Copilot Studio: Multi‑Agent Flow Works in 1:1 Chat but Not in Group Chat

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Posted on by CU23030055-0

Hi everyone,

I’m facing an issue with my AI agent built using Copilot Studio.

My agent works correctly in 1:1 chat, but when I use it in a Microsoft Teams group chat, it cannot properly orchestrate multiple agents.

Has anyone encountered this issue before?
If yes, could you please share how you solved it?

I’m also new to Copilot Studio, so I’m not sure whether my agent structure is appropriate for this kind of task.

■ Task Description

When a customer tags the agent with a question, the agent should automatically perform the following steps:

Determine whether the message is a question
If it is a question, save it to a specific Excel file
Analyze the question (for example, translate it into Japanese)

■ Agent Structure

1. Question Collector Parent Agent

This is an orchestrator agent that is connected to:

Question Collector Agent
Question Analyzer Agent

2. Question Collector Agent

Uses Excel Business connector to write the question into an Excel file
Sends the response “Question Collected” when finished

3. Question Analyzer Agent

Analyzes the question
Uses Excel Business connector to write the analyzed content into the Excel file
Sends the response “Question Analyzed” when finished

■ Test Results

✅ 1:1 Chat

Works as expected
The full flow executes correctly

❌ Teams Group Chat (Issues)

I encountered the following problems:

No response on the first tag
On the second tag, the Question Collector Agent responds, but it does not automatically trigger the Question Analyzer Agent
Only after tagging the agent a third time does the Question Analyzer Agent run

Any advice or best practices would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you in advance!

Categories:

Building Copilot Studio chatbots in Microsoft Teams

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frago 226 on at

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Hi

I had a similar issue and had to update the agent version in Teams after creating new sub-agents. Try that as well — maybe it will help in your case too.

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deepakmehta13a 310 on at

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Hi,

This looks like a channel sync/version issue in Teams, rather than a problem with your agent design. I’ve seen similar behavior.

You can try the following:

Republish the agent from Copilot Studio after making changes

While publishing, enable “Force newer version for persistent channels”

In Teams, remove and re-add the agent/app to the chat

Start a new conversation thread after re-adding

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Hope this helps.

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CU23030055-0 2 on at

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Thank you, @deepakmehta13a and @frago.
Sorry for the delayed response.

I have identified that the issue was not caused by a channel synchronization / versioning problem in Microsoft Teams.

During troubleshooting, I deployed the agent multiple times with different log messages, and the agent did return the correct responses corresponding to those messages.

Based on the observed behavior, it seemed that each deployed agent instance was interacting with only one tag at a time, which led me to assume that the agent might be closing its execution context after receiving a message.

Specifically, the behavior was as follows:

First tag: No output was generated; the Parent Agent did not respond.

Second tag: The Question Collector agent responded.

Third tag: The Question Analyzer agent responded.

As a resolution, instead of using an orchestration agent, I refactored the design to use a single topic that directly calls two flows: the Collector flow and the Analyzer flow.

With this approach, the system successfully executed end-to-end processing and wrote the data to the Excel file using a single message, confirming that the issue was resolved.

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