m365 Copilot Cowork - Missing history, Scheduled tasks, and Skills

Question

As of this morning our whole firm has lost their chat history, scheduled tasks, and Cowork skills. Cowork is usable and you can create new skills and tasks, but we've lost all history.

Is this a Cowork service issue (none reported in service health)? Known issue? etc.

Answer 1

This behavior aligns with how Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and Cowork handle chat history, personalization, and preview features, rather than with a documented outage in the provided context.

Key points from the available information:

1. Chat history and personalization can be disabled
   • Copilot Memory automatically collects key details from previous chats to personalize future responses.
   • If Chat history personalization is turned off in Copilot Chat settings, Copilot deletes the inferences it made from previous chats. This data is removed from the Copilot system after 30 days.
   • If the toggle is turned back on within the 30‑day grace period, Copilot overrides the deletion so that conversation data isn’t lost.
   • If it remains off, those inferences are permanently removed after 30 days.
   This affects what Copilot “remembers” and uses, but the context does not explicitly state that it deletes the visible conversation list in the UI. However, any firm‑wide change to chat history or personalization settings could explain a sudden loss of remembered context and behavior.
2. Copilot activity history can be cleared centrally
   • For Microsoft accounts, users can delete all Copilot app activity history from the privacy dashboard.
   • For work or school accounts, there is separate guidance (not detailed in this context) to delete Microsoft 365 Copilot activity history.
   If an admin or process cleared activity history at the tenant level (per the related guidance), that could result in loss of visible history and associated artifacts.
3. Cowork is a Frontier preview feature
   • Cowork is only available through the Frontier preview program and is explicitly documented as a preview feature.
   • Preview features may have restricted functionality and their availability and capabilities may change over time.
   • As a preview, changes to behavior (including history handling, scheduled prompts, or skills) can occur without appearing as a standard service health incident.
4. Scheduled prompts and skills
   • Cowork supports scheduled prompts for recurring tasks (daily briefings, weekly reports) and can discover and use custom skills.
   • The context does not document any specific known issue where all tenants lose Cowork history, scheduled tasks, or skills.
   • Because Cowork is in preview, changes to how these are stored or surfaced could occur as part of feature updates.

Given the constraints of the available documentation:

• There is no explicit statement of a known, documented Cowork incident that wipes history, scheduled tasks, and skills across a tenant.
• The most relevant documented mechanisms that could cause loss of history or remembered context are:
  • Chat history personalization being turned off (and remaining off past the 30‑day grace period), and/or
  • Activity history being cleared via the appropriate admin or privacy controls.
• Cowork’s preview status means behavior can change without a permanent guarantee of data persistence, and such changes may not always surface as standard service health issues.

Recommended next steps based on the documentation:

1. Verify Copilot Chat history and personalization settings
   • In Copilot Chat, open … Copilot chats and more → Settings → Personalization → Chat history.
   • Confirm whether Chat history is toggled Off for users. If it is Off and has been for more than 30 days, inferences and remembered context may already have been deleted.
2. Check whether Copilot activity history was cleared
   • For work or school accounts, review whether any process or admin followed the guidance to delete Microsoft 365 Copilot activity history (referenced from the chat history article).
3. Treat as a preview/rollout issue and open a support case
   • Because Cowork is a Frontier preview feature and the context does not document this as a known issue, and since the impact is tenant‑wide (entire firm), the appropriate path is to:
     • Collect tenant details, affected time window, and examples (users, skills, scheduled tasks).
     • Open a Microsoft support ticket so engineering can check backend logs and confirm whether this is a service‑side issue, a configuration change (history/activity deletion), or a preview behavior change.

---

References:

• Revisit your Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat history
• Manage your Microsoft Copilot activity history in the privacy dashboard
• Cowork overview (Frontier)
• Use Cowork (Frontier)
• Cowork common questions (Frontier)
• Responsible AI FAQ for Cowork
• Microsoft 365 Copilot release notes