Cowork has been generally available since June 16, 2026, and is billed differently than your previous Copilot licenses: per consumption, via Copilot Credits. NordFlux checks the prerequisites with your IT, sets up spending policies and limits, accompanies a pilot group, and hands over a rollout roadmap with figures from your own tenant.
Unlike a Copilot license, the cost question does not end at the purchase price per user. Whoever opens Cowork without a spending policy gets either no access or a consumption invoice that no one has seen before.
Five work packages, all before the broad rollout. You decide after each package whether to continue.
We compare who has an active Microsoft 365 Copilot license in your tenant, because that is exactly the prerequisite according to Microsoft for Cowork. We then check whether the Anthropic model family is enabled in the tenant, because Cowork cannot work without it. The result is a list of who could start today and who cannot.
Result Clear start list instead of guessesAccess to Cowork runs through consumption-based billing in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center under Copilot and Cost Management. We set up the standard spending policy with your global or billing administrator, set a monthly limit for the organization, and additionally a limit per user. This way, one person cannot consume the entire company's budget.
Effect Hard ceiling instead of open billBefore starting, we calculate your planned task types through Microsoft's Cowork cost estimator. We then let a small pilot group work for two to four weeks and read the actual consumption from the Cowork usage report and cost management. Only these measured figures go into your budget decision.
Result Consumption per user from your tenantCowork asks for approval before sensitive actions such as sending emails, posting to Teams, or scheduling appointments, and displays a risk level for medium and high risk. We define with you which actions are permanently approved, whether Cowork browsing remains on in the tenant, and which plugins from the Microsoft 365 App Store are allowed. Activity lands in the unified audit log, Microsoft Purview applies.
Effect Traceable instead of black boxWe work with five to ten people from your actual departments on real cases, also showing how to create your own skills as SKILL.md files in the OneDrive folder Documents/Cowork/skills. At the end, there is a roadmap showing which department joins in what order and with what limit. You continue the roadmap yourself after that.
Result Rollout plan with limits per groupSome things belong in Cowork, some belong in a custom-built agent or classic automation. We tell you upfront what goes where instead of forcing everything into one tool.
Without an assigned Microsoft 365 Copilot license, there is no Cowork. If Copilot has not yet become part of your daily routine, the introduction step beforehand is more worthwhile than jumping to Cowork.
Cowork always works with the rights of the person who starts it and answers individual work orders. If a process should run the same for the entire department, with a fixed knowledge base and fixed actions, a Copilot Studio agent is the more appropriate tool.
Cowork operates in the Microsoft 365 environment. As soon as your inventory management system, DATEV, or industry-specific software needs to be involved, you need a real integration. We use n8n, Power Automate, or UiPath depending on the use case, not the partnership program.
Four steps in thirty days, at a fixed price instead of an open timesheet. After the first step, you can exit without cost.
We review licenses, tenant settings, and planned use cases together with your IT. You receive a written assessment of whether Cowork makes sense for you today or if another step comes first.
Activate consumption-based billing, create spending policy with monthly and user limits, set warning thresholds and recipients for alert emails. Your administrator approves in the Admin Center, we sit alongside and document.
Five to ten people work for two weeks with Cowork on their real tasks, accompanied by open office hours. In parallel, we read consumption and usage from your tenant weekly.
You receive the measured costs per user, the list of tasks that were worthwhile, and the list of those that were not. Plus the rollout roadmap and documented settings so your team can continue without us.
Cowork requires that Microsoft 365 Copilot is already licensed and used by you. If this is not yet the case, the Copilot introduction brings more benefits than jumping to the next level.
In a free initial analysis of 60 minutes, we go through your license situation, your planned use cases, and expected consumption. Without obligation, without sales pressure, and if Cowork is not right for you, we'll tell you.
For Copilot Cowork, each user needs an active Microsoft 365 Copilot license, which is the basic prerequisite according to Microsoft documentation. Additionally, an administrator must activate consumption-based billing in the tenant, otherwise Cowork remains locked, even if the license is present. License costs and consumption are therefore two separate line items.
Cowork is billed via Copilot Credits based on consumption, in addition to the Copilot license. Counted are, among other things, model responses, called tools and skills, image generation, and browser tasks. There is therefore no fixed monthly price per user, which is why we measure consumption in the pilot against your real tasks instead of estimating a number.
Through spending policies in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center under Copilot and Cost Management. You can set a monthly limit for the entire organization and additionally a limit per user so that a single person does not consume the entire budget. In addition, there are warning emails from a self-selected threshold. A global administrator or billing administrator can set this up.
No. Cowork asks for your approval before sensitive actions such as sending emails, posting to Teams, or scheduling appointments, showing a preview and, for medium and high risk, an additional risk level. You can pause, continue, or cancel a running task. Scheduled and event-driven tasks also only run with the rights of the person who created them.
Cowork processes your files during a task in an isolated, temporary environment within the Microsoft 365 service boundary, which is removed again after completion. Data residency follows the same model as Microsoft 365 Copilot. Cowork uses, among other things, Anthropic models, which must be approved as sub-processors in the tenant. Your administrator can also disable the Anthropic model family. A note for your data protection review: the Claude Fable 5 model is currently marked as preview, off by default, and requires data retention with the model provider.
