copilot-cowork-dojo

Extract text, tables, citations, forms, and metadata from PDFs as grounded context for downstream M365 Copilot work. Use whenever a source for research-synthesis, decision-memo, or document-summarization arrives as a PDF (contracts, regulatory filings, policy documents, vendor reports, scanned forms, fillable intake forms, academic papers), including encrypted, permission-restricted, hybrid native-plus-scan, or large multi-hundred-page packs. Triggers: "extract from this PDF", "summarize this filing", "pull table from PDF", "OCR this scan", "read the fillable form", "this PDF is password-protected".

Produce a recap of decisions, actions, and owners — not a transcript. Use within 24h of any meeting where decisions were made or actions assigned. For a recurring series, also produce a private behavioral readout over a set window — speaking-time, decision velocity, and action carryover as a share of the whole, each finding tied to one concrete change. Triggers: "recap the meeting", "send notes", "what did we decide", post-meeting summary, "are our standups working", recurring-meeting health, meeting-series readout.

Critically inspect Copilot's draft for facts, tone, omissions, bias, and audience fit, then triage what you find by confidence and severity. Use as the REVIEW step of the pipeline, before any iteration or shipping. Triggers: before refining; before send; before a decision or sign-off; after every Copilot draft of meaningful length; reviewing a deliverable, deck, memo, or generated code/automation; running specialized passes (callout accuracy, silent gaps, will-it-survive-scrutiny, structure integrity).

Meta-skill for creating and improving dojo skills. Use when you've found a workflow worth packaging — typically after a pattern recurs 3+ times in tasks/lessons.md — or when an existing skill triggers unreliably and needs a test-driven tune-up. Triggers: "should this be a skill", recurring pattern, promoting a lesson, packaging a workflow, "this skill never fires", optimizing a skill description for discovery.

Apply your organization's brand - colors, typography, logo, and tone - consistently across Copilot-generated deliverables in Word, PowerPoint, Teams, and Viva. Use when polishing a deck, document, or post so it looks on-brand and accessible. Triggers: "make it on-brand", "apply our branding", "brand colors", "company template", "style this deck", "corporate identity", "match our style guide".

Phased workflow for building a high-quality connector or MCP server that lets Copilot act on an external system (an internal API, a line-of-business app, a SaaS tool). Use when planning, designing, or reviewing custom connector tools for Copilot or M365 agents. Triggers: "build a connector", "MCP server", "expose our API to Copilot", "custom tool for Copilot", "connect Copilot to <system>", "Graph connector design".

Co-author a substantial structured document with Copilot through three stages: context gathering, section-by-section refinement, and reader testing. Use when writing a proposal, PRD, design doc, decision doc, RFC, technical spec, or any long-form doc in Word or on SharePoint. Triggers: "write a doc", "draft a proposal", "create a spec", "write up the PRD", "design doc", "decision doc", "help me write this".

Write internal company communications in the formats your org expects: 3P updates (Progress, Plans, Problems), company or team newsletters, FAQ roundups, leadership updates, and incident or project updates. Use when drafting recurring org comms for Outlook, Teams announcements, or Viva Engage. Triggers: "weekly update", "write the newsletter", "3P", "team update", "company FAQ", "leadership update", "announce this to the org".

Pass context cleanly between Copilot agents (e.g. analyst agent -> comms agent). Use whenever a deliverable spans more than one specialist agent or persona. Triggers: "hand off to", switching agents, multi-agent pipeline, agent A -> agent B.

Sequence specialist agents and humans around a single goal. Use for multi-step deliverables — e.g. research -> synthesis -> draft -> review -> publish. Triggers: "set up the pipeline", "orchestrate agents", "research-then-draft", multi-stage workflow.

Every factual claim in a Copilot-assisted deliverable links to a file, message, URL, or named source the reader can open. Use whenever you produce research, analysis, recaps, or any document that informs a decision. Triggers: any quoted number, named individual, "per the…", "according to…", Copilot summaries.

Restate the request, surface assumptions, and confirm the deliverable before you open Copilot. Use when a request is vague, secondhand, urgent-but-fuzzy, arrives in chat as a one-liner, or any time "make me a..." appears without an audience or decision attached. Triggers: "quick favor", "just summarize", "can you draft", forwarded email with no framing.

Read, search, create, and update Confluence pages from Copilot. Use when the team's durable knowledge — runbooks, decision records, design docs, meeting archives — lives in Confluence rather than SharePoint. Triggers: "find the runbook", "publish the decision", "Confluence page", "RFC", "wiki page".

Pull the right files, threads, and people into the Cowork session before drafting. Use whenever the deliverable depends on prior work that lives scattered across email, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, or Loop. Triggers: before any non-trivial draft; "Copilot doesn't know about…"; when context lives in 3+ places.

Produce a one-page decision memo: context, options, recommendation, risks, ask. Use when you need a leader to make or ratify a decision asynchronously. Triggers: "draft a decision memo", "we need a one-pager for X", async approval, exec ratification.

Build PowerPoint (.pptx) decks with M365 Copilot using approved templates, layouts, and slide-narrative discipline. Use for QBRs, steerco updates, board pre-reads, customer briefings, all-hands — any deliverable that ships as a slide deck. Triggers: "build a deck", "make slides", "QBR deck", "steerco", "board pre-read", "PowerPoint", ".pptx".

Faithfully summarize a long document at the right altitude for the audience. Use for board pre-reads, exec briefs, policy reviews, RFP responses. Triggers: "summarize this", "give me the highlights", "TL;DR of this PDF", "exec summary of the report".

Drive Copilot through a structured draft section-by-section after CLARIFY, PLAN, and CONTEXT are done. Use when producing any multi-section deliverable — memo, brief, deck, status, recap. Triggers: "draft section", "fill in the section", section-by-section authoring.

Triage an inbox or thread, surface what needs a reply, and draft replies in your voice. Use during morning triage or when returning from time off. Triggers: "triage my inbox", "what needs a reply", "draft replies", returning-from-PTO inbox, end-of-week sweep.

Analyze, transform, reconcile, and visualize tabular data in Excel with M365 Copilot — formulas, pivots, charts, conditional formatting, Power Query. Use whenever the input or output is a spreadsheet (variance commentary, headcount roll-up, pipeline hygiene, budget reconciliation, cohort analysis, forecast). Triggers: "analyze this spreadsheet", "build a pivot", "reconcile", "variance", "forecast", ".xlsx".

Define where a human must approve, edit, or intervene in a Copilot workflow. Use whenever automation crosses a sensitivity, judgment, or external-communication boundary. Triggers: "set up approval", "who signs off", "before sending externally", any gate definition.

Frame audience, outcome, format, and constraints into one short brief that every subsequent prompt builds on. Use as the first step of the CLARIFY -> PLAN pipeline for any non-trivial deliverable. Triggers: opening a new Cowork session, switching topics mid-session, "let's draft a…".

Drive Jira from Copilot — create / update issues, run JQL queries, manage sprints and boards, generate release notes. Use whenever engineering or delivery context is captured in Jira and needs to flow into a cowork deliverable (status, steerco, retro). Triggers: "Jira status", "JQL", "create issue", "release notes", "sprint summary".

After any meaningful Copilot session, log what worked, what failed, and the rule you'd give a teammate. Promote recurring lessons into team patterns. Use at the end of every scenario walkthrough or whenever a Copilot output surprised you (good or bad). Triggers: end of any session, unexpected hallucination, surprisingly good output, weekly retro.

Produce a brief, agenda, and pre-reads for an upcoming meeting from scattered context (prior decks, threads, emails, last meeting's recap). Use 24–48h before any meeting that warrants a decision. Triggers: "prep for tomorrow's meeting", "need a brief", "build the agenda", steerco prep.

Read, write, search, and share files in OneDrive / SharePoint via Copilot connectors. Use whenever the deliverable lives in a document library or a user's OneDrive — including grounding Copilot on a specific file or folder. Triggers: "ground on this file", "save to SharePoint", "share with", "find the latest version", "OneDrive link".

Drive Outlook mail and calendar from Copilot — search threads, draft replies, schedule meetings, manage rules. Use whenever the input or output of a task is an email or a calendar event. Triggers: "draft a reply", "schedule a meeting", "find emails from", "calendar conflicts", "send to".

Sketch the deliverable structure before you open a Copilot prompt. Use for any output longer than a paragraph: memos, briefs, decks, recaps, status updates, proposals. Skip only for one-line answers. Triggers: "draft a memo", "build a deck", "write a brief", second time reprompting.

Manage Microsoft Planner / Tasks (and the Planner Premium / Project for the Web surface) from Copilot — create tasks, update assignments, roll up status, generate steerco views. Use for project-coordinator workflows and meeting-action tracking. Triggers: "create tasks from this", "Planner status", "assign to", "due date", "roll up tasks".

Know what you can and cannot paste into a Copilot prompt or share through Cowork. Covers personal data, customer data, financials pre-announcement, legal matters, security incidents, and confidential strategy. Use before pasting anything you wouldn't post in a public Teams channel. Triggers: pasting a file, sharing a Cowork session, exporting Copilot output, anything with PII / financials / legal / security content.

Drive Copilot toward a shippable draft with targeted, specific follow-ups rather than vague "make it better" prompts. Use after REVIEW, in tight loops until the deliverable passes the SHIP gate. Triggers: any refine prompt; "tighten this", "make it stronger", "fix section X".

Synthesize multiple sources into a single point of view with traceable citations. Use for competitive analyses, policy reviews, market scans, due-diligence summaries. Triggers: "synthesize these sources", "what's the takeaway across…", "build the matrix", "compare these reports".

Final QA gate before sending, sharing, or publishing a Copilot-assisted deliverable. Covers citations, sensitivity check, audience fit, and the human signature. Use as the last step of the pipeline. Triggers: send, share, post, publish, file, submit.

Produce an audience-tuned status update — exec, team, or stakeholder. Use for weekly, monthly, or steerco cadences. Triggers: "weekly status", "monthly update", "send a status", steerco prep, sponsor update.

Drive Microsoft Teams from Copilot via Graph / Teams Copilot connectors — post messages, summarize channels, retrieve meeting context, manage chats. Use whenever the source or destination of work is a Teams channel, chat, or meeting. Triggers: "post to Teams", "summarize this channel", "pull meeting transcript", "@mention", "Teams chat".

Read every line of Copilot output before sending, sharing, or pasting. Specifically check facts, names, numbers, dates, quotes, and any cited source. Use for every external-facing or decision-supporting output. Triggers: any send / share / publish action; before pasting Copilot output into a channel or email.

Author, edit, review, and ship Word (.docx) deliverables with M365 Copilot — using Word styles, tracked changes, comments, sections, and templates. Use whenever the deliverable is a Word document (memo, policy, report, briefing pack, contract redline, board pre-read), not a chat message or quick note. Triggers: "draft a memo", "write a report", "review this Word doc", "redline", "tracked changes", "policy document", ".docx".

Format and spec compliance for SKILL.md files. Use when authoring or reviewing a skill. Triggers: "review this skill", new skill drafted, format check, "does this match the dojo standard".

One paragraph. State precisely when the agent should activate this skill. Include trigger phrases and contexts. Be specific — vague descriptions prevent auto-discovery.