Demo Presenter — Field Notes from the Frontier

Demo scripts for end users

Learn by
doing the demo.

Three end-to-end demo scripts you can run yourself or use to teach a colleague how to work with Microsoft Copilot, Copilot Cowork, and Copilot Chat. Each takes about 30 minutes (45 if you stop to explore). Pick a starting point below.

The scenario
You're preparing for your team's quarterly business review (QBR) next week. You need to pull together what happened last quarter, identify key wins and risks, build a slide deck, and write a short narrative summary. Choose any one of the three demos below — each tackles the same QBR scenario, but shows off a different way to use Copilot to get the job done.

Pick a demo to start

💬

~30 min

Demo 1 · Copilot Chat

Research and gather what you need for the QBR using Copilot Chat — your AI-powered starting point. Best if you're new to Copilot.

Start demo →

📊

~40 min

Demo 2 · Microsoft Copilot

Build the actual QBR deliverables — slides, doc, and analysis — using Copilot inside PowerPoint, Word, and Excel.

Start demo →

⚙️

~30 min

Demo 3 · Copilot Cowork

Delegate the entire QBR prep to Cowork as an agentic task and review the completed work. Best for users ready to go beyond chat.

Start demo →

💬

Demo 1 · Copilot Chat

Research & information gathering for your QBR

Duration: 30 min License: Any work account Level: Beginner

Fresh this cycle. Find meetings based on topics and keywords, launched Sep 2026 — source. Copilot can now find a meeting from what happened inside it — the meeting body, the meeting chat, and the transcript — rather than only from what the invite happened to be called. That rewrites the first ten minutes of QBR prep: you stop hunting for a calendar entry you half-remember and start describing the decision you're trying to find.

What you'll learn. Copilot Chat is your starting point — the conversational AI that lives at m365.cloud.microsoft and inside the Microsoft Copilot app. Over the next half hour you'll use it to find, research, summarize, and assemble the inputs for next week's QBR, then turn that gathered context straight into finished files, all without leaving the chat interface.

Before you start. Open the Microsoft Copilot app — Windows, Mac, mobile, or browser — and sign in with your work account. Use the installed app on Windows if you can: topic-based meeting search runs on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android, and the Windows app also gives you the chat side pane beside search results. Have a recent project document, email thread, or meeting recap in mind, and pick one real Teams meeting from last quarter that actually mattered — you'll pull it into a notebook in step 4.

Find last quarter's meetings by what was said in them

5 min

Click path

Open the Microsoft Copilot app → select Search in the navigation pane. Search reaches people, files, images, messages, and SharePoint sites — and it now reaches inside meetings too, matching topics and keywords against the meeting body, the meeting chat, and the transcript. Narrow the results with the filters for files, people, meetings and chats, or by Location, Shared by, and Owned by. On Windows, Copilot Chat opens in a side pane on the right while the results stay where they are.

Try this

Don't search for the invite — search for the argument. Describe the thing you remember being said:

Find the meetings last quarter where we debated the delivery date slipping, and the ones where we settled the final scope.

Then, from the chat side pane, triage what came back without leaving the results:

These are the meetings, files, and chats from our programme last quarter. Which of them would a QBR audience actually care about, and what does each one prove?

What to notice

Nobody titles the meeting "the one where the date slipped," which is exactly why finding it used to take twenty minutes. Say the two honest caveats out loud in a demo: searching meetings by transcript text looks back two months, so the oldest month of a 90-day QBR still has to come from files and mail — and topic-based meeting search is in the Copilot app on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android. While the results are up, note that an email result now shows its attachments as pills on the result itself, so the deck somebody mailed round mid-quarter opens without opening the mail first. Finding and interrogating stay one motion: the search doesn't go anywhere while you ask about it.

Move to a full chat and work the Work IQ button

5 min

Click path

Open m365.cloud.microsoft → click New chat in the top-left. Web chat and work chat are one interface now, with a Work IQ button at the top left of the chat itself. Work data is on by default — click it once to switch work data access off, so the first prompt runs on general knowledge alone and anyone in the room can follow along. Then click it again to switch work data back on.

Try this

With Work IQ off:

I'm preparing a quarterly business review for my team next week. The QBR covers the last 90 days. Help me think through what sections a strong QBR should have — keep it to 5-7 sections, with a one-sentence purpose for each.

Now switch Work IQ on, in the same conversation:

Summarize what my team accomplished last quarter. Look at meetings I attended, documents I worked on, and emails from my manager and direct reports. Group findings into wins, risks, and key decisions.

What to notice

One chat, one button — nobody has to decide up front which kind of chat this conversation is going to be, and the outline you just built survives into the grounded half instead of being abandoned somewhere else. Copilot pulls from your real Microsoft 365 data, and only from what you already have access to. Citations appear inline, and checking one no longer costs you the thread: a cited Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or PDF file opens inside Copilot Chat, and so does a cited Outlook email.

Ground the chat in a specific file — and in a SharePoint list

5 min

Click path

In the prompt box, type / (forward slash). A picker appears — choose Files and select a recent project doc, OneNote, or PDF that matters to your QBR. Then open the Context IQ menu, search for a SharePoint list by name — your risk register, project tracker, or quarterly metrics list — and select it to scope the prompt to that list.

Try this

/[select your project doc] Pull out the top three risks called out in this document and explain why each one matters for the QBR. Suggest one mitigation per risk.

[scope to your risk register list] Using only this list, group the open items by owner and severity, then tell me which three belong on the QBR risk slide and why.

What to notice

You named the list instead of hoping Copilot would guess it, and the answer came back scoped to that list's rows. The same grounding pattern works for files, sites, people, and meetings. This is the lever that moves Copilot off "generic" and onto your actual work.

Build a QBR notebook from the meetings and mail where decisions happened

6 min

Click path

From your chat, click the Create Notebook icon (usually a notebook icon near the prompt area). Name it "QBR Prep" and add the same source files you referenced. Then add the two source types Copilot Notebooks now accepts as references: a Teams meeting from last quarter, and the Outlook email threads where the decisions actually got made. Notebooks also picked up a streamlined navigation flow in the same release, so opening and moving between sources takes fewer clicks than it used to.

Try this

Pick the messiest real inputs you have — the quarterly planning meeting, the mid-quarter re-plan, and the mail thread where scope changed — then ask the notebook to read across all of them at once.

Read every source in this notebook, including the Teams meetings and the email threads. Reconcile them against each other: where does what was said in the meetings or agreed over email contradict the polished status doc? List the discrepancies and tell me which ones a QBR audience would care about.

What to notice

This is the honest half of a quarter, and it usually never makes the deck. A Teams meeting brings its transcript, notes, chat, and shared content in as grounding; an email thread brings the argument that produced the decision. Neither one has to be summarized into a document first before Copilot can reason over it.

Draft the narrative, then stress-test it

5 min

Try this

Using everything in this notebook, write a one-page executive narrative for the QBR. Tone: confident but honest about risks. Audience: my skip-level manager. Format: 4 short paragraphs — Opening, Wins, Risks, What's Next.

Then iterate

Make it more concise. Cut to 3 paragraphs and remove anything that doesn't directly relate to revenue impact.

Based on this QBR content, what are the five toughest questions a skeptical leader might ask me? For each one, draft a clear, confident answer.

What to notice

You aren't restating the brief on every prompt — Copilot still holds what was said earlier, so tone, length, and audience shift with one short follow-up. Then it flips role and plays the tough audience, which is the cheapest way to find a weak claim before a room full of people finds it for you.

Let the notebook build the deliverables

4 min

Click path

Still in the "QBR Prep" notebook, use Quick create and choose PowerPoint presentation to generate the deck straight from everything you gathered. Then run Quick create again for a Word document narrative and an Excel spreadsheet of the key metrics.

Try this

Create a mind map of everything in this notebook so I can see the QBR structure visually.

What to notice

Quick create turns the notebook itself into a PowerPoint deck, Word doc, or Excel workbook — no copy-paste anywhere in the chain. Notebooks are available to all Copilot Chat users rather than only paid Microsoft Copilot licence holders, so next quarter you swap in new meetings and mail threads and regenerate all three from the same structure.

Pro tip The single biggest leap in Copilot Chat quality comes from grounding — finding the right material in Copilot Search, deciding whether Work IQ is on at all, then naming the specific files, people, sites, SharePoint lists, meetings, and mail threads you want Copilot to work from. Generic prompts get generic answers. Grounded prompts get YOUR answer.

By the end you should be able to

Find a meeting by its topic or keywords — matched against the meeting body, chat, and transcript — rather than by its title, and say where the two-month transcript window bites on a 90-day QBR
Run a Copilot Search in the Microsoft Copilot app and question the results from the chat side pane, without losing the search
Work in the single unified chat and use the Work IQ button to turn work data access on and off mid-conversation
Use the / picker to ground Copilot in specific files, sites, or people — and Context IQ to scope a prompt to one SharePoint list
Open a cited file or Outlook email inside Copilot Chat to check a source without leaving the thread
Build a Copilot Notebook and add Teams meetings and Outlook emails as references
Iterate on a draft by changing tone, length, or audience in one short follow-up
Use Copilot as a "tough audience" to stress-test deliverables
Use Quick create to turn the notebook into the deck, doc, and workbook

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📊

Demo 2 · Microsoft Copilot in the apps

Build your QBR deliverables in PowerPoint, Word & Excel

Duration: 40 min License: Microsoft Copilot required Level: Intermediate

Fresh this cycle. Copilot usage in Excel's Show Changes pane, launched Sep 2026 — source. Every QBR reaches the same question from the same person: where did this number come from? Excel's Show Changes pane now carries Copilot's own attribution on the card, in the same list as the edits people made — so the audit trail behind your metrics slide is a pane you open in the room, not a memory you reconstruct afterwards.

What you'll learn. Microsoft Copilot lives inside the apps you already use every day — PowerPoint, Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams. You'll move from asking Copilot questions to having Copilot do work for you directly inside the file — and, this cycle, to being able to show exactly which parts it did. This is where Agent Mode comes in.

Before you start. Have PowerPoint, Word, and Excel open (desktop or web) and a Microsoft Copilot licence in place — look for the purple Copilot button in the ribbon. Save the workbook you'll use in OneDrive or SharePoint; that's where Excel keeps change history, and step 3 depends on it. Ask your admin two things: which Brand Kits your organization publishes, and which MCP agents your tenant has published, so you know what to expect in the Copilot pane. Find the email where your manager set out what this QBR needs to cover; you'll reference it in step 1. It also helps to have a relevant data file — a sales spreadsheet, project doc, or last quarter's deck — ready to point at.

Build the QBR deck on your Brand Kit, from your manager's email and your Work IQ

8 min

Click path

Open PowerPoint and start a presentation → open the Copilot pane → toggle on Agent Mode at the top of the pane. Now set the look before you set the content: select the + in the Copilot pane → Select brand → choose your organization's Brand Kit (generally available since Sep 2026). You don't need to open Outlook or find a link either — you reference the brief email in the prompt by its subject, its senders, and the time frame or date it was sent.

Try this

Start with the email that set the assignment:

Use the email from my manager about the quarterly business review, sent in the last two weeks, as the brief for this deck. Build a 10-slide QBR presentation that answers everything that email asks for. Professional tone. Add speaker notes.

Then bring in the quarter itself:

Using my Work IQ, fill in each slide with the relevant files, meetings, and emails from the last 90 days. Sections: Title, Executive Summary, Last Quarter Wins, Last Quarter Misses, Key Metrics, Top Risks, What's Working, What Needs to Change, Next Quarter Priorities, Q&A.

And then the half of the story that isn't in your tenant at all:

For the "What Needs to Change" slide, reference relevant online sources on where our industry is heading this year, and cite the sources you used on the slide.

What to notice

Name what just happened out loud: the look, the brief, the proof, and the outside context arrived from four different places into one deck, in one pass. The Brand Kit means nobody spends the evening before the QBR restyling slides — Copilot generated them on your approved templates, fonts, colours, and imagery in the first place. Referencing the email directly means the deck reflects what was actually asked for, with no manual transfer and nothing lost in the retyping, while Work IQ gathers the right files, meetings, and emails so you don't hunt them down. Copilot in PowerPoint can also pull from the web and cite those sources on the slide, respecting web content security and privacy standards. If the deck strays from the template, that's a conversation for your brand manager rather than for you: whoever owns the Brand Kit can switch on Strict brand adherence in its template settings, which holds Copilot to the approved slide layouts and stops it inventing its own — and end users can't override it.

Run the PowerPoint skills — the built-in ones, then one of your own

5 min

Click path

In the Copilot pane on the right of PowerPoint, select the + in the prompt field → Choose skills. Alongside Review this presentation, Visualize this slide, and Standardize formatting you'll find Prepare for questions. You can also call any of them straight from the prompt with an @mention.

Try this

Run Review this presentation — Copilot scans your deck and gives slide-by-slide suggestions to improve structure, clarity, and storytelling. Apply the ones that make sense.

Now select your "Key Metrics" slide and run Visualize this slide — Copilot transforms a text-heavy slide into a clean visual on your brand.

Then run Standardize formatting — Copilot aligns fonts, sizes, and bullet styles across every slide in one shot.

Finish with @Prepare for questions, which reads the deck for weak points and tells you, slide by slide, what a QBR audience is going to push on.

Then make it yours

Skills aren't only Microsoft's. From the same Choose skills menu, scroll to the end → Manage skills → Add skill, and upload a SKILL.md file describing how your team builds a QBR deck. PowerPoint stores it in your Skills folder on OneDrive and it appears in the dropdown immediately, callable as an @mention from then on.

What to notice

These skills do in 30 seconds what would normally take an hour of manual cleanup, and you don't have to craft a long prompt — just pick one. The custom skill is the part worth demoing to a team: the house rules for a QBR deck stop being tribal knowledge and become something Copilot runs on request. Leave the "Key Metrics" slide half-empty for now; the next step is where its numbers come from.

Let Copilot write Python for the QBR analysis — then show exactly what it touched

9 min

Click path

Open Excel and load a sales, project, or operations spreadsheet (any tabular data with at least 3 columns and 20 rows). Select the Copilot icon in the lower-right corner of Excel → open the mode options menu → choose Allow editing so Copilot can work in the workbook rather than just answer about it. The same Copilot pane is where any MCP agents your organization has published now appear.

Try this

Start with the ordinary ask, then push it somewhere a formula won't go:

Analyze this workbook and tell me the top 3 trends, the 2 biggest anomalies, and which row or category is most worth investigating before next week's QBR.

Use Python to test whether the Q3 dip is statistically meaningful or just noise. Fit a trend line to the last eight quarters, flag the outliers, and put the chart and the numbers on a new sheet called "Trend Test".

Then go further

From the Copilot pane, call one of your organization's MCP agents — a ticketing, CRM, or service-desk agent — and ask it for the slice of last quarter that isn't in this workbook:

Get the open escalations for my team from the last 90 days, then add them to this workbook as a new sheet next to the metrics summary.

Now add a sheet that summarizes the findings as a simple table I can paste into PowerPoint. Add a chart that visualizes the most interesting trend.

Then prove it

Two moves turn an impressive analysis into a defensible one. First, Copilot's reply in the chat pane now carries links to what it changed — click one and Excel jumps straight to the new sheet, table, range, or object such as a chart or shape. Second, open the Review tab → Show Changes. The pane lists edits newest-first with who changed what, where, and when, plus the previous cell value — and Copilot's own usage now shows on the card, so its edits sit in the same audit list as everyone else's.

What to notice

Editing with Copilot runs Python in Excel — statistics, simulations, data cleanup, advanced visuals — and writes the results directly back into the workbook, with the existing security and execution controls still governing how that code runs. Copilot builds a step-by-step plan and you watch it reason and make changes live in the pane, so you can review, accept, or reject each one. Nobody in the room needs to know Python; someone in the room needs to know what question to ask. The attribution is what makes that safe to say in a QBR: "Copilot generated this trend line" stops being a confession and becomes a line item you can point at, filtered down to a single sheet, range, or cell. Show Changes needs the workbook stored in OneDrive or SharePoint and keeps history for up to 365 days — so next quarter you can still see how this quarter's numbers were built. And because MCP agents are reachable from the Copilot pane in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, data that lives outside Microsoft 365 reaches the same analysis without an export or a second app.

Draft the QBR narrative document in Word with Agent Mode

8 min

Click path

Open Word → click the Copilot button in the ribbon → toggle on Agent Mode. Open the models menu while you're here: Word now offers Anthropic models alongside OpenAI ones, with Sonnet 5 as the default for higher-reasoning work.

Try this

Write a 2-page executive QBR summary for my leadership team. Reference the Excel workbook I just analyzed — including the "Trend Test" sheet — and the PowerPoint deck I just built. Sections: Headline narrative, Top 3 wins with proof points, Top 2 risks and mitigation, What we'd recommend for next quarter. Keep tone confident but honest.

Then iterate

Add a citation for every claim that comes from the Excel file. Use footnotes.

Now check it against our company writing style — short sentences, active voice, no jargon.

What to notice

Citations appear automatically when Copilot pulls from web or Work IQ sources, so every fact is traceable — including the statistical claim you generated a moment ago in Excel. Agent Mode in Word can plan, execute, and refine multi-step document work — not just answer one-shot prompts.

Connect everything with PowerPoint Live

4 min

Click path

Back in PowerPoint → click Slide Show → choose Present in Teams (or PowerPoint Live). Imagine you're now in the QBR meeting.

What to demo

Show that attendees in a PowerPoint Live meeting can select slide text and ask Copilot to explain it in real time — without interrupting the presenter. Land it on the trend chart you generated in step 3: the one slide most likely to draw "wait, what does that actually mean?" is now the one an attendee can answer for themselves, mid-meeting.

Try Copilot in Outlook for the QBR invite & follow-up

6 min

Click path

Open Outlook → start a new email → click the Copilot button → choose Draft with Copilot. This closes the loop you opened in step 1: the deck came out of an email, and the invite goes back out as one.

Try this

Draft an email to my team announcing the QBR for next Thursday at 2pm. Include the agenda, ask them to review the deck attached, and request they bring one win and one risk to discuss. Tone: warm and direct.

What to notice

As you write and edit, Copilot now offers coaching feedback in chat and can apply the suggestions you pick directly to the message. It can also summarize long email threads, prepare you for the meeting itself, and book the QBR for you from chat — Copilot finds the times, reserves a room, and drafts the agenda. Outlook is on the list of apps that can reach MCP agents too, so the same outside systems you queried from Excel are available while you write.

The big shift Notice how the same Copilot identity follows you across PowerPoint, Excel, Word, and Outlook — and that Copilot isn't just answering questions, it's making changes in your file. The deck's look came out of your Brand Kit, its brief came out of a mail thread, its numbers came out of Python it wrote itself, and its context came off the open web. Between referenced emails, web sources, and MCP agents in that same pane, the boundary of "your data" stretches well past the file you have open. You always stay in control: review, accept, or reject every step — and now, when someone asks which parts Copilot wrote, Show Changes answers it cell by cell instead of leaving you to remember.

By the end you should be able to

Select your organization's Brand Kit in the Copilot pane so the deck is generated on approved templates, fonts, and colours from the first draft
Explain Strict brand adherence — what it locks down, and why only the Brand Kit owner can set it
Reference an email — by subject, sender, and date — as the brief Copilot in PowerPoint builds the deck from
Build a QBR deck with Agent Mode that gathers your Work IQ files, meetings, and emails
Ask Copilot in PowerPoint to reference and cite online sources while it creates the deck
Run the PowerPoint skills — Review, Visualize, Standardize, Prepare for questions — and upload a custom skill of your own
Turn on Allow editing in the Excel Copilot pane and ask Copilot to run Python for statistics, cleanup, and advanced charts
Jump straight to an edit from the links in Copilot's Excel chat response, and open Review → Show Changes to show Copilot's attribution next to everyone else's edits
Call an MCP agent from the Copilot pane to pull in data that lives outside Microsoft 365
Turn on Agent Mode in Word to draft multi-page documents with citations, and pick the model that drafts them
Run a PowerPoint Live meeting where attendees can ask Copilot about slides
Draft an email in Outlook with Copilot's help and take its coaching feedback

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⚙️

Demo 3 · Copilot Cowork

Delegate the whole QBR as an agentic task

Duration: 30 min License: Microsoft Copilot + usage-based billing Level: Advanced

Fresh this cycle. Cowork can edit an existing Office file in place, launched Sep 2026 — source. Point Cowork at a Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file already sitting in OneDrive or SharePoint and it saves the changes back to that same shared file, with the version history still there behind it. That removes the standing objection to delegating QBR prep to an agent: you no longer get a brand-new file to reconcile by hand against the one your leadership team already has a link to.

What you'll learn. Cowork is Copilot's most powerful mode — instead of working with you turn-by-turn, it goes off and completes long-running, multi-step work on its own, then returns finished deliverables. You'll size the job, hand it last quarter's real QBR deck and delegate the whole prep as a single task, send Cowork into the browser for the numbers Microsoft 365 doesn't hold, review what comes back, and then arm the whole thing to start itself the moment your manager's email lands.

Before you start. You'll need a Microsoft Copilot licence and your tenant needs Cowork usage-based billing turned on (via Copilot Credits in the M365 admin center). Access Cowork at m365.cloud.microsoft — there's a toggle in Copilot Chat to switch into Cowork mode. Have last quarter's QBR deck in OneDrive or SharePoint, since step 2 edits that actual file. For the browser step, run Cowork on the web (not the desktop app), have an up-to-date Microsoft Edge installed and signed in with the same work account, and check with your admin that Allow browser access is on under Copilot → Settings → View All → Cowork settings — it's off by default. Make sure you have at least 30-45 minutes uninterrupted, because Cowork can run for several minutes per task.

Launch Cowork and size the job before you hand it over

5 min

Click path

Open m365.cloud.microsoft → select Cowork in the top toggle next to Chat. The model picker and the effort level both sit in the compose box, where your work begins.

Try this

Leave the model on Auto — the default — and let Cowork choose. Then open the picker anyway so the room can see what's behind it: Claude Fable 5.1, added in September as the most advanced model for ambitious work, Opus 5 for complex, high-stakes work, Claude Sonnet 5 for everyday tasks and fast responses, GPT 6 Astra, added alongside it as the latest model for tough problems, and GPT 5.6 Sol and GPT 5.6 Terra for hard and for common work respectively. Now set the effort level: Medium is the default, and a full QBR is a fair case for High.

What to notice

This is two decisions, not one. The model shapes how the work gets done; the effort level decides how much room Cowork gets to do it — Light, Medium, High, Extra High, Max — with higher effort taking longer and spending more credits. Say that part out loud in a demo: effort is where quality, speed, and cost meet, and it's set before the task starts. Both choices persist until you change them, and Cowork stamps a model badge on each response so the room can see which one answered. One line for the admins watching: the list you see is the list your organization allows — the Anthropic family can be switched off tenant-wide in the Microsoft 365 admin center, and Fable 5.1 carries its own data-retention terms, so read those before pointing it at anything sensitive.

Delegate the entire QBR prep as one task — against the real deck, not a copy

3 min to write, 10-15 min for Cowork to run

Click path

Before you write the prompt, hand Cowork the file it should work in. Select Add attachments → Attach cloud files and folders and pick last quarter's QBR deck from OneDrive or SharePoint — or reference it with / in the compose box.

Try this

I have a quarterly business review next Thursday at 2pm. Please prepare everything I need: 1. Read through my Teams meetings, OneDrive files, and emails from the last 90 days to figure out what my team accomplished. 2. Update the QBR deck I attached — the same file, keeping its structure: Title, Executive Summary, Wins, Misses, Key Metrics, Risks, What's Working, What Needs to Change, Next Quarter Priorities, Q&A. Replace last quarter's content with this quarter's. 3. Write a 2-page executive narrative document in Word summarizing the same content. 4. Generate a simple Excel workbook with the key metrics in a table plus one chart. 5. Draft an email invite to my team for the QBR meeting. Leave the deck where it lives and save the new files in a OneDrive folder called "QBR Prep". When you're done, summarize what you found and any open questions for me.

Then grant edit access

The first time Cowork needs to write into that deck it stops and asks. Choose Approve once to allow the edit for this task, or Always allow so it stops asking for the rest of the conversation. When it's finished, open the deck inside Cowork to see the edits side by side and keep going, or open it in PowerPoint in its existing OneDrive or SharePoint location.

What to notice

Cowork plans the work, then executes step by step, showing its progress as it goes: "Reading meeting transcripts…", "Analyzing OneDrive folder…", "Drafting slide 3…". This is what makes it different from regular Copilot: it produces completed work, not just suggestions. The part worth slowing down on is point 2. The deck that comes back is the same file, at the same address — the link your leadership team already has still resolves, and OneDrive or SharePoint still holds every earlier version, so an over-enthusiastic rewrite is a restore rather than a disaster. Read this prompt closely either way, because it's also the recipe you'll hand to an automation in step 5 — what you're really writing here is the definition of the job.

Send Cowork into the browser for the numbers Microsoft 365 doesn't hold

6 min

Click path

There's no button for this. Ask for something that needs the web and Cowork decides to open the browser itself. The first time it does, a consent notice appears in the conversation — select I understand. That acknowledgment is stored in Edge on your device, and you won't be asked again.

Try this

Pick the system that always makes you tab out during QBR prep — the service desk, the billing portal, the project tracker:

Our ticket volumes aren't in any of my files. Open our service desk portal, pull the ticket counts and average resolution time for my team for the last 90 days, and add them to the Key Metrics section of the QBR deck in my "QBR Prep" folder.

Then download last quarter's invoices from the vendor billing portal and total them into a single line for the cost slide.

Then take over when asked

Watch the conversation while it runs. Cowork posts progress chips as it works, and asks you questions in chat rather than shoving you into the browser. For anything sensitive or consequential it shows an approval card — review it and select Approve or Reject. If a CAPTCHA, a password, or an MFA prompt appears, Cowork pauses and hands you the tab so you can clear it, then picks the task back up. If you lose the connection or close the tab, say "resume" in the same conversation.

What to notice

The hidden tab runs in your copy of Edge, so it uses your existing single sign-on and sessions — the agent reaches exactly the sites you reach by hand, no more and no less, and credentials, cookies, and tokens never leave your device. It also inherits every restriction your admin already enforces: web filtering, Conditional Access, and Purview DLP. When a policy blocks a step, Cowork says which step, why, and what you can do manually instead.

Review what Cowork delivered

5 min

Click path

When Cowork signals done, scroll up in the conversation to see its summary. Click each generated file link (the deck, the doc, the workbook, the email draft) to open them in the relevant app.

What to look for

• The deck is the file you attached, not a new copy — same location, same link, with last quarter's version still sitting in its OneDrive or SharePoint history.
• It has structure, branded visuals, speaker notes, and a coherent narrative.
• The Key Metrics slide now carries the ticket numbers Cowork fetched from the portal — not a placeholder.
• The narrative doc is cited — every claim links back to a source.
• The Excel workbook has real numbers, formulas, and a chart.
• The email draft is ready to send with the deck attached.
• Cowork's summary at the end notes any gaps it couldn't fill — those are the only things you need to address.

Then iterate

The deck looks great, but the "Misses" slide is too soft. Rewrite it to be more honest about what didn't land, and add a brief mitigation plan for each miss. Save it back to the same file.

Cowork remembers the files, structure, and decisions from the run, so refinements land fast — no need to re-explain the QBR, and no new copy of the deck to chase down afterwards.

Arm an event-driven task so next quarter's QBR starts itself

7 min

Click path

Stay in the same conversation. There's no wizard to open — describe the trigger and the work in one message, and Cowork proposes the automation rather than starting it. This is the step to slow down on: everything before it was you asking, and everything after it happens without you in the room.

Try this

Start with the trigger that matters most — the email that kicks off every QBR cycle:

Whenever my manager emails me about the quarterly business review, summarize what they're asking for, check it against the deck in my "QBR Prep" folder, and draft a reply for my review.

Then show the Teams side of it, scoped to mentions only:

When I'm @mentioned in the QBR planning channel, post me a one-line summary of what was asked and whether the deck already covers it.

Then review the proposal

Cowork answers with a Set up trigger? card rather than an armed task. Read the three lines with the room: When — the event that starts it, such as when you receive an email or when a Teams channel or chat message arrives, limited to messages that mention you if you asked for that. Run in — whether each run starts a new conversation or continues this one. What it does — the instructions Cowork will follow when it fires. The card also lists the permissions the task needs to act on your behalf. When it reads right, select Set up.

What to notice

Here the governance story is the demo. Event-driven tasks default to draft-and-approve: when a task would send an email, post a message, or change a shared system, Cowork prepares the action and asks you first. Every task runs with your permissions, sees only what you can see, and delivers results only to you unless you approve otherwise, and rate limits stop a task firing too often. Find it afterwards on the Automations page next to your scheduled prompts, showing Active, Draft, or Paused and when it last fired — open it to review its run history, or edit, pause, resume, or delete it.

Create a reusable skill so the trigger has a recipe to run

4 min

Click path

Open OneDrive → navigate to /Documents/Cowork/skills/ → create a subfolder called qbr-prep and, inside it, a file called SKILL.md.

Paste this template

--- name: qbr-prep description: Prepare a quarterly business review with deck, narrative doc, Excel workbook, and team email draft. Use whenever the user mentions QBR, quarterly review, or quarterly business review. --- Steps: 1. Read meetings, files, and emails from the last 90 days. 2. Pull ticket counts and resolution times from the service desk portal in the browser. 3. Identify wins, misses, key metrics, and risks. 4. Build a 10-slide PowerPoint deck using the QBR template. 5. Write a 2-page narrative document. 6. Generate an Excel workbook with metrics and one chart. 7. Draft a team email invite. 8. Save all files in a OneDrive folder named "QBR Prep [Quarter] [Year]". 9. Summarize findings and flag open questions.

What to notice

Cowork discovers skill files in this folder automatically at the start of every session — or you can build the same skill with the guided builder on the Customize page (Skills tab → Add → Create new), and Cowork will score it and hand back a plain-language quality report. That discovery-per-session behaviour is what makes step 5 pay off: when the trigger fires three months from now, the automation finds this skill waiting and runs the whole flow, browser step included. You can create up to 50 custom skills per user.

The big shift Chat is conversational. Apps integrate Copilot into your workflow. Cowork is delegation — you pick the model, describe an outcome, set how hard it should be worked, and walk away. Now that it edits the real file rather than handing you a copy, and drives your own browser under your own sign-ins, the work it can finish isn't bounded by a blank document or by Microsoft 365. Add an event-driven trigger and a skill file and the last instruction disappears too: half a day of QBR prep starts when the email lands, and the first thing you see is the deck you already shared, updated, with a draft waiting for your approval.

By the end you should be able to

Switch from Copilot Chat into Cowork at m365.cloud.microsoft
Choose a model — including Claude Fable 5.1 and GPT 6 Astra — or leave it on Auto, and set an effort level that matches the size of the job
Delegate a multi-step task with a single, detailed prompt
Attach an existing Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file from OneDrive or SharePoint and have Cowork edit that same shared file — granting edit access with Approve once or Always allow, and keeping its version history
Ask for work that needs a website and let Cowork complete it in your local Edge
Approve, reject, or take over a browser step — and explain why it never exceeds your own access
Review completed deliverables and ask for refinements
Describe an email or Teams mention trigger and read the Set up trigger? card before you arm it
Find, pause, and review the run history of an event-driven task on the Automations page
Create a custom skill file so a repeating workflow becomes one-click — or no clicks at all
Understand when to use Chat vs apps vs Cowork

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