Will our old Teams-and-Copilot retention policy stop covering Copilot prompts?

You’re right to check this before someone assumes “Teams policy = Copilot covered” and an eDiscovery request comes back empty. Retention that used to travel with Teams chat is being unbundled, and the roadmap is unusually blunt about what happens next.

Here’s what’s going on. Learn used to store Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Chat messages under the combined location Teams chats and Copilot interactions. New policies use separate locations: Teams chats on one side, and Microsoft Copilot experiences (Microsoft 365 Copilot, Security Copilot, Copilot in Fabric, Copilot Studio) on the other, plus Enterprise AI apps and Other AI apps where collection policies apply. Roadmap 571306 says some legacy Teams retention policies that currently also apply to Copilot interactions will be converted to — and treated as — Teams-only. They will no longer implicitly govern Copilot workloads, with general availability targeted for October 2026.

Learn’s create-policy guidance already tells you how to separate an existing combined policy: PowerShell can make the old policy Teams-chat-only (User:TeamsChatUserInteractions) and add Copilot to a newer-location policy (User:M365Copilot), or you create a fresh policy with Microsoft Copilot experiences selected. Existing combined policies continue to be supported for a time, but Learn notes they can’t be edited once your tenant supports the separate locations — and new policies must use the new locations. Behind the scenes, prompts and responses still land in a hidden folder in the user’s Exchange mailbox, searchable with eDiscovery while retained; what users still see in the Copilot UI is not a reliable picture of whether compliance still has the copy.

This is Steady GRC, not marketing: if Legal’s retention schedule says “keep Copilot for seven years” and the only policy left after the split is Teams chat, you’ve accidentally demoted Copilot to whatever the default mailbox behaviour is. Schofield’s Second Law applies to compliance copies as much as backups — data doesn’t really exist for discovery unless you still have a retained copy you can find.

Options that actually work:

1. Inventory now, dual-policy before October. List every retention policy that mentions Teams chat or the old combined location. Confirm whether Copilot interactions are explicitly covered. If not, create (or extend) a Microsoft Copilot experiences policy with the same retain/delete intent as Legal signed off. Best Steady default.
2. Separate with PowerShell, then verify in eDiscovery. Follow Learn’s separation commands, wait for distribution (up to seven days), and run a Content Search for Copilot interactions for a known test user. Moderate effort; proves the copy still comes back.
3. Retain-only on Copilot while you finish the paperwork. Buy time without deleting prompts you’re not sure you can afford to lose. Temporary; still needs an owner and an end date.
4. Ignore the Message Centre post. The Teams policy keeps working for Teams; Copilot quietly stops being governed by it. Auditors notice later.

12 Panes action / comms: Tell Compliance and Legal: After the split, Teams retention is Teams; Copilot needs Microsoft Copilot Experiences (and collection policies for non-Microsoft AI apps you care about). Tell the Purview admin: Inventory legacy combined policies this week; don’t wait for the October conversion to surprise you. Tell the DPO: eDiscovery against the mailbox copy is the proof, not what still shows in the user’s chat history. Leadership: This is a configuration change with legal consequence, not an optional tidy-up.

Benefits / risks: Separate locations let you set Copilot retention differently from chat (often what regulated firms want); cloud-attachment retention labels can still keep the file version referenced in a Copilot turn; inactive mailboxes keep leavers’ retained Copilot data searchable; if you only had the legacy combined policy, Copilot coverage can vanish when it’s treated as Teams-only; delete-only policies still take service time (days, not hours) before permanent deletion — don’t promise overnight wipe.

I’d suggest a one-page register this week: policy name, locations today, retain/delete duration, owner, and whether Copilot is explicit. Take it to Legal, schedule the Copilot Experiences policy, and re-test eDiscovery before the October change lands. Once that’s done, the split is boring — which is exactly what you want from retention.

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