Microsoft has announced the general availability of Copilot Cowork, a new capability within Microsoft 365 Copilot designed to help people delegate more complex, multi-step work across Microsoft 365 apps, data and workflows.
While Microsoft Copilot already helps users find information, develop ideas and complete short tasks such as drafting emails or summarising content, Copilot Cowork goes further. It can work semi-autonomously in the background, reviewing information, planning actions and producing outputs while users focus on other priorities.
What’s the difference between Copilot and Cowork?
The main difference is that Copilot (standard chat) is a digital assistant that helps you think and write step-by-step, while Copilot Cowork is an autonomous agent that takes an end goal and executes a multi-step workflow in the background across your app.
What’s the difference between Copilot Cowork and Claude Cowork?
Copilot Cowork runs in a protected cloud environment based on the Microsoft365 infrastructure. Claude Cowork uses direct sandboxed access to local folders and files.
Copilot Cowork completes multi-step workflows across Microsoft 365 apps such as Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Sharepoint and OneDrive and within Microsoft 365 security and governance boundaries.
So if you have a Microsoft Cloud-based IT infrastructure, then we would highly recommend Copilot Cowork as it provides the integration, data confidence and security that you need.
What does Copilot Cowork do?
Copilot Cowork represents an important shift from AI as a tool which people have to prompt in the moment and moves towards AI as a digital coworker that can support business processes end to end, with users remaining in control where decisions, approvals or judgement are required.
Cowork licensing, usage and cost control
To use Copilot Cowork, organisations need a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence and usage-based billing set up against an Azure subscription. As Cowork completes delegated work and consumes Copilot Credits, those credits are billed through the Azure subscription.
Administrators can manage access, set spending limits, define who can use the capability, and configure budgets and alerts to help keep usage and costs under control.
How do I get started with Cowork?
Go to your Microsoft Copilot app and find the Cowork agent. From here you can try out a few different prompts to see how they work. Cowork will ask you to clarify and refine your prompt so that it is clear what is required. Specify how you want the output of the task to be delivered too, and whether it’s a one off task, or maybe something that you would like to run regularly, for example every Monday or once a month to coincide with end of month tasks in your business.
What are some use cases for Cowork?
It’s easy to use Cowork to do tasks for you such as organising your inbox – particularly helpful when you return from annual leave, arrange my week, or prepare for a meeting. Here are a few ideas to inspire you:
Use Cowork to research a company
Perhaps you need to gather some background information on a new potential client? You can use Cowork to create a summary document of that company in Word, put together a spreadsheet of financial information in Excel. Once you write the prompt you will see that the task is broken down into a number of steps. Youn can then leave the agent running to complete the task in the background while you get on with something else. When the task is complete you will be able to review the resources created in the Outputs section of Copilot.
Use Cowork to help prepare for a meeting
Ask Cowork to help you prepare for a meeting and with this prompt Cowork will review your Teams, Outlook calendar and emails. This output is delivered using the highly powerful WorkIQ which looks at all relevant content from across your Microsoft applications such as across SharePoint and OneDrive. Cowork will ask clarifying questions to make sure the brief is correct before it starts the task and clarify what your role is in the meeting eg. presenter or participant. You will then be provided with a summary of attendees and detailed notes on their issues and interests that are specifically relevant to your upcoming meeting. Cowork will also identify the questions you should be ready to answer.
Use Cowork to create a Multi-step request
It’s also possible with Copilot Cowork to create a prompt with multiple steps. For example, you can ask it to schedule a meeting with several participants, create a briefing document for the meeting and build a slide deck in PowerPoint. Once it has clarified the details needed from you it will complete the steps and save all of the files in the Output area of your Copilot instance.
Use Cowork to schedule a prompt
Cowork also has the ability to schedule and run regular prompts for you. For example you could create a prompt that every Monday after your team meeting, it will analyse the transcript, summarises the key action points and send them to you via email in an Excel table later that morning.
Use Cowork to create board reporting packs
Cowork can automate routine work involved in creating regular reporting packs. Instead of spending time each month copying and pasting sections from monthly reports and spreadsheets into a board pack template, organisations can use Cowork to streamline the process. This is a strong example of where Cowork can save time, and automate monthly board pack production.
Find out more
Copilot Cowork is a significant development for organisations exploring how agentic AI can improve productivity, reduce administrative effort and support better ways of working across Microsoft 365. It is affordable and suitable for small and medium sized businesses alike.
If you would like to understand what Copilot Cowork could mean for your organisation, or how to approach it safely and cost-effectively, please get in touch.
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