Step 2 — 30 minutes before the meeting, brief from multiple sources
The quarterly review with your largest customer is in 30 minutes. Create a short briefing by combining email, meeting notes, status reports, and Teams.
▶ What you learn — Cowork reads multiple repositories and assembles them into one answer. This is the first point where it feels agentic.
13:30. In 30 minutes, you have the Meridian Bank FY26 Q3 quarterly business review (QBR). It is your largest account, Project Northstar (USD 4.2M) is in progress, and there was an incident six days ago.
If a person did it manually
| What to review | Where | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Attendees and agenda | Calendar invite | 2 min |
| Recent conversation | 3 email threads, 11 emails | 15 min |
| Commitments from last meeting | SharePoint meeting notes | 8 min |
| Project status | SharePoint status report | 8 min |
| Open commitments | SharePoint list | 5 min |
| Internal discussion | 22 Teams channel messages | 12 min |
Total: 50 minutes. You have 30 minutes left. So people usually skim only email and enter the meeting, then get called out for forgetting last meeting’s promises.
2-1. Create a comprehensive briefing
Scenario 4 · Core
📌 What is happening
Within 30 minutes, you need to read multiple sources and decide what to say first.
- 🎯 Expected output
- A short briefing in chat — 3 conversation points · unfulfilled promise · 1 risk
- 💡 Efficiency point
- The point is not speed but preventing omissions. When people are short on time, they drop sources. Items from documents no one reopens, especially unfulfilled promises from the last meeting, can decide the meeting.
- ⚠️ What to check
- Check whether it includes the item the customer requested in the August meeting that is still unfulfilled. That is the answer.
Why not create an HTML file — File generation is the slowest part of this scenario. A chat briefing is faster to read and shows results immediately in a demo.
Create a short chat briefing for today's 14:00 Meridian Bank quarterly review.
You only need recent emails, the most recent meeting notes, and open action items.
① 3 conversation openers ② promises not yet fulfilled ③ 1 risk.
One or two lines for each item is enough. Do not create a file.
✅ Result check
- Attendees Helena Vargas (Head of Infrastructure), Rajiv Menon (IT Operations Manager)
- Rollout progress 1,870 / 3,200 (58%)
- Mention of INC-4471 incident six days ago, post-incident report not submitted
- ⭐ Unfulfilled promise — “No response yet to the August request to convert downtime-avoidance impact into EUR”
The ⭐ item is the highlight. This fact appears only as an “Open” item in the August meeting notes. It is not in email or the status report. If Cowork found it, it actually opened the meeting notes.
If you need likely questions — “Only 5 questions the customer may ask in this meeting.” Asking for 10 from the start is slower.
2-2. Tell your manager in 3 lines
Scenario 5
📌 What is happening
VP Sales Lena Hoffmann will attend. She does not want the full briefing; she wants “the 3 lines I need to know.”
- 🎯 Expected output
- 3 lines + 1 risk for an executive
- 💡 Efficiency point
- Rewriting the same information for each recipient takes time. Cowork keeps the briefing in the session, so it can change only the perspective without rereading.
- ⚠️ What to check
- The executive version should focus on numbers and risk.
Reduce the briefing you just made to 3 lines for VP Sales Lena Hoffmann.
Add only 1 decision needed today and 1 risk. Do not create an email yet.
✅ Result check
- Is it a compressed 3 lines, not the full briefing?
- Does it include executive numbers such as USD 4.2M and 58%?
- Are working-level details removed?
To send by email — “Turn the above into an email draft to Lena. Do not send it.”
Why this step matters
It decides for itself “which sources to look at” — The prompt does not say “open the meeting notes file.” It only says “the most recent meeting notes.” Cowork found it in SharePoint, opened it, and picked out the unfulfilled item.
Search requires you to know where to look. An agent finds it on its own.
What you verified in this step
- ✅ It synthesizes multiple repositories at once
- ✅ It decides for itself which file to open
- ✅ It surfaces unfulfilled promises from documents no one reads
- ✅ It rewrites the same information for the recipient