What are Claude Cowork scheduled tasks? Claude Cowork scheduled tasks are a new feature launched on February 25, 2026, that allows users to create recurring AI workflows that execute automatically at specified times, enabling commercial real estate professionals to automate daily market briefings, weekly portfolio reports, investor communications, and ongoing deal pipeline monitoring without manually starting each task. Anthropic announced this feature alongside a sweeping set of enterprise updates including new MCP connectors for Google Drive, Gmail, DocuSign, FactSet, and Salesforce, positioning Claude Cowork as a full enterprise productivity platform rather than a standalone AI chatbot. For CRE professionals, scheduled tasks transform Claude from a tool you use on demand into an autonomous assistant that works on your behalf around the clock. For a comprehensive overview of AI tools transforming CRE investment, see our complete guide on AI commercial real estate.

Key Takeaways

How Claude Cowork Scheduled Tasks Work

Setting Up a Scheduled Task

The setup process is designed for accessibility. Open Claude Cowork, click "New task" in the upper left corner (or use an existing task), and type /schedule in the task prompt. Claude guides you through the setup process, asking questions about what the task should do, when it should run, and what outputs to produce. Once you confirm by clicking "Schedule," the task is added to the Scheduled Tasks page in the left sidebar. The key difference from standard Cowork tasks is persistence: you describe the workflow once, and Claude executes it automatically on your defined schedule without reprompting.

Scheduled tasks have access to the same capabilities as regular Cowork tasks, including connected tools, skills, and installed plugins. This means any workflow you can run manually in Cowork, you can schedule to run automatically. If you have connected Google Drive, Gmail, and Slack to your Cowork environment, a scheduled task can search your Drive for property management reports, analyze the data, draft a summary email, and post highlights to your team's Slack channel, all without human intervention.

Enterprise Capabilities and Integrations

Alongside scheduled tasks, Anthropic shipped a comprehensive set of enterprise features that significantly expand Claude Cowork's utility for CRE firms. Enterprise administrators can now build private plugin marketplaces connecting to private GitHub repositories, with prebuilt plugin templates for financial analysis, investment banking, equity research, private equity, and wealth management. New MCP connectors include Google Drive, Google Calendar, Gmail, DocuSign, Apollo, Clay, Outreach, SimilarWeb, MSCI, LegalZoom, FactSet, WordPress, and Harvey. According to CNBC, Anthropic described these updates as Claude Cowork's transition into a "true enterprise grade product." For CRE firms, the FactSet and MSCI connectors are particularly valuable, enabling scheduled tasks that pull market indices, property benchmarks, and portfolio analytics directly into automated reports.

Security and Isolation

Claude Cowork operates in a dedicated virtual machine isolated from the user's main operating system. The system requires explicit permission before taking significant actions such as deleting files, sending emails on the user's behalf, or modifying shared documents. For CRE firms handling confidential deal data, LP information, and proprietary financial models, this isolation model provides meaningful security boundaries. Scheduled tasks inherit the same permission framework: the agent can only access data sources and perform actions that the user has explicitly authorized during initial setup.

CRE Workflow Automation With Scheduled Tasks

Daily Market Intelligence Briefing

One of the highest value scheduled task workflows for CRE investors is an automated daily market briefing. The workflow pulls overnight news from financial and CRE news sources, identifies transactions, financing activity, and market data relevant to the investor's target markets, summarizes key developments in a structured format, and delivers the briefing via email or Slack by 7:00 AM each morning. Previously, a CRE analyst would spend 30 to 60 minutes each morning scanning news sources, trade publications, and market databases to compile this briefing. With a scheduled Claude Cowork task, the AI performs this work overnight and the briefing is waiting in the investor's inbox before they start their day. Over a year, this automation saves approximately 130 to 260 hours of analyst time on a single recurring task.

Weekly Portfolio Performance Reports

CRE portfolio managers can schedule weekly reports that aggregate property performance data from connected sources. The workflow pulls rent collection data from property management system exports in Google Drive, compares current occupancy and revenue against budget projections, flags properties with variances exceeding predefined thresholds (for example, occupancy below 90% or collections below 95% of scheduled rent), generates a formatted report with property level detail and portfolio level summaries, and distributes the report to designated team members via email or Slack. The NOI for each property is calculated as gross revenue minus operating expenses, excluding debt service, capital expenditures, and depreciation. This consistent automated reporting ensures that portfolio managers receive timely performance data without relying on manual compilation. For complementary portfolio analysis techniques, see our guide on AI deal analysis real estate.

Monthly Investor Update Drafting

Investor communications are one of the most time consuming recurring tasks for CRE fund managers. A scheduled monthly task can compile portfolio performance data from the preceding month, draft narrative commentary highlighting notable developments, generate comparison tables showing performance against pro forma projections, prepare property level summaries with key metrics (occupancy, rent per unit, NOI margin), and format the update in a consistent template matching the firm's branding. The scheduled task produces a draft that the fund manager reviews and refines before distribution, reducing preparation time from 8 to 15 hours to 1 to 2 hours of review and editing.

Deal Pipeline Screening Automation

CRE acquisition teams can schedule automated screening of new deal flow. The workflow monitors connected email accounts for new offering memoranda from brokers, extracts key deal metrics from received documents (asking price, unit count, cap rate, location, property type), compares extracted metrics against the firm's acquisition criteria, scores and ranks deals based on preliminary fit, and delivers a daily or weekly deal screening summary to the acquisitions team. This automated screening ensures that no broker offering falls through the cracks, while prioritizing the acquisitions team's attention on deals that meet their specific investment criteria. For related deal evaluation techniques, see our guide on AI rent roll analysis.

Limitations and Practical Considerations

The Desktop Dependency

The most significant limitation of Claude Cowork scheduled tasks is the desktop dependency: tasks only run while your computer is awake and the Claude Desktop app is open. If your computer sleeps or the app closes during a scheduled run time, Cowork skips the task and re runs it when the app reopens. This means CRE firms relying on overnight or weekend automated reports need a dedicated workstation or laptop running Claude Desktop continuously. This limitation is meaningful for time sensitive workflows like morning market briefings. If a laptop sleeps at 2:00 AM and the briefing is scheduled for 6:00 AM, it will not execute until the computer wakes up and the app opens, potentially delaying delivery.

Data Source Limitations

Scheduled tasks can access data through connected MCP integrations and web research, but they cannot directly query proprietary CRE databases like CoStar, Yardi, or RealPage unless those systems expose connectors through the MCP framework. For CRE firms that rely heavily on proprietary data sources, scheduled tasks work best for workflows that combine publicly available market data with firm specific data stored in Google Drive, shared folders, or connected CRM systems. Workflows that require real time pulls from proprietary databases may need custom integration work.

Review and Oversight Requirements

Despite the automation capabilities, Claude Cowork scheduled tasks should be treated as draft generators rather than final output producers for client facing communications. Automated investor reports, market analyses, and deal screening summaries should always be reviewed by a human before distribution. This is especially critical for financial calculations. The AI calculates cap rate as NOI divided by purchase price, and DSCR as NOI divided by annual debt service, but investors should verify these calculations against their specific deal structures before relying on them for investment decisions.

For personalized guidance on implementing Claude Cowork scheduled tasks for your CRE investment workflow, connect with The AI Consulting Network. We help investors design automated reporting systems, configure enterprise integrations, and build AI driven workflow automation that delivers measurable time savings.

CRE investors looking for hands on AI implementation support can reach out to Avi Hacker, J.D. at The AI Consulting Network.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What plans include Claude Cowork scheduled tasks?

A: Scheduled tasks are available on Claude Desktop for all paid plans: Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise. As of February 25, 2026, Anthropic shipped Claude Cowork for Windows and Intel based macOS with full feature parity across all platforms. Pro plans start at $20 per month and Max plans at $100 to $200 per month. Team and Enterprise plans are priced per seat with additional administrative features including private plugin marketplaces and custom MCP connector management.

Q: Can Claude Cowork scheduled tasks send emails on my behalf?

A: Yes, if you have connected Gmail or Outlook through the MCP connector framework. Scheduled tasks can draft and send emails as part of automated workflows. However, the system requires explicit permission during setup for actions like sending emails, and CRE firms should carefully configure these permissions to prevent unintended communications. For client facing emails, we recommend configuring the task to draft emails as saved drafts rather than sending automatically, giving a human the opportunity to review before distribution.

Q: What happens if my computer is asleep when a task is scheduled?

A: If your computer is asleep or the Claude Desktop app is closed when a scheduled task is set to run, Cowork skips the task. When your computer wakes up and the app opens, Cowork automatically re runs the missed task and sends a notification. Skipped runs also appear in the task history. For CRE firms relying on time sensitive automated reports, the workaround is maintaining a dedicated workstation with the Claude Desktop app running continuously, or scheduling tasks for times when the primary user is typically active.

Q: How do Claude Cowork scheduled tasks compare to Perplexity Computer for CRE automation?

A: Claude Cowork scheduled tasks and Perplexity Computer serve different automation needs. Cowork scheduled tasks excel at recurring, calendar driven workflows: daily briefings, weekly reports, and monthly updates that follow a consistent pattern. Perplexity Computer excels at complex, multi step research projects that require orchestrating multiple AI models simultaneously. For CRE firms, the ideal setup may combine both: Claude Cowork for routine scheduled automation and Perplexity Computer for deep research projects and ad hoc analysis that require multi model capabilities. The key practical difference is that Cowork requires the desktop app to be running, while Perplexity Computer runs entirely in the cloud.

Q: Can I connect Claude Cowork to my property management software?

A: Claude Cowork's current MCP connectors include Google Drive, Gmail, DocuSign, FactSet, Salesforce, Slack, Notion, and several other business applications. Direct connectors for property management platforms like Yardi, RealPage, and AppFolio are not currently available but may be developed as the MCP ecosystem expands. The current workaround is exporting property management data to Google Drive or shared folders that Claude Cowork can access. Enterprise administrators can also build custom plugins connecting to private data sources through the new private plugin marketplace feature.