COPILOT WEEKLY
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6-minute read
3 QUICK WINS · 2 WORKFLOWS · 1 POWER PLAY
👋 Hello, Hello.
On Friday, Microsoft rebuilt Copilot around three tabs. Home puts Chat and Cowork in one spot, with Word, Excel and PowerPoint built right in. Code lets you describe a tracker or dashboard in plain English and get a working tool back, no developer needed. And Autopilot is the wild one: give it a name, a role and a goal, and it keeps working while you're offline. You can even @mention it in Teams like a coworker.
This issue came almost entirely from your replies, so thank you. Keep them coming. 👀
IN 5 MINUTES, BE THE ONE IN THE OFFICE WHO KNOWS COPILOT:
Listen to the 40-page report on your commute.
Check what your Cowork tasks actually cost.
Turn messy notes into one sentence your execs will act on.
Book a meeting for seven people with one prompt.
Let your open-items tracker update and close itself.
Build the notebook that writes your performance review.
3 Quick wins, for anyone just starting
1. 🎧 Turn any report into a podcast
If you've got a 40-page report to read before tomorrow's meeting and a 30-minute commute. Copilot can turn that file into an audio overview you listen to on the way, with one host giving a summary or two hosts talking it through like a podcast.
Open OneDrive on the web or on your phone.
Find the report. It works with Word docs, PDFs and Teams meeting recordings.
On the web, click Copilot → Get an audio overview of this file. On your phone, tap (...) next to the file → Create an audio overview.
Pick Podcast style for two hosts, or keep Summary style for one.
Give it a few minutes, then press play.
The tip: You can speed it up, read the transcript, and save it as an MP3 to listen offline. It also works inside Word and in Copilot Notebooks.
You walk into the meeting having "read" it.
2. 💸 Type /cost to see what Cowork is using
Cowork tasks use Copilot Credits, and your company sets a monthly limit. Most people have no idea how much a task uses until they hit that limit. There's a command for it.
Open Copilot → Cowork.
In any task, type /cost and press Enter.
You'll see roughly how many credits this task has used so far, how many you've used this month, and how many you have left.
The catch: It's an estimate for you to keep an eye on, and it only works after a task runs. You can't check the cost of a task before you start it.
Big repetitive tasks stop being a surprise.
3. 🗣️ Get the one sentence your execs need
If you've got a leadership meeting in an hour and two pages of messy notes, and you still can't say in one sentence what you're asking them to decide. Paste the notes into Copilot and let it pull the argument out.
Why it works: The objections list is the part you'll use most. You hear the hard questions before anyone asks them in the room.
Use this prompt: "You are a strategic communications advisor. I'll paste messy notes, numbers and context. Turn it into: context, why now, business impact, options and trade-offs, recommendation, next step. Give me a one-sentence takeaway first, then the narrative, then the objections an exec will raise. Flag assumptions and weak logic. Do not invent anything. If it's too vague, ask me the minimum questions you need."
@copilotsamaritan Things you didn't know you can do with Copilot (part 43) You've got a leadership meeting in an hour and two pages of messy notes, but you ... See more
Walk in with the answer and the comebacks.
2 Workflows, built from your questions
1. 📅 Book a meeting for seven people with one prompt
Here's what happened when I ran this week's reader question in Copilot Cowork: I gave it 7 names across 3 teams and asked for the earliest 30-minute slot during business hours. On its own, it looked everyone up, checked availability three different ways, and found my open times in seconds.
Then it hit a wall. It couldn't see the other seven calendars, so it told me exactly that and refused to make up a time. When I told it the team had agreed on 7 PM, it checked my calendar, flagged an office-hours session I'd forgotten about at the same time, asked for my OK, and put the meeting on my calendar. No invites went out. It listed everyone's names and emails in the meeting details so I could add them and hit Send.
Make sure Copilot can see your team's calendars. Ask your teammates to share their calendars with you, or ask IT to turn on free/busy sharing across the company. This is the step that decides whether the rest works.
Open Copilot → Cowork.
Paste the prompt below with your team's names.
Approve the action when Cowork asks.
Open the meeting in Outlook, add the attendees, and press Send.
The prompt: "Check the calendars of [names], plus mine. Find the earliest 30-minute slot during business hours (9 AM to 5 PM, Monday to Friday) when all of us are free. Then create a Teams meeting called [title] at that time. Put everyone's names in the details, but don't send the invite yet."
The catch: Adding people to a meeting sends the invite right away, so Cowork checks with you first. If you want it to send the invites itself, just say so. And double-check the time zone. Cowork uses whichever one your Outlook is set to.
Seven calendars, one prompt, zero reply-all threads.
2. 📋 The tracker that updates and closes its own tasks
A reader wrote in: "I currently have an Excel file with multiple tabs to track open items. I'm manually updating it and adding new tasks. Can I create a repeatable agent task that updates my file with new tasks and closes out actions that have been completed?"
The repeatable part is a scheduled Cowork task: you write the instructions once, and it runs every morning on its own. The idea is simple. You keep a sheet in OneDrive that tracks your to-dos, what's pending and what's closed, but you don't wanna spend your mornings updating it. So you get Copilot to watch your Teams chats and email and update the tracker for you.
Save your tracker in OneDrive so Cowork can open it.
Open Copilot → Cowork and paste the prompt below.
Cowork confirms the schedule and asks for your approval before it starts.
To pause or change it later, go to My tasks → Scheduled.
The prompt: "Every weekday at 8 AM, open my [exact file name] Excel file. Check my email and Teams messages since the last run. For each new request or action item, add a row to the right tab with Task, Owner, Due date, Source and Status set to Open. For any Open item where a message shows it was completed or confirmed, change Status to Closed and put today's date in Closed on. Never delete rows. Then tell me what you added and what you closed."
The tip: Run it on a copy for the first week, so your real tracker stays safe while you check what it closes. And it only closes what a message proves is done, so if something gets finished in a hallway chat, send a one-line "done" email and the next run catches it.
You stop being the person who updates the spreadsheet.
1 Power play
🗂️ The notebook that writes your performance review
Review season comes around and nobody remembers what they did in March. Set this up once, and every week Copilot writes down your wins, decisions and progress. By review time, the evidence is all in one place.
Open Copilot → Notebooks → New notebook. Name it 2026 Progress.
Open Cowork and schedule the weekly summary:
“Review my emails, Teams chats, meetings and documents from the last 7 days.
Create a one-page executive update with key achievements, current risks, decisions needed, upcoming milestones and recommended next steps"Add those weekly docs to your 2026 Progress notebook as references. Notebook Instructions:
“Go through all the references in this notebook. Each document represents one full week of my work. Analyze them together to identify the progress I’ve made across weeks, months, and the year. Highlight key accomplishments, projects completed or advanced, important milestones, recurring challenges, and how my priorities have evolved. When relevant, reference the specific week or document where the progress happened.”
When review time comes, ask the notebook:
"List my ten biggest wins this year, with a real example and the month for each."
The catch: Having Cowork save straight into the notebook needs your IT admin to turn on OneNote access for Copilot. Until then, drop the new docs into the notebook manually once a month. It takes a minute.
Bonus: Remember quick win #1? Notebooks can make audio overviews too. Listen to your whole year before the review meeting.
Your raise case, written one Friday at a time.
🎤 Ask us anything. Show us what you built.
A Copilot question you can't crack, a prompt that won't land, a feature you keep seeing but don't quite get: reply to this email.
Built something with Copilot? A workflow, a prompt stack, a skill file that saves you an hour a week? Reply and tell us. The whole point of this list is people sharing what they're shipping so everyone learns together.
Don't forget to rate today's post
That's your Copilot 3-2-1 for the week. Reply with the one task you'd hand to Autopilot first.
Kushank and team
Copilot Samaritan · Copilot Weekly is a PracticalyAI newsletter · practicaly.ai/copilot
