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There’s no official method to directly trigger a custom topic when a conversation starts in Copilot Studio, since the “On Conversation Start” is a system-managed topic that’s locked down for editing or redirecting.
Workaround Strategy
To simulate a custom startup experience, here’s what other makers have tried or what you could explore:
-Use the “Fallback Topic” cleverly
Set up a fallback topic with smart conditions or context variables that recognize when it’s the first turn of the conversation.
Use that topic to redirect users to your custom onboarding or welcome topic.
-Embed Custom Logic in Bot Greeting
If you control the hosting experience (e.g., embedding Copilot in Power Pages or Teams), you can use Power Automate or JavaScript to prefill context or trigger actions that redirect to a custom topic.
Leverage System Variables
Tap into session.startTime or any conversation-level variable to infer when a conversation is fresh.
Use conditional logic to launch your custom topic only once per session.
-Manual Redirect via Entity Recognition
Ask a subtle onboarding question in the first turn and use that input to trigger your intended topic with entity recognition.
-Raise a Feature Request
Since this limitation is baked into system architecture, surfacing it as feedback on the Copilot Studio Ideas portal
here might spark interest from the product team.
If this fixes the issue, please mark as resolved to help others with find it.
Happy to help
Robu1
SuperUser|Moderator
Season 2:2025
