Claude Cowork Team Setup — Workspace, Members & Roles

Step 1 — Create Your Workspace

Go to claude.ai/cowork and sign in with your Anthropic account. If you don't have one, create a free account first.

1. Click Create Workspace
2. Enter a workspace name — use your company or team name (e.g. "Acme Corp" or "Product Team")
3. Choose your initial plan — you can start free and upgrade once you know your team's usage pattern
4. You're now the workspace Owner — the highest permission level

Step 2 — Invite Team Members

Go to Settings → Members → Invite Members. You can invite by email address individually or paste a comma-separated list for bulk invites.

Invited members receive an email with a link. They need an Anthropic account to accept — if they don't have one, the invite link walks them through creating one. There's no minimum plan required to accept an invite; the workspace's plan covers their access.

Bulk Invite

For teams of 10+, use the CSV import option in Settings → Members → Import:

email,role
[email protected],member
[email protected],member
[email protected],admin
[email protected],viewer

Upload the CSV and all invites go out simultaneously. Check the import log for any addresses that failed (invalid format or existing members).

Step 3 — Understanding Roles

Project-Level Roles

Members can have different roles in different projects. A developer might be a Member in the Engineering project but a Viewer in the Marketing project. Set project-level roles in Project Settings → Members.

Step 4 — Create Your First Projects

Projects are the main organisational unit inside a workspace. Think of each project as a persistent Claude workspace for a specific team or purpose — with its own members, system prompt, knowledge documents, and artifact library.

Click New Project from the workspace home:

1. Name the project — e.g. "Engineering", "Marketing Content", "Customer Support"
2. Set visibility — Workspace (all members can find it) or Invite-only (only explicitly invited members)
3. Add a project description — shown to members on the project home; helps them understand what this project is for
4. Optionally add a system prompt — Claude uses this as standing instructions for every conversation in this project. See the System Prompts guide for templates.

Recommended Project Structure

Enterprise SSO Setup

On Business and Enterprise tiers, you can require all workspace members to sign in through your identity provider (Okta, Azure AD, Google Workspace, etc.) rather than individual Anthropic accounts.

Go to Settings → Security → Single Sign-On:

1. Select your IdP from the dropdown (Okta, Azure AD, Google Workspace, SAML 2.0 generic)
2. Copy the ACS URL and Entity ID shown — paste these into your IdP's SAML app configuration
3. Paste your IdP's Metadata URL or XML into the Claude Cowork SSO settings
4. Test the connection — a test button sends a test authentication request through your IdP
5. Enable Enforce SSO — after this, all members must use SSO. Existing password-based sessions are invalidated at their next login.

SCIM Provisioning (Enterprise)

Enterprise tier supports SCIM for automatic user provisioning and deprovisioning. When an employee leaves and their account is deactivated in your IdP, SCIM automatically removes their Cowork access — no manual cleanup required.

# SCIM base URL (enter into your IdP's SCIM config):
https://api.claude.ai/cowork/scim/v2/{workspace-id}

# Bearer token: generate in Settings → Security → SCIM → Generate Token

Step 5 — Set Workspace Defaults

Before your team starts using Cowork heavily, configure a few workspace-level defaults in Settings → Workspace:

• Default model — Sonnet 4.6 for most teams (good quality at reasonable cost); Opus 4.6 for research or complex writing teams. Members can switch per-conversation on Pro/Business tiers.
• Artifact retention — default is 90 days. Enterprise tier can extend to custom periods or indefinite retention.
• Conversation sharing — whether members can share conversation links outside the workspace. Disable this for sensitive teams.
• Default project visibility — whether new projects are workspace-visible or invite-only by default.
• Usage notifications — email alerts when workspace usage approaches tier limits.

Onboarding Your Team

The most common reason teams underuse Cowork is a weak onboarding moment — people sign up, see a blank chat interface, and don't know where to start. A good onboarding takes 10 minutes and dramatically increases adoption:

1. Write a welcome artifact — create a shared document called "How we use Claude here" explaining the team's key projects, what each project's system prompt does, and 3–5 example prompts that work well for your team's work.
2. Pin it to the workspace home — pinned artifacts appear at the top of the project view for all members.
3. Run a 15-minute live demo — walk the team through one real workflow (e.g. turning meeting notes into action items) so they see it work before going async.
4. Create a Sandbox project with no rules — give people a project with no system prompt where they can experiment freely without worrying about "doing it wrong".