Microsoft rolls out Copilot Cowork

After three months of preview in Frontier, Microsoft is officially launching Copilot Cowork.

Cowork carries out tasks across a company's Microsoft 365 environment, with the ability to send emails, schedule meeting, create documents, posts in Teams, send messages and search an organisation.

Cloud hosting means files are not stored locally, security is enforced, and tasks keep running even when devices are off, while native Work IQ support grounds every task in the systems a business already runs on, so the work reflects real context.

Enterprise-grade security and compliance ensure Cowork operates within an organisation's existing Microsoft 365 trust boundary, with protections that align to an organisation’s existing policies and controls.

Multi-model design lets companies run the models a task needs, so capability scales with the work as more models become available, while utilising lower cost from a runtime that finds the right information and tools, model choice that matches the right model to each task and billing that charges only for what companies use.  

Copilot Cowork requires the Microsoft 365 Copilot User Subscription License (USL). Users are then billed for Cowork on a usage-based basis, with charges determined by the tasks they run. 

The Microsoft 365 Copilot USL includes a "complete AI productivity experience": Copilot Chat; Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams, the Work IQ context engine; a multi-model system offering frontier intelligence; pre-built agents like Researcher and Analyst; and custom agents built with Agent Builder.

Nine new partner plugins are available now from Enosix, Harvey, LSEG, Miro, monday.com, Moodys, Morningstar, S&P Global Energy, and TeamsMaestro.

Eight new plugins are coming soon from Adobe, Atlassian, Box, Canva, CB Insights, Databricks, MoneyForward, and Templafy. Fabric and Dynamics 365 Sales, Customer Service, and ERP apps are also now GA.

In Frontier, Microsoft's program that allows companies to opt in to experimental and emerging AI features before they’re generally available, Cowork can browse the web through a local Edge browser following the enterprise policies in place for users today.

Cowork also prompts, responses, and generated artifacts flow through existing Microsoft 365 controls and are governed, discoverable, and retained securely. Sensitivity labels are inherited and displayed end-to-end, while the protected surface is at GA: audit log, Data Security Posture Management, eDiscovery, Insider Risk Management, Data Lifecycle Management and Communication Compliance policies, with Data Loss Prevention coming soon.

Cowork was first introduced with a limited set of customers as a research preview as part of Microsoft's introduction of 365 E7: The Frontier Suite earlier this year.