web
You’re offline. This is a read only version of the page.
close
Skip to main content

Announcements

Welcome to the Power Platform Communities
News and Announcements icon
Community site session details

Community site session details

Session Id :
Power Platform Community / Forums / Copilot Studio / Custom CoPilot agent k...
Copilot Studio
Suggested Answer

Custom CoPilot agent keeps "forgetting" content in the knowledge base

(1) ShareShare
ReportReport
Posted on by BN-12111751-0 4
I created a custom agent that is meant to provide answers from a list of documents that I either uploaded or pointed to in Sharepoint. It was working ok at first but there are many times that it seems to forget the info that is already in there. Is anyone else having this issue? I cannot deploy this agent to my team if it doesn't work most of the time.
Categories:
General topics
I have the same question (1)
  • Suggested answer
    Sam_Fawzi Profile Picture
    Sam_Fawzi 879 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at
     
    This can happen, and it’s usually not that the agent is forgetting the knowledge base — it’s how Copilot retrieves and ranks content. Several things typically cause this behavior:

    1. Make sure all documents are fully indexed
    In Knowledge → Documents, check that each file shows:
    • Status = Ready
    • No parsing warnings
    • No permission errors
    If a document is stuck in Processing or Error, the agent may return incomplete answers.

    2. Confirm user permissions
    If the user interacting with the agent does not have permission to read a SharePoint document, Copilot will silently skip that file and act like the content doesn’t exist.
    Have the same user try opening the document directly in SharePoint to confirm access.

    3. Improve the agent’s grounding instruction
    Under Agent → Instructions, add something like:
    “Always answer using the knowledge base. If the information does not exist in the knowledge base, state that it is unavailable.”
    This reduces hallucinations and forces more consistent retrieval.

    4. Keep instructions concise
    Long system prompts can push retrieved content out of the model’s context window.
    Shorter instructions = more stable grounding.

    5. Check document formats
    PDFs (especially scanned ones) sometimes embed poorly.
    Try converting one problematic file to Word (.docx) and re-upload — retrieval quality almost always improves.

    6. Ensure your content contains searchable text
    Even though retrieval is semantic, your documents will work best when they have:
    • Clear headings
    • Proper sentences
    • Minimal tables/graphics
    • Repeated terminology
    Highly formatted content produces weaker results.

    7. Use Test → Evaluate mode
    This feature shows exactly which document chunks were retrieved when you ask a question.
    If the wrong chunks or no chunks appear, the root cause is indexing or document structure.

    8. Known intermittent issues
    Microsoft has documented occasional reliability issues with blended sources (SharePoint + uploads).
    If retrieval becomes unstable, removing all documents and re-adding them usually resolves it.

    Helpful Microsoft Learning Resources
    Here are two official Microsoft links that explain grounding, retrieval, and best practices:
    1. Microsoft Learn – Build AI Agents with Copilot Studio
    2. Enterprise Copilot Grounding & Retrieval Best Practices
    These give detailed explanations of how the knowledge base is indexed and how to structure content for stable retrieval.

    If you’d like, share:
    • Number of documents
    • File formats
    • Whether they are uploaded or SharePoint-based
    • A sample question / response  that fails
    I can help pinpoint the exact cause.
     
  • BN-12111751-0 Profile Picture
    BN-12111751-0 4 on at
    I have a mix of Uploads, Sharepoint docs, and Onedrive docs. There are almost 100 docs. They are PDFs, Powerpoints, Word and Excel docs. There are times that the agent works fine in terms of correct responses to a prompt, then a day later it will give me a response to that same prompt with I could not find any of that knowledge in the knowledge base.

Under review

Thank you for your reply! To ensure a great experience for everyone, your content is awaiting approval by our Community Managers. Please check back later.

Helpful resources

News and Announcements

Welcome to the Power Platform Communities

Quick Links

Introducing the 2026 Season 1 community Super Users

Congratulations to our 2026 Super Users!

Kudos to our 2025 Community Spotlight Honorees

Congratulations to our 2025 community superstars!

Congratulations to the March Top 10 Community Leaders!

These are the community rock stars!

Leaderboard > Copilot Studio

#1
Valantis Profile Picture

Valantis 586

#2
chiaraalina Profile Picture

chiaraalina 170 Super User 2026 Season 1

#3
deepakmehta13a Profile Picture

deepakmehta13a 118

Last 30 days Overall leaderboard

Featured topics

Announcing the "Microsoft Copilot Studio ❤️ MCP" lab
Block PII/PCI in Copilot Studio agent user prompt
Welcome to the Copilot Studio forum!

Product updates

Microsoft Power Platform Community release plans