My first impressions of Copilot Cowork

The hottest thing since the sun - Copilot Cowork just came to Frontier in Microsoft 365 Copilot. I had to try it, join me for my first impressions 💫.

Copilot Cowork was announced on the 9th of March as a natural next step in Copilots journey from ask > respond to ask > DO. And fast-forward less than a month and Copilot Cowork is already here to test. I AM EXCITED and here are my first impressions of Copilot Cowork🥳🥳.

How to enable Copilot Cowork

First step is to enable it, and this is something that must be done by an IT admin (send this post to them 😈). As of now getting Cowork to work depends on two factors:

1. Anthropic needs to be enabled. Microsoft is continuing their journey to a multi-model and best-of-breed  approach in Microsoft 365 (more on this later in the post). In EU, EFTA and UK you have to actively enable Anthropic. The reason is that Anthropic can't guarantee the data being processed inside the inside EU data boundary. Ofc using these models inside M365 still gives you enterprise data protection, but your prompts might be processed outside of EU/EFTA/UK. You need to make an educated and active decision if it's ok that prompts might be processed outside these areas or not. If you want to enable it you find the setting under Microsoft 365 admin > Copilot > Settings > AI providers operating as ‎Microsoft‎ subprocessors > Enable/Disable. You can read more here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/copilot/connect-to-ai-subprocessor.

1. Frontier needs to be enabled. Being a frontier is a mindset and about actually changing your organization to an AI first organization working side by side with AI. But it's also just a fancy name for trying beta features for Copilot (don't tell Microsoft I said that😶). To decide if your organization wants to try new features that might be unstable, might be removed, might change a lot is a decision to make yet again. You don't have to enable Frontier for every user. I love to test new features early but I know not everyone loves that. If you want to enable it you find the setting under Microsoft 365 admin > Copilot > Settings > Copilot Frontier > Different settings are availible for web apps, desktop apps and agents. You can read more here: https://adoption.microsoft.com/en-us/copilot/frontier-program/.

Where to find Copilot Work

To find Cowork open Microsoft 365 Copilot (I love the desktop app but it works in the browser and Microsoft Teams as well) and go to the agent store. Search for Cowork and add it!

And there it is, now the fun part starts 💗.

Example use cases for Copilot Cowork

As of now Microsoft gives us some example prompts that I recommend you start exploring.

• Organize my inbox

• Organize my week

• Prep for a meeting

• Research a company

All of them are a great start to explore what Cowork can do and how it works. When you click any of the templates you will get a hefty prompt that you can tailor further if you want to. In the example below I'm showing the Organize my inbox one, I'm updating the prompt to include 48 hours instead of 24 hours. Cowork helps me delete emails (as you can see in the end of the gif), answering emails, and creating calendar bookings. I just have to confirm from time to time but everything inside of Cowork 🥹.

Two other use cases I've explored and enjoyed A LOT are organizing my tasks and get the help to create presentations.

Use case number 1

Prompt: Can you go through my calendar, emails and chat and see if I have any open tasks/assignments/anything I need to prepare. For every item you find please add it as a new task in Microsoft To Do in a new list called "Copilot". Title should be the described task, due date if possible and link in comments.

For this task Copilot looks through everything task like Microsoft 365, creates a new list in To Do (which is my favourite place to have personal tasks,) and adds everything there. Directly in Cowork I can engage with the tasks such as answering an email, RSVP:ing to an event, and at the same time close the tasks in To Do.

Use case number 2

Gathering material for a presentation from different sources works well, but I'm still waiting for Copilot to make beautiful presentations (I'm actually optimistic though). In this prompt Cowork is creating a presentation for me and also sending a message in Microsoft Teams.

Prompt: I’m creating a customer presentation about the evolution of the multi-model best-of-breed language model approach in Microsoft 365. I want to explore current capabilities, upcoming innovations, and Microsoft’s long‑term vision—focusing on how multi-model AI will change the way people work. Make the presentation cute, light, pink and sparkly. Please also write a message about this presentation and share it in my Amanda corp team. 

In this task Copilot makes a sort of shitty looking presentation but it gathers the information, and also send a message in a team about it (after my approval of course)!

What Copilot Cowork can't do (now)

When I'm writing this post Cowork can't access information/data/systems outside of Microsoft 365, but since this is just the beginning I'm optimistic. It seems like there are limitations in Microsoft 365, so far I've discovered that it's not possible to create Loop pages or upload files to a team 😭😭. Will see what more I discover as I continue my exploration.

A multi-model approach

As Copilot continues to mature, Microsoft is putting a lot of effort into using the right LLM for the right job. Not every LLM succeeds in the same area and instead of limiting what we can achieve, Copilot offers the best solution for the thing we want to do. I find this very interesting to see how Microsoft sees Microsoft 365 as the vessel and then different models depending on your actions, and often you don't even have to make the decision about what model to use - Copilot just knows and will direct you.

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So what are my first impressions of Copilot Cowork?

In conclusion this was a first good go and I'm really excited to continue exploring this. Especially in a tenant where I have more data in then my test tenant 🤠. Besides this the biggest change isn't about what is possible, it's about changing your mindset about what you can achieve. I struggle everyday with trying to challenge my mind what I can't and can do. I try reaching for the stars so I at least can reach the moon 🌙!  I believe this is the start of something big.