Microsoft recently introduced something new that changes how you interact with Copilot. It’s called Copilot Cowork, and it shifts Copilot from being a conversational assistant to something that can actually take on tasks and execute them on your behalf.
Instead of prompting Copilot step by step, you describe the outcome you want and let it go off and do the work.
In this post, I’ll walk through what Copilot Cowork is, how it works, and where it can actually be useful.
If you’d prefer to see it in action, here’s the walkthrough video.
Where Copilot Cowork Came From
The concept behind Cowork actually started outside of Microsoft.
Earlier this year, the company Anthropic, creators of Claude, released something called Claude Cowork. The idea was that instead of chatting back and forth with AI, you could give it a task and let it work independently until the result was ready.
Microsoft worked with Anthropic to bring similar capabilities into the Microsoft ecosystem as Copilot Cowork.
There is one major difference though.
Claude Cowork can run locally on your machine. Copilot Cowork runs entirely in the cloud inside Microsoft 365.
That means you can start a task, close your laptop, and the work keeps running in the background.
Because it runs inside Microsoft 365, it also inherits the platform’s security model. It respects things like file permissions, sensitivity labels, and organizational governance policies.
That matters a lot when you’re letting AI perform tasks on your behalf.
How Copilot Cowork Is Different from Regular Copilot
To understand Cowork, it helps to compare it to how we normally use Copilot.
With regular Copilot, the interaction is very transactional. You ask a question, Copilot responds, and then you decide what to do next. You’re guiding every step of the process.
Copilot Cowork works differently.
You start by describing the outcome you want, and Cowork builds a plan to get there. It can search across your Microsoft 365 data, use built-in skills, and generate the final output.
Instead of steering the whole process yourself, you’re essentially delegating the task.
How to Access Copilot Cowork
To use Copilot Cowork today you need a few things in place.
You’ll need a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, a Microsoft 365 tenant, and access to the Frontier program, which provides early access to new AI capabilities inside Microsoft 365.
Once enabled, you can access Cowork from the Microsoft 365 portal by opening the All Agents section and searching for the Cowork agent.
After adding it, it becomes available inside your Copilot experience.
Adding Context from Your Microsoft 365 Environment
One of the most powerful aspects of Cowork is that it understands context from across Microsoft 365.
You can reference things like files, emails, meetings, Teams chats, SharePoint sites, or even specific people in your organization.
For example, you might reference a document from a meeting retrospective and ask Cowork to draft an email summarizing it for your manager.
Cowork can review the document, identify who your manager is, write the email, attach the file, and prepare it for sending.
Before it actually sends anything, it gives you a checkpoint to review the output.
Built-In Skills
Cowork works by combining different capabilities called skills.
At the time of recording there are 13 built-in skills, including the ability to create Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF files, send emails, schedule meetings, run enterprise search, perform research, and generate adaptive cards.
These skills are what allow Cowork to take action, not just generate text.
Automating Repeatable Tasks
Where Cowork really starts to shine is with repeatable processes.
You can schedule tasks so that they run automatically on a recurring basis.
For example, you might ask Cowork to check every Monday morning for upcoming PTO and identify tasks that need to be wrapped up before you leave. It could review your calendar, scan emails, and send you a summary of anything that needs attention.
Another example is a weekly team update email.
You could ask Cowork to send a Monday morning message summarizing your priorities and key meetings for the week. Because it has access to your calendar and communication history, it can pull the context it needs to create that message automatically.
Once you approve the first run, you can allow Cowork to send future updates without needing manual approval.
Creating Custom Skills
Cowork also supports custom skills, which allow you to define repeatable workflows.
A custom skill is simply a Markdown file that describes the goal of the workflow, the expected output format, and any style or formatting rules that should be followed.
These skills are stored in your OneDrive inside a cowork skills folder. Once they’re added, Cowork can automatically call them when a task matches the description of the skill.
For example, you could create a custom skill that turns rough notes into a polished blog post.
Example: AI-Assisted Content Creation
One way I’ve used Cowork is to help with content creation.
For example, I can ask it to research a topic and draft a blog post. Cowork can perform deep research, collect relevant information, and then apply a custom blog formatting skill to structure the output.
What’s interesting is that while the task is running, you can still add new instructions. If you suddenly realize you want a comparison chart included, you can add that request without restarting the process.
Cowork simply updates the plan and continues working.
Final Thoughts
Copilot Cowork represents a shift in how we interact with AI tools.
Instead of using AI purely for answers or quick drafts, we can start delegating larger tasks and letting AI handle the execution.
For organizations already using Microsoft 365 Copilot, this opens the door to automating many of the small but time-consuming workflows that fill up the workday.