Copilot Cowork: What the New AI Feature Means for Project Management

With Copilot Cowork, Microsoft is bringing a new dimension to AI-supported collaboration: instead of individual prompts, project managers and PMOs now delegate entire work packages to an AI agent that plans, executes and delivers results independently. What does this mean in concrete terms for PMOs - and how does a modern PPM solution like Altus PPM fit into the picture?

From chat help to digital project assistant

Anyone who has used Microsoft Copilot in their day-to-day project work will be familiar with the pattern: ask a question, get an answer, continue working. Copilot Cowork fundamentally changes this pattern. Instead of responding to individual inputs, Cowork takes over entire task chains - and processes them independently over a period of minutes or hours.

For example: you ask Cowork to prepare a project status meeting. The AI searches your emails and team messages for relevant updates, creates a summary in PowerPoint, pulls current key figures from Excel and creates a suggested date in the calendar. This all happens in the background - you stay in control at all times and can check progress or correct course.

What Copilot Cowork changes for PMOs

Cowork offers several concrete benefits for project management offices. The most obvious: saving time on recurring tasks. Compiling monthly status reports, updating stakeholder presentations or maintaining milestone overviews - tasks that take hours today can be delegated to Cowork as a work order.

Cowork also thinks across the board. The AI accesses files, calendars, emails and chat histories and links information that is scattered across various Microsoft 365 applications. For PMOs, who often act as an information hub between specialist departments and management, this is a significant productivity gain.

Importantly, Copilot Cowork works within the existing Microsoft security and governance structures. Authorizations, compliance guidelines and audit trails are retained - a decisive factor for company-wide use in the PMO.

Agents instead of assistants: The next evolutionary stage

What sets Cowork apart from previous Copilot functions is its agent-based architecture. Cowork breaks down a request into sub-steps, selects the appropriate tools and coordinates their execution. Microsoft is deliberately talking about a change: away from a pure assistant and towards an acting agent.

For project managers, this means a paradigm shift. AI is no longer just asked - it is commissioned. It creates a plan, indicates checkpoints and delivers a finished result at the end. This is reminiscent of delegating to a team member: placing an order, checking intermediate statuses, approving the result.

It becomes particularly exciting when agents communicate with each other. Cowork can use specialized agents as tools - for example, one agent for budget analyses, one for scheduling and one for risk assessments. This creates a virtual project team that works with the PMO.

Microsoft has since unveiled the logical next step in this principle: with Microsoft Scout, the first autonomous “autopilot” agent no longer needs to be commissioned – it works in the background on its own initiative, detects risks and triggers tasks. You can read what this means for PMOs in our article on Microsoft Scout in the PMO.

MCP: How AI agents connect external systems

A question that many project managers ask themselves: Can Copilot Cowork operate beyond the Microsoft 365 world and write to third-party systems? It now can: with the Cowork plugins (skills and connectors) introduced in May 2026, Cowork connects external systems via the Model Context Protocol (MCP) - initially as a preview in the Frontier program, with partners such as Miro, monday.com and LSEG. MCP, the open standard that lets AI agents access external data sources and APIs, has been generally available in Copilot Studio since 2025.

For comparison: Claude Cowork - the technological basis of Copilot Cowork - connects external systems directly via MCP connectors. For example, it can read sales information on won projects from the CRM system such as HubSpot, create a project in Altus or Projectum xPM, assign Jira tickets to available resources or send team messages without having to go through an orchestration platform. Both approaches are moving in the same direction: AI agents that not only read, but actively act in company systems.

Looking for a modern PPM solution? The most important questions

With the end of support for Microsoft Project Online on 30 September 2026, many organizations are faced with the question of how to future-proof their project and portfolio management. The same questions keep cropping up:

How do I migrate from Project Online to a modern solution? Solutions such as Altus PPM make it possible to migrate existing Project Online data in the shortest possible time - often within a day. Altus runs directly in its own Microsoft 365 tenant and stores all data in the dataverse so that the company retains full control.

Can the new PPM solution work with AI agents such as Copilot Cowork? As Altus PPM is natively based on Microsoft 365 and the Dataverse, the basis for collaboration with Copilot is already in place. Project data, portfolio overviews and resource plans are located exactly where Copilot Cowork can access them - without additional interfaces or data silos.

Do I still need a stand-alone PPM tool if Copilot can do everything? Copilot Cowork is an execution and orchestration tool - not a PPM system. It can aggregate information, create reports and coordinate tasks. But the structured recording, prioritization and management of projects and portfolios still requires a specialized platform. Copilot Cowork and Altus PPM complement each other: the PPM system provides the database and process logic, Copilot Cowork automates the work with it.

How do I integrate Jira, Azure DevOps or Planner into my portfolio management? Altus PPM integrates seamlessly with Planner, Project, Jira and Azure DevOps. This creates a centralized view of all projects - regardless of which tool the teams use in their day-to-day operations.

What to do now

Copilot Cowork has been available as a preview via the Microsoft Frontier program since late March 2026; general availability is still pending. Access is provided through the Microsoft 365 Copilot license, which is also included in the new Microsoft 365 E7 suite (available since 1 May 2026). It is worthwhile for PMOs to evaluate at an early stage which recurring processes are suitable for delegation to Cowork - and at the same time make their own PPM infrastructure fit for the AI era. Holert offers the right workshop format for this with the PMO AI Power Day.

The right combination is crucial: a modern PPM system such as Altus PPM as a structural basis, supplemented by AI agents such as Copilot Cowork for operational automation. Bringing these two building blocks together creates the conditions for a PMO that works faster, more data-driven and more strategically.

PMO AI Power Day: Experience AI agents in the PMO in practice

Want to do more than just read about Copilot Cowork, connecting external systems via MCP and an AI-ready PPM foundation – and try it out for your own PMO? At Holert's PMO AI Power Day, you work together with our experts to identify which recurring processes can be delegated to AI agents – and how to make your project and portfolio landscape fit for the AI era. In a compact format, we combine the latest AI trends with concrete use cases for your project and portfolio management.