How Copilot Cowork, Dynamics 365 Sales plugin and a custom skill run a sales pipeline
- Hamish Sheild
- Jun 11
- 9 min read
Non-selling work (e.g. writing & recalling notes, updating CRM etc.) consumes around two-thirds of the average sales team's time, even with sales and automation technology widely available, according to McKinsey. Across a large sales team, that is a significant share of effort going into admin tasks rather than revenue-generating work, and it compounds with every rep. I went looking for a fix on my own pipeline first before thinking through what it means at scale for teams.
I have been looking for an AI solution that matches the way I work for a while. Initially the Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft sales agent solutions didn't make sense and weren't overly useful, for me. That changed when Microsoft expanded Copilot Cowork with plugins, including one for Dynamics 365 Sales. For the first time, the assistant I was already talking to could read and write directly into my CRM, with accuracy.
This post is a short account of how I use Copilot Cowork for sales admin, how I set it up, and what it takes to get value from it.
From conversation to action
Copilot Cowork is the part of Microsoft 365 Copilot that completes work rather than only answering questions. You describe the outcome you want, and it turns that request into a plan, then works the steps in the background. It is grounded in your own data, drawing on signals across Outlook, Teams, Excel, and the rest of Microsoft 365, so it acts with the context you bring to your own job.
When updating systems or doing something that needs human review, Cowork shows you the actions it recommends and waits for your approval before applying any change (Microsoft 365 Blog). Nothing gets written to my CRM, or sent to a customer, without me confirming it first.
How I work my pipeline now
The way I run my pipeline shifts depending on what is in front of me, and so does where the information starts. Some days it is an email from a prospect. Other days it is a Teams meeting I have recorded and had transcribed. Often it is a quick voice note I dictate straight after a call, while the detail is still fresh. Cowork can take any of these as its starting point, which means the channel I happen to be working in does not dictate how CRM gets updated.
A typical example begins with a rough, vague prompt. An email comes in and I say something like, "review my latest emails from client [x] and suggest updates to the opportunity." A transcript or a voice note works the same way. From there, Cowork will:
find the relevant source, whether that is an email thread, a meeting transcript, or my dictated note, and the matching Opportunity record in Dynamics
research the account and the person, including a look for the right LinkedIn profile, before populating any details
create a new Account, Contact, and Opportunity together in one pass when the deal is new
suggest an estimated value and a close date, with its reasoning shown
flag genuine risks to the opportunity (for me, it does this better than the Dynamics 365 Sales Opportunity Agent)
add notes and follow-up tasks, and close completed tasks as we work through them
reply with a clickable link to every Dynamics 365 record it created or updated so I can quickly check what it has done
The productivity gain is not only the typing it saves. It is the prompting it does back to me. When I forget to set a value, it proposes one. When a deal has gone quiet, it tells me. When a task on the opportunity is clearly done, it offers to close it. I am reviewing suggestions instead of starting from a blank field, which is a meaningfully different kind of work.
There is a longer-term gain too. Detail gets captured in the record that I would never write down myself, the context behind why a deal slipped, or something a contact mentioned in passing, because I simply do not have the time or the inclination to type it. That detail now sits in Dynamics 365, ready for whatever AI tool needs it next.
The built-in Sales agents have their place
Dynamics 365 already has a growing line-up of AI agents for sales, and they are well designed for what they do. They include the Sales Qualification Agent for researching and engaging inbound leads, the Sales Opportunity Agent for deal briefings, risk detection, and stakeholder mapping, the Sales Close Agent for guided customer engagement, AI-powered Data Enrichment for keeping records current, and the Sales Research Agent for natural language pipeline and revenue analysis.
Keeping track of which agent does what, and which role and stage each one suits, is genuinely hard, so I built a free, public reference for it: the Microsoft Sales AI Agents explorer. It lays out each agent, its status, the roles it serves, and its core capabilities in one place. If you are weighing up the built-in options for a team, start there.
Each of those agents is built for a specific role and a specific moment in a defined sales process, and for a team running that process at scale, they are a strong starting point. But a defined process does not always cover the adhoc human interactions like the email that needs a quick update, the meeting that needs writing up, the voice note dictated between calls. Those interactions do not map neatly onto a stage or a role, and they happen to every seller, whether they are one person running the whole pipeline or one of many reps inside a structured process as part of a sales team. Copilot Cowork, the Dynamics 365 Sales plugin and a skill can help cover that layer outside of process. An AI agent that responds to how the day unfolds, alongside whatever structured agents and processes a team already has in place.
Turning my preferences into a skill
A skill is how I ended up making Copilot Cowork consistent, accurate and repeatable. Without it, I would have to have a lot of back-and-forth discussion with Copilot Cowork, providing extra instructions and correcting mistakes.
I did not start with building my own skill from scratch. I started by prompting the Dynamics 365 Sales plugin directly to create and update records, then chatting back and forth to correct it. The first attempts populated the wrong fields, or skipped the research step, or pushed close dates out for reasons I did not agree with. Each correction taught it how I want an Opportunity logged, which columns I care about, when to research an account, how to handle close dates, and to return a Dynamics 365 record link every time.
Once those preferences were stable, I asked Copilot Cowork to create the skill for me based on the preferences I had shared in the conversation. This produced a reusable set of instructions Cowork follows to complete the tasks my way each time. The skill sits against my account in OneDrive, and Cowork can hold a library of them and load the relevant one at the start of a conversation.
Skills are really worth understanding (even for non-technical people) as they are the magic that makes everything work consistently. The plugin is what gives Cowork access to Dynamics 365 Sales. The skill is what tells the agent how to work with Dynamics 365 Sales in the way that I want it to.
For a team, the same idea scales further than having a skill file in OneDrive folders. Microsoft 365 admins can package a skill into a Cowork plugin and deploy it to specific users, groups, or the whole organisation from the Microsoft 365 admin center. Once deployed, that plugin's skills sit alongside the Dynamics 365 Sales plugin's skills and connectors in the same conversation. Cowork does not make you choose one or the other. In practice, that means a sales manager could define a skill that captures the team's standard for how opportunities gets logged, which fields matter, when to research an account, how close dates get handled, and have it apply automatically for everyone, without forcing a rigid workflow on people who sell differently day to day.
Setting up Copilot Cowork and Dynamics 365 Sales plugin
The first thing to know is availability. At the time of writing, Cowork and its plugin ecosystem, including the Dynamics 365 Sales plugin and the custom plugin deployment described above, are part of Microsoft's Frontier preview programme, not a generally available release. Your tenant needs to be enrolled in Frontier before any of this is something you or your team can try.
I'm also concious, that because it is not a generally available release, there is uncertainty around how it will be licensed. At the moment, it seems to be covered by the Microsoft 365 Copilot license but I expect that there will be a significant licensing cost when it is generally available due to the amount of processing (token consumption) it does. However, I am likely to be OK with that due to the value it provides. Sales is just one scenario I am using it for.
Beyond Frontier access, a few things need to be in place. The Dynamics 365 Sales plugin has to be enabled, you need the underlying Dynamics licence and the right permissions for the records you are touching, and your admin settings need to allow the plugins and skills you intend to use. Getting those rights configured is what unlocks the value. Without them, you have a capable assistant that cannot reach the system where your work lives.
Finding what fits
There is no single approach that works for every sales team. Whether you are deciding which AI tools to roll out across a team, or managing your own pipeline like I am, finding what fits how you and your people work matters more than reaching for the most capable tool on the list.
For me, the combination of the Dynamics 365 Sales plugin and a skill that captures my preferences has become part of how I work, every day. It is enabling me to save time and also do things that I wouldn't have done in the past, which add value to me and my clients. For a team, the same combination, plus a shared skill deployed centrally, gives everyone a consistent starting point without locking them into a rigid flow. If the prescribed agent flows feel tight for how your team sells, or you are looking for a lighter way to lift CRM hygiene across a pipeline, this is worth a serious look. The thinking on where each of these tools fit is still settling, and it will take time and real use to refine. That is the conversation I would rather have with clients. Not which AI is most powerful, but which one earns a place in the way your team works.
Q: What is the Copilot Cowork Dynamics 365 Sales plugin?
A: It is an integration that lets Microsoft 365 Copilot Cowork read and write directly to Dynamics 365 Sales records, including Opportunities, Accounts, and Contacts. You describe what you want in plain language, and Cowork proposes the changes for you to approve before they are written to the CRM.
Q: Is Copilot Cowork generally available?
A: Not yet. At the time of writing, Cowork and its plugin ecosystem, including the Dynamics 365 Sales plugin and custom plugin deployment, are part of Microsoft's Frontier preview programme. Your organisation needs to be enrolled in Frontier, and an admin needs to make Cowork and the relevant plugins available, before you or your team can use them.
Q: What inputs can Copilot Cowork turn into CRM updates?
A: It can work from several channels. An email thread, a recorded and transcribed Teams meeting, or a voice note dictated after a call can each become the source for creating or updating a record, so the channel you work in does not limit how the CRM gets updated.
Q: How do you make Copilot Cowork follow your own sales process?
A: You capture your preferences as a Cowork Skill, a reusable set of instructions Cowork follows each time. The practical way to build one is to prompt the plugin directly, correct it through a few conversations until records are logged the way you want, then save those preferences as a skill stored against your account.
Q: What do you need to set up before the Dynamics 365 Sales plugin is useful?
A: The plugin needs to be enabled in your Microsoft 365 admin settings, you need the relevant Dynamics 365 licence, and you need the right permissions on the records you want to update. Without those rights configured, Cowork cannot reach your CRM.
Q: Can a Cowork skill be shared across a sales team, not just used by one person?
A: Yes. A personal skill lives in your own OneDrive, but Microsoft 365 admins can also package a skill as a Cowork plugin and deploy it to specific users, groups, or the whole organisation from the Microsoft 365 admin center, the same way the Dynamics 365 Sales plugin itself is deployed. Deployed plugin skills sit alongside the Dynamics 365 Sales plugin in the same conversation, so a team can have a shared skill for CRM hygiene without losing the plugin's reach into Dynamics.
Q: How is this different from the built-in Dynamics 365 Sales agents?
A: Agents like the Sales Qualification Agent, Sales Opportunity Agent, and Sales Research Agent are built for defined roles and stages in a sales process at scale. You can compare them in the free Microsoft Sales AI Agents explorer. The Cowork plugin is more flexible and suits managing a pipeline end to end in whatever order suits the day, with a human approving every change.