Get more done with Copilot Cowork: Review

Instead of telling Copilot 'draft an email,' you tell it 'organize the quarterly team offsite.' This is the core idea. The AI, this new 'Cowork' thing, is supposed to figure out the steps: check calendars, find a venue, draft the announcement. The module does a decent job of walking through this with a fake event planning scenario. It calls the process 'describing a goal, reviewing the plan, and approving actions.'

That 'reviewing the plan' part is what matters. The module shows a UI where the AI presents a multi-step plan, like a project manager would, and you have to sign off before it touches anything. This is the control mechanism. It's not a black box just running wild through your OneDrive and Teams. It's an important distinction that the marketing material often glosses over.

My main issue is that it's all a video and a slide deck. The 'exercise' is just a multiple-choice quiz about what you just watched. I couldn't actually try Cowork myself. I can't feel how rigid the planning is or how well it interprets a vague goal like 'boost team morale.' So, I walked away with the concept in my head, but zero practical feel for the tool. It feels like a detailed press release—a good one, but still just a preview of something that's coming. I now know what to ask my IT department about, but I can't say I 'learned' how to use it.