A digital worker is only useful if your team can actually work with it. The most natural home isn’t another dashboard to check — it’s the place your team already lives: Slack, Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365.
Why chat is the right interface
An AI coworker for business earns its keep by removing steps, not adding a tab. When it lives in Slack or Teams, people delegate to it the same way they’d @-mention a colleague: “summarise this thread”, “pull the latest numbers”, “draft a reply to this customer”. No new login, no training session, no change-management programme.
What an AI coworker does inside Slack or Teams
- Answers from your knowledge. Ask a question, get an answer grounded in your own docs, wiki and past threads — with sources.
- Acts on requests. Create the ticket, update the CRM record, kick off the workflow — triggered from a message.
- Watches channels. Notice a customer escalation or a stalled deal and nudge the right person.
- Reports proactively. Post the morning standup summary or the weekly pipeline digest without being asked.
The Microsoft 365 angle
Microsoft 365 is where a lot of the actual work-product lives — Outlook, Word, Excel, SharePoint, Teams. A digital worker wired into 365 can read the inbox, draft documents, update spreadsheets and pull from SharePoint, which is why “AI coworker Microsoft 365” is less about chat and more about action across the suite. The same applies to Google Workspace if that’s your stack.
What enterprises should look for
Enterprise digital workers add requirements a consumer chatbot doesn’t have to meet:
- Permissions that respect yours. The worker should only see what the requesting user is allowed to see.
- Auditability. Every action logged, reviewable, reversible.
- Data residency & privacy. Clear answers on where data goes and how it’s handled — for Australian businesses, under the Australian Privacy Principles.
- Human approval on high-stakes steps. Configurable, not all-or-nothing.
Platform vs custom build
You’ll see plenty of “AI digital employee platform” products that give you a worker in Slack within minutes. They’re great for common, narrow jobs. The ceiling shows up when the work depends on your systems and rules — that’s when a worker built around your stack wins. If you want the integration depth of a custom build without hiring an engineering team, that’s what Coworkers delivers. Next, see how to onboard one like a new hire.