Overview
Most people start with Claude as a chatbot. This course shows how to turn it into a dependable work partner that knows your role, remembers your material, works in the background and sits inside the Microsoft 365 tools you use every day.
Day 1 builds the foundations: choosing the right model and plan, prompting with context, personalising Claude to your profile, and creating persistent workspaces with Projects, Artifacts and Skills. Day 2 moves to automation and integration: the desktop app, Claude in Chrome, Cowork, the Microsoft 365 connector, scheduled tasks and Model Context Protocol (MCP) connectors, then Claude inside Excel, Word and PowerPoint. Nine hands-on exercises run on your own business material.
Who it's for
Professionals who already use Claude occasionally and want it to do more of their routine work. It is especially suited to:
- Managers and team leaders
- Analysts and finance professionals
- Administrators and executive assistants
- Project and operations leads
Prerequisites
- Some experience of using Claude or a similar AI assistant is helpful but not essential
- Comfort with Word, Excel and PowerPoint
- A paid Claude plan and the other items under What you'll need, in place before Day 1
By the end of this course you will be able to
- Choose the right model, plan and workspace for a task, and manage the risk of wrong or invented answers
- Write context-rich prompts with the GCES method and set Claude up to respond in line with your role and tone
- Build a Project, an Artifact and a Skill for your own work
- Run Claude from the desktop app and the browser, and delegate multi-step work to Cowork, including a scheduled task
- Connect Claude to Microsoft 365 and other tools, and understand what MCP connectors add
- Use Claude inside Excel, Word and PowerPoint to analyse, write and prepare materials faster
Course outline
Times show the standard running order and can be adjusted when we tailor the course to your team. The trainer stays available during breaks to help anyone finish an exercise.
Welcome & orientation 10 min
How the two days fit together, the nine exercises, and the working context each person will use throughout.
Claude beyond the chat window 30 min
Where Claude stands out and when it makes sense to choose it over other AI tools. A simple test for matching a task to a tool, and what changes when AI is a work partner rather than a search box.
Try it: Sort six tasks from your own week by the tool you would use for each, and say why.
Model families and plans 30 min
How Claude's model families trade depth against speed and cost, and when to use each one. What a paid account adds, and how the plans differ for individuals and teams.
Try it: Choose a model for four tasks of different difficulty and justify each choice.
How AI answers, and managing the risk 30 min
The probabilistic way AI produces text, why hallucinations happen, and practical mitigations: supplying sources, asking for citations, requesting a self-check and keeping a person on the final call.
Try it: Find an invented detail in a Claude answer, then add two checks to the prompt to catch it.
Effective prompting 40 min
Why context matters more than syntax. The GCES method (Goal, Context, Expectations, Source) as the base structure, when to continue a conversation and when it is better to start a new chat.
Try it: Exercise 1 — build a complete prompt to respond to a customer complaint, then refine it twice.
Personalising Claude with Custom Instructions 30 min
Setting up your profile preferences (often called Custom Instructions) so Claude knows your role, priorities and preferred tone from the first message.
Try it: Exercise 2 — configure your profile preferences for your own role and test them on a typical request.
Projects as persistent workspaces 45 min
Creating a Project with its own history and a dedicated knowledge base such as manuals, technical sheets and standards. How project instructions and your profile preferences complement each other, and sharing a Project with the team on Team and Enterprise plans.
Try it: Exercise 3 — build a working Project for your own context and ask it five test questions.
Working with files and the web 35 min
Uploading PDFs, Excel files and images and getting reliable answers about them. Web search for current information with citations you can verify.
Try it: Ask the same question with and without web search, then open two citations to confirm they say what Claude claims.
Artifacts: documents, dashboards and prototypes 40 min
Using Artifacts as a production space inside the chat: documents, dashboards and interactive prototypes you can edit with Claude and export.
Try it: Exercise 4 — generate a working Artifact for your own context and refine it with two follow-up requests.
Skills: repeatable procedures 45 min
Defining a repeatable procedure once so Claude applies it the same way each time. What a Skill contains, how Claude decides when to use it, and which plans and settings it needs.
Try it: Exercise 5 — create a working Skill for a recurring task in your own context and test it on one real example.
Close 10 min
Recap of Day 1 and preparation for the online day.
Welcome back 10 min
Questions from Day 1 and a check that everyone's desktop app and extension are ready.
Claude Desktop and Claude on mobile 25 min
Installing the desktop app, its requirements, signing in and first configuration, and how it differs from using Claude in the browser. Using Claude on a phone: what syncs across devices and good habits for work on the move.
Try it: Set up the desktop app, then start a chat on your phone and continue it on your computer.
Claude in Chrome 30 min
Installing the official extension, the permissions it needs, and practical uses such as reading, summarising and filling in web pages. Its limits, and security precautions: which sites to allow, reviewing actions, and treating web content as untrusted.
Try it: Have Claude summarise a public web page and compare two products, with site permissions limited to the pages you choose.
Cowork: what it is and when it is worth using 30 min
How Cowork takes on whole tasks rather than single prompts, working in folders you choose and showing its plan and progress. Choosing tasks that suit it and tasks that do not.
Try it: Pick three real tasks and decide which belong in Cowork, in chat or with you.
The Microsoft 365 connector and multi-step tasks 30 min
Connecting Claude to Outlook, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams. Chaining search, read, summarise and write into one task, and handling the last step (drafting versus sending) safely, with write access switched on only where it is needed.
Try it: Ask Claude to find a document and the related email thread, summarise both, and draft a reply that you review without sending.
Scheduled tasks and the MCP connectors ecosystem 30 min
Setting up scheduled tasks so Claude repeats a prompt on a timetable, including what is needed for them to run. How Model Context Protocol (MCP) connectors extend Claude to more tools, and how to judge which to trust.
Try it: Create a weekly scheduled task that prepares a short summary, and list the permissions it needs.
Setting up a Cowork project and its folders 35 min
Creating a Cowork project and organising a folder system that makes tasks repeatable: inputs, working files, outputs and reference material.
Try it: Exercise 6 — create a Cowork project and organise its folder system.
Where Cowork falls short and how to work around it 20 min
The current limits of Cowork, such as usage, folder access and tasks that need your computer to stay on, and practical workarounds.
Try it: Write down three limits you expect to meet and the workaround for each.
A complete Cowork project 40 min
Adding Skills, instructions and folders to your project, then testing it on a complex task and reviewing the plan, the progress and the result.
Try it: Exercise 7 — configure a complete Cowork project with Skills, instructions and folders, and test it on a complex task.
Claude in Excel 35 min
Using Claude inside Excel to analyse data, build formulas, clean tables, interpret indicators and prepare executive summaries, and checking its working before you rely on it.
Try it: Exercise 8 — analyse a spreadsheet with Claude and produce an executive summary with conclusions and recommendations.
Claude in Word 25 min
Reviewing and rewriting text, structuring documents, and creating proposals, reports, minutes and professional communications from your own material.
Try it: Ask Claude to restructure a rough report and tighten one section, then compare it to your original.
Claude in PowerPoint 25 min
Turning content into a presentation narrative: scripts, stronger key messages and versions for different audiences.
Try it: Exercise 9 — transform a Word document or a set of notes into a PowerPoint presentation structure.
Close: next steps & Q&A 10 min
Choose what to put into practice in the next week.
What you'll need
Claude
- An active paid Claude plan (Pro, Team or Enterprise). Skills, Cowork and Claude in Chrome need a paid plan, and sharing Projects needs Team or Enterprise.
- Skills and Artifacts need code execution and file creation to be switched on; on Team and Enterprise this is an administrator setting.
Microsoft 365
- A work or school Microsoft 365 account with OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams, Excel, Word and PowerPoint.
- The Microsoft 365 connector needs your Claude organisation owner and a Microsoft administrator to approve it. If that is not in place, the connector exercise runs as a demonstration.
- The Claude add-ins for Excel, Word and PowerPoint are installed from Microsoft AppSource, which your administrator may need to allow.
Equipment
- A laptop on which you are allowed to install the Claude desktop app and the Chrome extension.
- Google Chrome, for the Claude in Chrome session.
- Two or three real-world working files that do not contain strictly confidential data, for example a PDF manual, an Excel sheet or a Word report.
Practice files are provided for every exercise. You are welcome to use your own everyday documents where your organisation's policy allows.