Manage Prompts and Conversations
One prompt has a whole lifecycle, and this domain follows it end to end
A prompt is the instruction you give Microsoft 365 Copilot, and almost everything you do here orbits one of them. Picture the lifecycle: you write a prompt, the prompt produces a conversation, a prompt worth keeping gets saved, scheduled, or shared, and a prompting pattern you keep repeating eventually becomes an agent. That single thread is the map for this domain. The classic exam trap is to treat these as one feature. Writing a sharper prompt, reusing a saved one, finding a past chat, and building an agent are four different jobs with four different homes in the product, and a question usually turns on which job the scenario is actually describing. Name the job first and the feature follows.
The domain unfolds in four steps: write, reuse, manage, then build
Read this page as a map, then follow the four subtopics in order. Writing Effective Prompts is the craft: Microsoft frames a good prompt as up to four parts (Goal, Context, Expectations, Source), and only the Goal is required. Saving, Scheduling, and Sharing Prompts is reuse: the three hover actions on a prompt, all flowing through Copilot Prompt Gallery, that decide whether you rerun a prompt yourself, have Copilot run it on a schedule, or hand it to your team. Managing Copilot Conversations is housekeeping: your chats save automatically, and you find, rename, delete, or send one to a Copilot Notebook from the Conversations list. Building and Managing Copilot Agents is packaging: when a prompting pattern should become a reusable, instruction-driven assistant, a business user builds it no-code in Agent Builder. Each subtopic carries the steps, the screens, and the traps; this overview just shows how they connect.
When two answers both work, prefer reuse over retyping and the lightest tool that fits
Across the whole domain Copilot rewards the same instinct. If you will ask the same thing again, save or share the prompt instead of retyping it, so answers stay consistent. If you keep tweaking one prompt, refine it with a follow-up rather than restarting, because the follow-up keeps the earlier context. And reach for the smallest tool the task needs: a one-off question stays in Copilot Chat, a repeated personal prompt gets saved, a team-wide pattern gets shared, and only a genuinely reusable, scoped assistant justifies building an agent. The exam-correct answer is usually the lightest feature that still meets the requirement, not the most elaborate one.
The four jobs in the prompt-and-conversation lifecycle (and where each is covered)
| Job | What it produces | Key feature | Drill into |
|---|---|---|---|
| Write | A clear instruction Copilot can act on | Goal / Context / Expectations / Source; Prompt Gallery suggested prompts | Writing Effective Prompts |
| Reuse | A prompt you rerun, schedule, or hand to a team | Save, Schedule, Share via Copilot Prompt Gallery | Saving, Scheduling, and Sharing Prompts |
| Manage | A tidy, findable history of past chats | Conversations list; Rename, Delete, Add to Notebook | Managing Copilot Conversations |
| Build | A reusable, scoped assistant | Agent Store; Agent Builder (knowledge, instructions, capabilities, prompts, sharing) | Building and Managing Copilot Agents |