
MC1158329 (last updated 8 June 2026) describes improvements to Memory in Microsoft 365 Copilot in terms of making it easier for users to find and manage their memory directives. The update should be available in all tenants now.
Microsoft introduced the memory facility for Copilot about a year ago. It’s a capability that’s easy to overlook until you take the time to think about the instructions that you always want Copilot to remember. Once the instructions are captured as memories, the quality of Copilot’s responses will be much better. As you can see from Figure 1, the memory settings I created for Copilot set specific requirements, such as preferring concise responses or seeing PowerShell examples based on the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK. I also want to see citations from Microsoft for anything to do with Microsoft technology. This memory stops Copilot surfacing a “fact” from some random web site when I research topics.
Memories are intensely personal. These settings work for me because they reflect the kind of interactions I have with Copilot. It takes time for people to figure out what memories influence Copilot’s responses positively for them.
Creating a memory is still done by telling Copilot to remember something as shown in Figure 2.
Clicking the three dots in the top right-hand corner exposes a menu. Memories are available through Chat Settings, then Personalization, and Shared memories.
Some might ask why the Settings menu doesn’t contain a choice to add a new memory. I guess that it’s because Copilot must process a prompt to recognize it as an instruction to create a new memory. It’s simpler to interpret a memory through Chat than to replicate the interaction in the Settings UI.
Gradual Improvements Makes the Difference
Microsoft 365 Copilot receives a lot of criticism. People prefer Claude or ChatGPT or something else. They find things to complain about in the way that Copilot performs actions.
Perfection remains elusive, not just for Copilot, but for all the AI chat tools. Still, it’s encouraging to see steady, practical improvements. Even incremental changes like these make Copilot more usable over time, even if progress feels too slow for some. Of course, people need to know about the improvements if the changes are to have an effect, and if administrators ignore the message center notifications, how will users discover what’s new?
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