Sizing Copilot Credits for Cowork? Let Your Users Use Cowork Investment Advisor Agent.

Let’s discuss something that can be quite a headache: helping customers allocate Copilot Credits for M365 Copilot Cowork. This task can be cumbersome if done manually. Fortunately, there’s an easier way to tackle it.

Here’s the good news: you don’t have to start from square one. Microsoft provides the Customer Cowork Estimator — a fantastic tool that helps you input personas, assess prompt complexity, and gauge expected usage to calculate an estimated credit amount. It’s the ideal starting point, doing the tricky calculations for you.

To maximise this tool’s potential, you need to provide quality inputs, and a bit of groundwork is required for that. For each department, here’s what you should do:

• Identify the user types. There are four main categories: corporate knowledge workers, management, customer-facing staff, and technical personnel.

• Count how many users belong to each type. This is straightforward for small teams but a bit more involved for larger ones.

• Determine the genuine tasks each group would perform using Cowork. Focus on the real multi-step workflows that span multiple applications — not just quick messages or summaries.

• Assess the intensity of each workflow. Classify them as Light, Medium, or Heavy, as each level consumes a different number of credits per execution.

• Estimate how frequently each workflow will be executed. Daily processes can add up quickly, while weekly tasks will have lesser frequency.

Once you provide these inputs, the estimator will handle the calculations smoothly. The challenging part is gathering the inputs persona by persona and workflow by workflow for potentially thousands of users — and this is where the Agent comes in. It streamlines the groundwork needed for the estimator.

The Cowork Investment Advisor agent — a single hub for users to assess their Cowork requirements with built-in starter prompts.

This agent simplifies that groundwork for you. Instead of assessing each user from a distance, the admin can activate the agent for everyone. Each user can then evaluate their own needs while the agent manages the complex aspects, ready to feed into the estimator. Here’s what it does behind the scenes:

• Identifies the correct persona. It determines which of the four personas applies to each user.

• Uncovers the actual workflows. It identifies the primary Cowork scenarios each user is likely to employ.

• Ensures accuracy. It verifies that each task is a legitimate Cowork activity, involving several steps, multiple applications, and real decisions, rather than something that could just be handled by a Scheduled Prompt or basic Copilot Chat.

• Bases its analysis on real evidence. It evaluates recent activities — emails, meetings, documents, and Teams chats — ensuring estimates reflect actual user behaviour rather than mere speculation.

• Performs the calculations. It links each workflow’s complexity to credits per run and computes the totals, providing you with figures that align smoothly with the estimator.

• Displays the value. It provides insights on pay-as-you-go versus pre-purchase plans and a sense of potential returns.

• Maintains transparency. It clearly states its assumptions, indicates confidence levels, and adheres to privacy and compliance protocols.

Here’s what the agent can provide you — the persona, top workflows, complexity assessment, credits, costs, and a clear recommendation, all in one concise report:

The Cowork Investment Advisor agent — your go-to for sizing Cowork needs with ready-to-use prompts.

So why empower users to take this step? Here are some compelling reasons:

• Increased accuracy. The figures are drawn from each individual’s actual workload rather than top-down estimates.

• Consistent approach. Everyone utilises the same method — identical personas, comparable complexity ratings, and consistent calculations — ensuring the figures align clearly for easy implementation.

• Prevents overbuying. By filtering out workflows that won’t truly utilise Cowork, customers only pay for the credits they will actually use.

• Builds a solid business case. You get clear cost insights and an understanding of potential returns, ensuring you provide more than just a number.

• Scales effortlessly. Whether you have ten users or ten thousand, the workload remains relatively consistent on your side.

• Saves you significant time. You can exchange tedious manual calculations for streamlined gathering and reporting. Spend your time offering advice instead of tallying numbers.

If an admin isn’t ready to enable the agent for all users, that’s perfectly fine; it’s not mandatory. This agent is an M365 Copilot agent, equipped with free access to Work IQ — the same technology that will eventually underpin Cowork. Its free access allows the agent to analyse actual worker behaviour and eliminate guesswork from the sizing process. Moreover, there are various ways to utilise it:

1. Create it with Agent Builder. You’ll find ready-made instructions, a description, and a starter prompt in the GitHub repository. Anyone with M365 Copilot access can quickly implement them using Agent Builder.

1. Not keen on building an agent? Simply use the prompt. There’s a detailed prompt available for direct use in the M365 Copilot Chat interface. It provides the same sizing insights based on actual data — no agent necessary.

Regardless of the approach you choose, getting started is straightforward. If you’re planning to implement the agent for your users:

1. Have a casual chat with your customer’s admin to discuss activating the agent for their team.

1. Allow each user to assess their own Cowork requirements.

1. Gather all the inputs and assemble them into a single estimate.

Prefer to keep control? You can create the agent from the GitHub repository using Agent Builder, or input the comprehensive prompt into M365 Copilot Chat to achieve the same end with minimal setup.

THE BOTTOM LINE

You’ve got the heavy lifting done for you. You’ll save hours, eliminate guesswork, and provide your customer with a credit plan they can truly rely on — with solid data and a convincing business case supporting it. Try this out in your next engagement and see just how much quicker the process can be.

Everything necessary is consolidated in one place: