Copilot Interactions and eDiscovery

Microsoft hasn't fully perfected this.

Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash

I had been planning this issue for the last couple of weeks. Still, my original plan took a detour after I attended an ILTA webinar with Lighthouse, where John Collins included a graphic about Copilot interactions and where they are stored.

As expected, I could see that they were being stored similarly to Teams chats. Files referenced in a prompt were treated as modern attachments. (there’s that term again!). Still, since they were not being uploaded into the Copilot interaction, they were not being copied to the Microsoft Team Chat Files folder in OneDrive. This is similar to what happens with a link shared in chat instead of a file shared in chat.

I had not considered it, but John pointed out that if you enable the automatic labeling of shared attachments, that file will be labeled and retained when referenced in the Copilot interaction. It makes sense. I hadn’t thought of it, and there are potential complications for copies of all those files in OneDrive collections, but it is consistent.

He also pointed out something I hadn’t tested yet: interactions inside Outlook are not being stored in the Exchange mailbox. Oh, the irony.

I needed to look for myself.