Drop #3: Cowork On Your Phone, Charts in Chat & Global Instructions
Welcome to Drop #3. A big week — Dispatch is fully rolled out, Claude got native charts in chat, the Excel/PowerPoint add-ins got a serious upgrade, and a new unified Microsoft 365 connector just arrived. Plus a tip that could save you minutes on every Cowork session.
News This Week
Dispatch is live for all Pro and Max subscribers
Anthropic's Dispatch feature — which lets you send and monitor Cowork tasks from your phone — finished rolling out this week. Max subscribers got access first, with Pro following within two days. Scan a QR code in Claude Desktop, and your phone becomes a remote control for your Mac or PC. Learn more.
Interactive charts and diagrams, now built into chat
As of March 12, Claude can generate custom charts, graphs, and diagrams directly inside chat responses. No more copying data to a separate tool to visualize it — just ask and Claude renders it inline. See the release notes.
Excel and PowerPoint add-ins now share full context
The Excel and PowerPoint add-ins were updated on March 11 to share full conversation context between applications. They also now support Skills and can connect via LLM gateways for Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud Vertex AI, and Microsoft Foundry. Details here.
One connector for all of Microsoft 365
A new unified Microsoft 365 MCP connector brings Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneDrive, and SharePoint under a single connection — making it much easier to wire Cowork into your whole Office workflow. Explore Cowork.
Resources Worth Bookmarking
- → Official Claude Release Notes — Full changelog for all Claude and Cowork updates
- → Claude Cowork Setup Guide — Context files, instructions, plugins, and workflow setup for 2026
- → Cowork Power User Guide — 50+ tested tips on plugins, skills, sub-agents, and memory
- → Claude Dispatch Deep Dive — How to set up and use Dispatch to control Cowork from your phone
Tip of the Week: Set Up Global Instructions Once, Save Time Every Session
In Claude Desktop, go to Settings → Global Instructions. Write 2–3 sentences about your role, how you like information formatted, and the kinds of tasks you do most. Claude will apply this context to every Cowork session automatically — no re-explaining yourself each time.
Here's a simple template to get started:
- Open Claude Desktop Settings
- Find the Global Instructions field
- Write your role, preferred tone, and typical tasks
- Save it
Claude treats it like a standing briefing doc — it kicks in before you even type your first message.
Until next time.
— The ClaudeCowork.com team