Tech Ease

Copilot Cowork is a personal agent that runs multistep jobs for you, using Work IQ context from your mail, meetings, chats and files. Use Copilot Chat for quick answers and Copilot Studio when a team needs a shared agent.

What is Copilot Cowork, and how is it different from regular Copilot Chat? Anand explains how Cowork takes on longer, multi-step jobs, how Work IQ gives it context, and how skills and plugins extend it. He covers when Copilot Studio is the better fit, how to get started, and why Autopilot looks like the next step.

Chapters

(00:00) The Monday Power BI refresh chore
(00:39) What Copilot Cowork is in plain words
(01:04) Copilot Chat vs Copilot Cowork
(01:31) Work IQ: the context layer underneath
(01:57) Extension 1: Skills & SKILL.md playbooks
(02:40) Extension 2: Plugins & IT governance
(03:36) Back to Monday: small jobs that add up
(04:02) Cowork vs Copilot Studio & how to start
(05:03) Where it is heading: Microsoft Autopilot (Scout)

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/qlxD3dMrZ5c

A Copilot notebook keeps one project's files, notes and chats in one place, so Copilot answers from just that material. New in October 2026: Markdown and text files, and Notebooks for Copilot Chat users.

Copilot Notebooks has changed a lot since last year's episode. Anand explains what a notebook is, what's new, including Markdown and text files and Notebooks for Copilot Chat users, and which features are available now, in early access, or coming soon, based on Microsoft's October 2026 Notebooks post. He ends with one simple way to start a notebook today, in Copilot or OneNote.Microsoft's October 2026 Notebooks post: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoft-copilot-blog/whats-new-in-notebooks--october-2026/4559105Chapters0:00 How many places does one project live?0:24 What a notebook is0:49 Sharing, with private chats1:00 What's changed since last time1:27 What's in it for you: notebook only vs work and web1:58 Three everyday examples2:49 There's more coming: early access and coming soon3:22 The limits3:39 Try it todayFeature status (available now / early access / coming soon) as described in Microsoft's post. Screens in this video are illustrations.Tech Ease is independent and not affiliated with Microsoft. Microsoft, Microsoft 365, Copilot, OneNote, Word, Excel and PowerPoint are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/QqtV77qo21c

From mid-November, SharePoint and OneDrive agents are created in Copilot Agent Builder, and old .agent files stop working in April 2027. Also this week: OneDrive Copilot actions, Copilot Studio Evaluations, sensitivity-labeled files and long-running work in Copilot Chat.

Five Microsoft 365 updates worth your time. SharePoint and OneDrive agents move from .agent files to Copilot Agent Builder from mid-November, and .agent files stop working in April 2027 (MC1511052, with the Agent chat web part in RM575298). OneDrive's Copilot actions leave the File Explorer right-click menu (MC1515940), Copilot Studio Evaluations now explain why a test succeeded or failed (MC1518085), Copilot Studio agents get support for sensitivity-labeled files (RM571305), and Copilot Chat in Frontier can take on long-running, multistep work (MC1479277, with the Tasks view in Teams and Outlook in MC1458472 and MC1458470).

Links

• SharePoint and OneDrive agents move to Copilot Agent Builder (MC1511052): https://mc.merill.net/message/MC1511052
• SharePoint Agent chat web part (RM575298): https://mc.merill.net/message/RM575298
• OneDrive Copilot actions leave the File Explorer context menu (MC1515940): https://mc.merill.net/message/MC1515940
• Copilot Studio Evaluations improvements (MC1518085): https://mc.merill.net/message/MC1518085
• Copilot Studio support for sensitivity-labeled files (RM571305): https://mc.merill.net/message/RM571305
• Long-running, multistep work in Copilot Chat (Microsoft Support): https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-copilot/use-copilot-chat-for-long-running-multi-step-work
• Long-running work and the Tasks view in Copilot Chat (MC1479277): https://mc.merill.net/message/MC1479277
• Tasks view in full-screen Copilot in Teams (MC1458472): https://mc.merill.net/message/MC1458472
• Tasks view in full-screen Copilot in Outlook (MC1458470): https://mc.merill.net/message/MC1458470

Deep dive: Who's Going to Upgrade Your SharePoint Agent?

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• YouTube: https://youtu.be/Tf_UROiSEa8

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Tech Ease is independent and not affiliated with Microsoft. Microsoft, Microsoft 365, SharePoint, OneDrive, Copilot, Teams, Outlook and Purview are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.

Someone on your team gets asked for a learning page. They know the content, but not the time to design tabs, quizzes and flashcards in SharePoint. Anand walks through the Learning Designer, his skill for Copilot in SharePoint: fill in a form, get a Word Learning Request Brief, press one button, and Copilot builds one self-contained HTML learning page with up to three stages, flip-card flashcards, a practice exercise and knowledge checks. You'll see the demo, what is inside the package (SKILL.md, the mapping file and the reference HTML), what the maintainers' review fixed, and lessons for anyone contributing a skill to the PnP repository.

Links

• Learning Designer skill (PnP sharepoint-skills): https://github.com/pnp/sharepoint-skills/tree/main/Skills/learning-designer
• Team Newsletter Publisher skill (PnP sharepoint-skills): https://github.com/pnp/sharepoint-skills/tree/main/Skills/team-newsletter-publisher
• YouTube version: https://youtu.be/aP2TDM1YVP8

Demo brief written for this video; the reference page is the sample bundled with the skill.

Tech Ease is independent and not affiliated with Microsoft. Microsoft, Microsoft 365, SharePoint, Word, PowerPoint and Copilot are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.

Anand takes his Dynamics User Group talk, From Form to Document to Dashboard in SharePoint, and walks through two scenarios built on the same pattern: a monthly newsletter made from a document generation form and a Copilot skill, and a site safety audit where Copilot in SharePoint fills in library columns that feed a live HTML dashboard for a plant manager. An audience question from his session leads into the technical setup: editing the generated Word doc, using Copilot to help write skill instructions, the newsletter's file mapping and templates, and Quick Step buttons in both libraries. You'll see both demos and a fair look at when a list is the better tool than a Word report. For a closer look at the form side, listen to the episode What If Your Templates Filled Themselves In? The newsletter skill is on GitHub: https://github.com/pnp/sharepoint-skills/tree/main/Skills/team-newsletter-publisher

Links

• Newsletter skill on GitHub (PnP sharepoint-skills): https://github.com/pnp/sharepoint-skills/tree/main/Skills/team-newsletter-publisher
• Earlier episode, What If Your Templates Filled Themselves In? (Tech Ease on Spotify): https://open.spotify.com/episode/4Et2RAffYXPtdIARSc1yJe

Demo data is made up; screens were recorded in a demo SharePoint site.

Tech Ease is independent and not affiliated with Microsoft. Microsoft, Microsoft 365, SharePoint, Word, Dynamics and Copilot are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.

If you built an agent on a SharePoint site, it's saved as a dot agent file, and those files stop responding once March 2027 is over unless someone upgrades them. Anand covers what's coming to Microsoft Copilot Agent Builder and Copilot in SharePoint from mid-November, the four ways to move your agent forward, and what doesn't carry over, from sharing to placement in Teams. Source: Microsoft's "Upgrade agents in SharePoint and OneDrive" page, https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/upgrade-sharepoint-agents

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What can Copilot in SharePoint actually do on a site? This video walks through site questions, image reading, list dashboards, reusable site skills, extracting a PDF section, and Autofill, with the license and credit distinctions alongside each example. It also covers site-owner controls, the November first preview-settings deadline, and plain-English rules expected in December.

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Most corporate paperwork isn't a blank page at all, just the same approved Word document with a few details changed, and it still eats time and invites mistakes. In this solo episode, Anand walks through structured document generation in SharePoint: Copilot suggests fields from your Word template, a form collects the answers, and every submission becomes a fresh Word or PDF document in your library. He explains the difference between conditional sections and conditional field visibility using Microsoft's own examples, and ends with a simple challenge to turn one reusable document into a form and test it. If you heard "The Newsletter Was Just the Start," this is a closer look at the first step in that demo.

I keep saying "skill" on this show, so this time I open one up. Using my Team Newsletter Publisher skill from the community SharePoint skills repository, we look at what's inside: the SKILL.md workflow, the field mapping reference, and the HTML template. And we look at why a rule for an empty news slot says more about skills than any definition.

Try it:
- The skill on PnP: https://github.com/pnp/sharepoint-skills/tree/main/Skills/team-newsletter-publisher
- The Word template (pending merge into PnP): https://github.com/anandragav/sharepoint-skills/blob/skill/team-newsletter-publisher-word-template/Skills/team-newsletter-publisher/Team-Newsletter-Template.docx

Fill in the template, save it in a document library, add the skill to your SharePoint environment, and ask Copilot to publish the team newsletter. Don't upload the Word file with the skill.

Three Microsoft 365 updates worth your time. The preview PowerShell controls for Copilot in SharePoint stop counting on 1 November, so availability moves to per-site Site AI settings and spending policies deserve a look. Copilot Search is coming to SharePoint and OneDrive, with preview due this month and GA in January (RM573696). And legal plugins with 20+ skills land in Word and Cowork as the Legal Agent retires (MC1509799).

Links

- Copilot in SharePoint, preview controls retiring 1 Nov (Microsoft Learn): https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/copilot-in-sharepoint-get-started

- Copilot Search in SharePoint and OneDrive (RM573696): https://mc.merill.net/message/RM573696

- Legal plugins in Word and Cowork (MC1509799): https://mc.merill.net/message/MC1509799

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