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Run a full QBR prep cycle in Cowork

Quarterly business reviews eat a day: pull the account data, build the deck, prep your talking points, then chase the follow-ups afterward. Hand the whole cycle to Cowork and review four deliverables instead of authoring them.

Stage: Cowork · For: End user, Manager, Champion · Level: Intermediate · Time: 25 min

When to use this

A QBR isn't one task — it's a chain: gather the account's numbers and activity, shape it into a deck, distill talking points so you're not reading slides, and after the meeting turn decisions into tracked follow-ups. Doing each by hand is exactly the kind of multi-step, multi-source work Cowork was built to own.

Use this the week before a QBR, when you'd otherwise block out an afternoon to assemble it all yourself.

What you'll need

  • M365 Copilot license with access to Cowork
  • The account's material reachable by Copilot — emails, meeting notes, the CRM/account plan, prior QBR decks in OneDrive/SharePoint or Teams
  • The basics of the account: name, the stakeholders, and what "success this quarter" looked like
  • (Optional) a QBR deck template your org uses, so the output matches house style

Try it now — the prompt

Describe the full cycle as one outcome — Cowork plans the steps:

Prep my QBR for [account name], meeting [date]. Pull the last quarter of activity —
emails, meetings, and the account plan — and: (1) build a QBR deck covering wins,
usage/adoption, open issues, and next-quarter goals; (2) give me one page of talking
points so I can present without reading slides, including the two hard questions
they'll likely ask and how I'd answer; (3) draft a follow-up email template I can send
after the meeting. Save the deck and notes to my files.

Why this works: you named the account and window (grounds it), the four deliverables (deck, talking points, anticipated questions, follow-up), and the shape of each — so Cowork produces a review-ready package, not a vague summary. Anticipating the hard questions is what turns prep into confidence.

Step by step

  1. State the full cycle. Paste the task above with your account details. Cowork lays out its plan — the sources it'll read and the deliverables it'll build — before running.
  2. Let it gather and assemble. It searches the account's activity, drafts the deck, and writes the talking points. Each step is visible, so you can sanity-check what it found as it goes.
  3. Review the package against what you know. Open the deck and talking points. Check the numbers and the "open issues" slide hardest — those are where a stale source shows.
  4. Refine in plain language: 
    The adoption slide is buried — move it to position 2 and add the trend vs. last
quarter. And make the talking points punchier: one line each, lead with the win.
  5. Close the loop after the meeting. Bring the decisions back: 
    From the QBR notes, pull the three commitments we made, turn them into tracked
follow-ups with owners and dates, and fill in the follow-up email I drafted earlier.

Screenshots

We deliberately don't ship screenshots that go stale — the Microsoft Copilot UI changes often. Follow the numbered steps above, which we keep current. Maintainers can regenerate fresh captures with the Playwright tool in tooling/screenshots/.

Make it better

Turn one good QBR into a repeatable motion: - Make it recurring. "Two weeks before each quarter-end, draft QBR decks for my top 5 accounts." A cycle you describe once can run on a schedule (Frontier needed for background automation). - Standardize the shape. Feed Cowork your QBR template so every deck lands in house style. - Build the account-team version. "Add an internal pre-read for my manager: risks, asks, and where I need help."

📚 Learn more. This kind of process-level delegation is the heart of the community Cowork Cookbook by Sean Galliher (unofficial). For where Cowork sits in the product, see the M365 Copilot resources hub.

Watch out for

  • Verify every number before it leaves the building. Cowork assembles from your sources; you own accuracy. The usage and revenue figures are exactly what a customer will challenge — check them.
  • Scope the window. "Last quarter of activity for this account" grounds it; "everything about this customer" doesn't. Tight sources, sharp deck.
  • Decisions need a human. Talking points and follow-ups are drafts — the judgment on what to commit to in the room is yours.

Where this leads (the ramp)

You just delegated a repeatable business cycle. If you run QBRs every quarter for the same accounts, the next question is obvious: could the team have a button for this? That's Stage 4 · Agent Builder — package the QBR steps and account knowledge once, for everyone.

Next: Agent Builder → Build a team-knowledge agent over a SharePoint site

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