Microsoft this week introduced a series of new and enhanced Copilot features led by “Copilot Cowork,” based on Anthropic Claude Cowork technology, for automating and managing complex tasks across workflows.
The company’s Copilot Wave 3 also includes Microsoft 365 Copilot built natively into the core productivity apps Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. At a Monday online event, the company disclosed general availability of the previously announced Agent 365 “control plane” for management and governance.
The company’s event also included rollout of Microsoft 365 E7, “the Frontier Suite” combining Microsoft 365 E5, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Agent 365, and security functionality.
Cowork for Complex Tasks
Copilot Cowork automates work across multiple steps and applications, leveraging Microsoft’s WorkIQ intelligence layer to reason over all relevant materials for full work context. With Cowork, Copilot will break down complex requests into steps, reason across tools and files, and execute the task at hand. Cowork will manage tasks that run for minutes or hours.
During an online event, Charles Lamanna, President, Business Applications and Agents and Microsoft, demoed Copilot Cowork performing a range of work in preparation for a customer meeting. “I want to get all the emails, the meetings, the notes that are relevant, and then I want to create a presentation, and I want to go have an Excel overview of product growth and have all that information just generate for me automatically,” he said. “What’s great about Cowork is it can run for hours, if that’s how long it takes.”
In addition to the demo of building a meeting packet and aligning team members in meeting prep, specific use cases for Cowork cited by Microsoft included:
- Cleaning up personal calendars
- Researching a company including pulling source material, compiling analysis, and packaging results
- Creating a new product launch plan that includes shareable assets and competitive intelligence
By combining Anthropic’s agentic model in Claude Cowork for multi-step tasks with Microsoft 365, Cowork delivers a managed experience combining AI-powered reasoning with enterprise-level controls. At the same time, Copilot Cowork and an expanding alliance with Anthropic — including Claude technology powering new SharePoint functionality — continues to advance Microsoft’s stated commitment to model choice.
“We have the ability to reach across the industry and look at innovations coming from OpenAI, look at those coming out of Anthropic and other great partners, bring them into this system that we call copilot and agents that allows us to do something that’s really unique,” said Jared Spataro, Chief Marketing Officer, AI@Work at Microsoft.
With Wave 3, Claude and the latest OpenAI models are both available in Copilot via the Frontier program; Copilot automatically applies the right model for the task.
“There’s lots of great models out there. There’s also a lot of great agent harnesses that take the models and kind of execute them. But so much of the work that we do [at Microsoft is focused on] how do we bring our customers’ data and working environment to the model? And that’s what WorkIQ is all about,” Lamanna said.
Copilot Cowork will be available through the Frontier program in late March.
App-Native Copilots
Copilot Wave 3 embeds Microsoft 365 Copilot natively in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. WorkIQ keeps Copilot grounded in work context, so updates always reflect what is current across files, meetings, and chats. The online event featured a demo of Copilot in Excel. “This is native to Excel. It’s creating the right structure. It’s inserting real Excel formulas. It speaks Excel. Every change is transparent, it’s auditable, it’s reviewable, and its reversible,” said Sumit Chauhan, Corporate Vice President, Office Product Group at Microsoft.
These new Copilot experiences are generally available in Excel and Word, with PowerPoint and Outlook starting to roll out over the coming months.
Agents in Chat, Governance, and Frontier Suite
In Copilot Wave 3, chat in Copilot becomes the entry point for content creation and task execution. That means that from a chat session, users can create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations directly, or ask Copilot to execute common actions—like scheduling a meeting or drafting and sending an email — without copying and pasting between tools. Built‑in agents for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook let you move easily from conversation into app‑native work.
The company also announced May 1 general availability of Microsoft Agent 365, the control plane for AI agents that was announced and demoed in 2025. Priced at $15 per user, Agent 365 gives IT and security leaders a single place to observe, govern, and manage agents across the organization.
Microsoft also unified a range of applications in Microsoft 365 E7: The Frontier Suite, bringing together Microsoft 365 E5, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and Agent 365 into a single platform. Microsoft 365 E7 also includes Microsoft Entra Suite, Defender, Intune, and Purview security capabilities for comprehensive protection across agents and employees. Microsoft 365 E7 is priced at $99 per user, below the costs of purchasing these capabilities individually.
Related Microsoft and AI Insights:
- Microsoft Agent Framework Enables Complex, Multi-Agent Actions
- Copilot’s Advantage vs. Stand-Alone Chatbots
- Becoming Frontier at Microsoft AI Tour NYC: Inside the Agent-First Enterprise
AI Agent & Copilot Summit is an AI-first event to define opportunities, impact, and outcomes with Microsoft Copilot and agents. Building on its 2025 success, the 2026 event takes place March 17-19 in San Diego. Get more details.
Tom Smith
Analyst
Cloud Wars, Agent and Copilot
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