6.4.3. Delegating Work and Reviewing Plan, Progress, and Results
💡 First Principle: Supervision only works if you can see the work. Cowork puts everything you need to supervise in one side panel (the plan's progress, what went in, what came out, which skills are in use, and which permissions you've granted), and it gives you graded controls from "approve this once" to "stop right now."
The side panel:
| Section | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Progress | A progress bar (percent complete) and a step-by-step log of the plan |
| Input folder | The files you provided |
| Output folder | What Cowork created, with Download and Preview |
| Skills | The skills loaded for this task, shown as chips |
| Schedule | Scheduled prompts tied to this task |
| Permissions | The "don't ask again" approvals you've granted, which you can review and revoke |
Approvals. Before a sensitive action (sending an email, posting in Teams, scheduling a meeting, modifying a file), Cowork shows an approval dialog, often with a preview of the content. The button is labeled with the action (Send, Post, Create), and medium- and high-risk actions show a risk indicator. Your options:
- Approve once with the action button.
- More options: skip similar prompts for the rest of the session. For email and Teams you can scope this Only to a recipient, Only to a domain, or Always allow.
- Approve All (n) when several approvals are waiting.
- Cancel to skip just that action while the rest of the task continues.
- Show parameters to see the technical details.
"Don't ask again" and Always allow apply to the current session only, and you can revoke them in Permissions.
Controlling the task:
| Control | Effect |
|---|---|
| Pause (soft) | Finishes the current step, then pauses |
| Pause (hard) | Stops immediately, mid-step |
| Resume | Continues from where it stopped |
| Cancel | Clears the task entirely |
Reviewing results. Cowork's task views are Needs your input, In progress, Complete, Automations and Unread. Files Cowork creates are saved to your OneDrive and appear in the OneDrive Cowork folder. You can preview Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, CSV, images, email and more side by side, or Download All as one ZIP file. Cowork can also edit existing Word, Excel and PowerPoint files in place in OneDrive or SharePoint (you choose Approve once or Always allow for the session), and version history is preserved, so an edit can be rolled back.
⚠️ Exam Trap: Cancel in an approval dialog skips that one action and lets the task continue, while Cancel on the task clears the whole task. And a soft pause lets the current step finish, so if Cowork is about to do something wrong right now, you need a hard pause.
Reflection Question: Cowork is sending personalized follow-up emails to 30 customers. After approving the first three, you want to stop approving each one but only for emails going to your company's own domain. Which approval option do you use, how long does it last, and where would you undo it?
