Introduction
Most knowledge workers don't struggle with individual tasks. They struggle with the coordination between tasks—the meeting prep that requires pulling email threads, finding the right deck, summarizing recent conversations, and then packaging it all before the call. Each piece is manageable. Stitching them together is where the afternoon goes.
Microsoft 365 Copilot already helps with individual steps: summarize a thread, draft a reply, analyze a file. But what if you could describe the outcome you need and let Copilot carry the work forward across your apps?
That's what Copilot Cowork does. Cowork carries out tasks on your behalf across Microsoft 365. You describe what you need in natural language, and it does the work—sending emails, scheduling meetings, creating documents, posting in Teams, and managing files. It's grounded in your work context, including your emails, meetings, files, and collaboration patterns, so the results reflect your actual environment, not generic output. Instead of prompting for one artifact at a time, you delegate multi-step work and stay in the loop through review, steering, and approval.
Imagine you're an account manager with a customer meeting in two days. You have relevant emails, a previous meeting summary, usage data in a spreadsheet, and talking points scattered across Teams chats. Today, pulling that together takes time away from other work. With Cowork, you describe the goal and let it assemble the briefing, the analysis, and a draft deck—checking in with you along the way.
See it in action:
In this module, you learn how to:
- Differentiate Copilot Chat, agents, and Cowork and choose the right tool for the shape of work in front of you.
- Recognize how Cowork's pay-as-you-go usage works, check what a task uses, and let model choice work in your favor.
- Describe how Cowork carries out multi-step work: from your request through planning, progress, approval, and results.
- Write effective requests that help Cowork produce useful, well-scoped results.
- Identify scenarios where Cowork adds the most value, such as meeting prep, calendar triage, company research, and launch planning.
- Recognize the security model that applies to Cowork and the known limitations to keep in mind as you work.
By the end of this module, you'll be able to recognize when work is a candidate for Cowork, delegate it with a well-structured request, and confidently review the results.
Note
We recognize that different people like to learn in different ways. You can choose to complete this module in video-based format or you can read the content as text and images. The text contains greater detail than the videos, so in some cases you might want to refer to it as supplemental material to the video presentation.