Cowork, enterprise automation and agent governance

Watch-outs

• Cowork has been generally available worldwide since 16 June 2026 for Microsoft 365 Copilot customers, but admins still control discoverability and must enable usage-based billing before users can run tasks.
• Cowork consumption is measured in Copilot Credits; organisations can set user or group limits and users can check approximate task cost with /cost.
• UK Cowork does not require Anthropic/Claude. Microsoft separates Cowork access from model availability; if Anthropic is disabled, Cowork users can continue with allowed non-Anthropic models such as GPT models.
• For UK organisations, model-provider choice should be recorded as a governance/configuration decision because Anthropic availability has separate admin and data-processing considerations.
• For Work IQ or other connected agent tools, start read-only where possible and enable write operations only for a justified use case with appropriate identity and approval controls.
• Treat Cowork access like any other temporary or role-based capability: record owner, purpose, limit and review date, and remove access when the user or project no longer needs it.
• Agent governance becomes more important as shared, action-taking and connected Agents accumulate; maintain an inventory before the estate becomes hard to understand.
• Use human approval or an equivalent controlled handoff before high-impact actions where the technology supports it, and keep human accountability for regulated AO decisions.