Step 0 — Prepare the lab environment (for admins)

Five preparation tasks

1. Assign credits and usage-based billing

Copilot Cowork uses credits consumed per agent execution. A license alone is not enough. If usage is not assigned to the lab group, participants will enter a prompt and be stopped by “You have exceeded your usage limit.”

1-1. Enable usage-based billing (PAYG)

• Go to the Microsoft 365 admin center → Billing → Usage-based services
• Under Copilot Credits, connect an Azure subscription — credit consumption will be charged to this subscription
• Select or create the resource group to connect (for example, rg-copilot-cowork-lab)
• Confirm that the status changes to Active

1-2. Assign credits to the lab group

If you leave this open company-wide, consumption unrelated to the lab gets mixed in and cost tracking becomes difficult. Create a security group that contains only lab participants and assign usage only to that group.

• Create a security group in Entra ID — for example, Cowork-Lab-Participants
• Add the lab participant accounts to the group
• Go to admin center → Settings → Copilot → Agent and credits management
• Set the Cowork access scope to Selected groups and select the group above
• Set a monthly credit cap per group (you can be generous for one lab run per participant)

1-3. Enable Anthropic models

Cowork depends on Anthropic models. If this is turned off, the Cowork tab itself will not appear.

• Go to admin center → Settings → Org settings → Copilot
• Turn on Anthropic model usage and agree to the subprocessor terms
• Sign in with a participant account at m365.cloud.microsoft/chat and confirm that the Cowork tab is visible

2. Upload sample files so participants can download them

The lab uses 30 files: 24 in SharePoint and 6 in OneDrive.

2-1. Upload to the distribution location

Participants must be able to download the files, so place the source files somewhere with read access.

• Create a SharePoint site for the lab — for example, /sites/Cowork-demo
• Upload all 30 files to the document library with the folder structure unchanged (preserving subfolders is important)
• Grant the lab group at least read permission to the site
• Announce the site URL to participants

3. OneDrive files — participants must upload these themselves

Why each person must upload them

In the scenario, these six files are “Ava’s personal working files.” They are drafts that have not been shared with others, and the lab uses them to show that Cowork “distinguishes between shared documents and my personal drafts.” If the files are in the admin’s OneDrive, participant accounts cannot see them.

Participant instructions (copy and announce as-is)

[Copilot Cowork lab preparation — takes 5 minutes]

Before the lab starts, please complete the steps below. If you do not, you will get stuck during the lab.

1. Open the lab materials site.
   → (SharePoint site URL announced by the admin)

2. Download all six files from the OneDrive_Ava folder.
   - Halcyon_pricing_scratch.xlsx
   - QBR_talking_points.docx
   - Q3_forecast_working.xlsx
   - Solstice_save_plan_draft.docx
   - Alex_Chen_30-60-90_draft.docx
   - Meridian_RCA_outline.docx

3. Open your OneDrive and create a folder at this path.
   My files > Documents > Cowork-demo > OneDrive_Ava

4. Upload the six downloaded files to that folder.

5. Check: if you can see all six files in OneDrive, you are ready.

Note - The last two files (Alex_Chen_30-60-90_draft.docx,
Meridian_RCA_outline.docx) have titles only and their contents are blank.
They are not broken files; Cowork will fill them in during the lab.

• Announce the message above by email or in a Teams channel at least one day before the lab
• Right after the lab starts, ask once more: "Has everyone uploaded the OneDrive files?"
• Keep the download link visible on screen for participants who have not done it yet

4. Place SharePoint documents in the lab site or Teams channel

For Cowork to find documents, they must be in a SharePoint location accessible from participant accounts. Choose one of the following two methods.

Method A — Dedicated SharePoint site (recommended)

• Create a site in the SharePoint admin center or Teams — for example, Cowork-demo
• Upload 7 folders + 24 files to the default document library (Documents)
• Add the lab group as site members (or grant org-wide read access)
• Sign in with one participant account and confirm that the files actually open

Advantage — The structure is clean, and cleanup is complete when you delete the entire site after the lab.

Method B — Files tab in an existing Teams channel

• Create a Teams team/channel for the lab or use an existing channel
• Upload the folder structure unchanged from the channel's Files tab
• Add participants as team members

Advantage — Access feels natural because participants are already in Teams, and you can receive questions in the same channel during the lab. Caution — Private channels use separate sites, so check permissions again.

5. Seeded Teams channel conversations — the answer for Step 4 is here

5-1. What you need to create

You need 2 teams, 6 channels, and 58 messages.

Senders must be scenario persona accounts (Ava, Marcus, Priya, Tom, Sofia, Noah, and so on). It must not look like one account wrote everything — the moment where Cowork cites “who said what” is what makes this lab convincing.

5-2. The one line that must be included

In the INC-4471 War Room channel, at 04:47 on the incident day, sent by Marcus Bello.

Found it. The queue consumer scale-out threshold is pinned at 8 in the
production config. It was set as a temporary ceiling during the load test
in Q1 and never reverted, so the autoscaler physically cannot go past 8
consumers no matter what the queue depth is. Nothing was broken.
The ceiling was just too low for the new volume.

You also need the two threaded replies that follow this sentence (Priya and Marcus) to complete the causal story that this was a dormant issue.

5-3. Injection methods

• Recommended — Graph migration API: With the Teamwork.Migrate.All application permission, create teams/channels in migration mode so you can preserve the original sender and original timestamp. This creates a war room that follows a realistic timeline from 02:12 to 06:22
• After injection is complete, call completeMigration in channel → team order so the team becomes normal. Do not miss the General channel even if it has no messages — if even one remains, team migration fails
• Finally, add the lab accounts as team owners. If they are not members, Cowork cannot read the channels
• Alternative — manual entry: Sign in with each persona account and paste at least the 18 war-room messages manually. The timestamp will be today, but Step 4 will still work

Readiness checklist

Before the lab starts, verify the following directly with one participant account. Permission problems do not appear when using an admin account.

• The Cowork tab is visible in Copilot
• Any prompt in Cowork runs without a credit error
• The SharePoint lab site opens and shows 7 folders
• You can open documents inside 01_RFP
• Your OneDrive contains six files in Cowork-demo/OneDrive_Ava
• Teams shows the INC-4471 War Room channel, with 18 conversation messages under multiple people's names

If all six pass, go to Step 1 — Morning 08:30.

Common issues