Stop onboarding your AI every Monday.

Cowork Projects can keep recurring instructions with related work. They are private to their creator, and a listed attachment is not a promise that every task can read it.

Every Monday, you explain the same report to the same AI. Who reads it. What the abbreviations mean. Why “everything is progressing well” is not a status update. Apparently onboarding is now a weekly event.

Microsoft lists Projects in Cowork’s October updates. They group related tasks, instructions and context. That could save some repetitive explaining. It also comes with two details worth teaching before everyone starts moving files around.

Your project is not the department’s shared workspace

Microsoft’s project guide, updated October 24, says projects are private to their creator. It also warns that seeing an attachment in project context does not mean every task can use it.

Start a new task from the project page. Set project instructions through the project’s menu, then Edit instructions. Those instructions apply within the project and take precedence over global Cowork or chat instructions.

Try it with a report you already understand

Here’s an illustrative exercise, not a product test. Create a project for your weekly operations report and give it instructions like these:

Write for department managers. Separate completed work, overdue commitments and decisions needed. Identify the source for each claim. If the current figures are missing, say what is missing. Do not substitute last week’s figures or send the report.

Use approved practice material. Start a second task and check whether the format carries over and whether it can actually access the intended source. The test is whether it produces the right report, not whether the folder has a nice color.

This is workplace Copilot Cowork, which uses usage-based billing. Check your organization’s access and spending setup; a work account alone doesn’t establish entitlement. We have not tested Projects or confirmed availability in every tenant.

Put the recurring instructions somewhere useful. Keep checking the facts that change every week.