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Stage 3 · Cowork

Let it run the work. Hand Copilot a multi-step task and let it work through it — the first taste of delegation, not just assistance.

The shift: from "Copilot helps me with a step" to "Copilot owns the task." This is the hinge of the whole ramp — once you're comfortable delegating end-to-end work, building an agent that does it repeatedly becomes the obvious next move.

When you're ready for this stage

You trust Copilot for single prompts and find yourself wishing it could just finish the whole thing — pull the inputs, do the steps, hand you a result. That's exactly what Cowork is for.

Going the wrong way?

Cowork earns its overhead on real multi-step work. If you've spun up a session for one rewrite, summary, or lookup, you've overshot — drop back to Chat.

What you need

  • A Microsoft 365 Copilot license, and Cowork turned on for you by your admin — it's generally available but off by default and billed in Copilot Credits. How access and cost work ↓
  • A real, multi-step task with clear inputs (files, emails, a meeting) and a clear deliverable.
  • Willingness to delegate — and to review the output rather than do each step yourself.

Start here — if you only do three things

Delegate one real task end-to-end, prove it on a stack of documents, then make the recurring version run itself.

All walkthroughs

Delegate a whole task

Start here — the hand-off that makes delegation click.

Synthesize & compare sources

Turn a pile of inputs into one coherent, decision-ready read.

Produce a deliverable

Go from raw inputs to a polished draft you only need to review and ship.

Run recurring & operational cycles

Describe the cycle once and let it run the busywork on schedule.

Coordinate people processes

Run a rigorous, fair multi-stage people process as one delegated flow.

Adopt as a team

Capture a great run so it doesn't die with the session — make it a reusable skill the whole team can rerun.

Access and cost

Cowork is generally available (since June 16, 2026), off by default, and billed per task in Copilot Credits on top of the Microsoft 365 Copilot license. Type /cost in Cowork any time to see what a task used. Expand for the details.

How Cowork is paid for

Copilot Cowork previewed in Frontier from March 30 and became generally available worldwide on June 16, 2026 for work and school accounts (announcement) — no Frontier enrollment needed. A few extras, like the App skill for building lightweight apps, are still Frontier-only.

Microsoft splits Copilot into everyday AI, covered by the Microsoft 365 Copilot user license (USL), and advanced AI on usage-based billing. Cowork is advanced AI: it needs the USL and it draws Copilot Credits for every task (USL vs. usage-based billing).

  • What drives a task's cost: model use, context retrieval, tool calls, and runtime. Billable activity includes model responses, tool and skill calls, image generation, and browser tasks.
  • What it costs: pay-as-you-go is $0.01 per Copilot Credit; a pre-purchase plan (P3) trades a commitment for a discount.
  • The license doesn't cover it. Unlike Copilot Chat or the built-in agents, a Microsoft 365 Copilot license does not zero-rate Cowork usage.
How an admin turns it on (spending policy)
  1. Set up usage-based billing in the Microsoft 365 admin center (Copilot → Cost Management).
  2. Create a spending policy that selects Cowork and scopes the users or groups who should have it. The policy is the access control — anyone in scope can use Cowork, however small the limit.
  3. Set limits and alerts at the tenant, group, or user level. Limits reset monthly and don't carry over.
  4. Decide on discovery. If Cowork is discoverable but not enabled, users can request access in the app.

If you managed Cowork during the Frontier preview: the old Agents → All Agents → Cowork control no longer decides who gets access — only a spending policy does (Manage Copilot Cowork).

Keep an eye on the meter
What Cowork can do now

Since GA, Cowork has grown well past one-shot hand-offs (Cowork overview):

Capability What it means for this stage
Scheduled prompts and event-driven tasks Recurring work (a weekly digest) and triggers (a matching email or Teams message) run without you — managed on the Automations tab.
Built-in skills — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, Email, Scheduling, Meetings, Daily Briefing, Deep Research, and more Real files and real actions, not descriptions of them.
Custom skills (up to 50) Capture a great run as a reusable skill — the heart of the Skills Catalog.
Plugins from the Microsoft 365 App Store Partner skills and connectors your admin can deploy org-wide.
Model choice and Auto Pick a model per task, or let Auto choose — a lever on cost per task.
Approvals Cowork pauses for your go-ahead before sending, posting, or scheduling.

Use it on the web at copilot.cloud.microsoft, in the Microsoft Copilot desktop app for Windows and macOS, or on mobile.

Useful skills

The walkthroughs above aren't all one-offs — the recurring and templated ones become reusable skills: capture the recipe once and the whole team reruns it cold. The ones worth saving first:

  • Recurring weekly digest

    A standing Monday-morning digest that runs itself — describe it once, rerun it every week.

    🧩 Reusable skill

  • Customer-health digest

    Rank your whole book of business worst-first, on a schedule, so you know where to spend the week.

    🧩 Reusable skill

  • Multi-document brief

    A repeatable "stack of docs → one coherent brief" recipe the whole team can rerun.

    🧩 Reusable skill

  • QBR prep cycle

    The whole quarterly-review cycle — data → deck → talking points → follow-ups — as one rerunnable flow.

    🧩 Reusable skill

  • Build a recipe library

    Capture any great run so it doesn't die with the session — the foundation for everything above.

    🧩 Reusable skill

Browse them all in the Skills Catalog.

Borrow, don't build

Rather than re-document Cowork process-by-process, lean on the work already out there.

The full curated set for this stage lives in Resources → Stage 3.

Security at this stage

Cowork chains many steps, but every one runs as you — including scheduled and event-driven tasks — and processes files in a temporary, isolated environment inside the Microsoft 365 service boundary. Multi-step doesn't mean wider access: Microsoft Purview and the unified audit log still apply. See the full picture in Security & Governance.

Where this leads

Delegating the same kind of task three or more times a week? You'll start wishing it just existed as a reusable thing. That wish is the doorway to building — and Agent Builder is the no-code way in.

Continue to Stage 4 · Agent Builder →

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