Tuesday 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM · Room A312

Building Custom Agents for Microsoft 365 Copilot: Copilot Studio vs. the M365 Agents Toolkit

You've rolled out Microsoft 365 Copilot and now your organization has entered the AI revolution.

Mission accomplished... or is it?

Out of the box, Microsoft 365 Copilot only has access to the underlying LLM's baseline knowledge and some content in your Microsoft 365 tenant.

But most companies have valuable data outside Microsoft 365—manuals, standard operating procedures, policies, inventory systems, ERPs, CRMs, sales data, and more!

In this workshop, learn from long-time Microsoft MVPs Mark Rackley & Andrew Connell how to get the most out of your Microsoft 365 Copilot investment, creating unique scenarios tailored for your organization.

After learning how Copilot works and comparing the options available to customers, Andrew & Mark will take their real-world experience to demonstrate what options are available to you.

We’ll cover using Copilot Studio, a great tool for makers, power users, and low-code developers to extend Microsoft 365 Copilot, and how to create Autonomous Agents. But that’s not all… you’ll also learn how full-stack web developers can use the Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit (ATK, formerly called the Teams Toolkit (TTK)) for VS Code to create declarative agents or custom engine agents!

These options enable customers to go from the out-of-the-box capabilities to implement advanced customization scenarios. You’ll learn how to extend Copilot's knowledge with your organization’s data and teach it new skills, even when that data doesn’t live within Microsoft 365. You’ll walk away with a solid grasp of what options are available to you, which tool is the best for your scenarios, and requirements, as well as the costs & licensing involved with each option.

Key takeaways:

• Understanding how Microsoft 365 Copilot works, its built-in capabilities, and customization options
• Learning what’s possible to extend Copilot using Copilot Studio or the Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit for VS Code
• Understand how to extend Microsoft 365 Copilot with custom instructions, knowledge, topics, actions, and skills

Wednesday 11:40 AM - 12:50 PM · Room A313

Azure Functions: Real world scenarios & NodeJS implementation overview

In this session, we will explore the powerful capabilities of Azure Functions for extending Microsoft 365.

We will begin by discussing the various use cases for Azure Functions, including their ability to trigger actions when items in Microsoft 365 change and their application as Timer Jobs. We will delve into the integration with SharePoint Framework (SPFx) APIs using the On-Behalf-Of (OBO) flow and discuss how queues can be used to provide the most resilient solutions.

The remainder of the session will be devoted to giving an overview how implementing Azure functions using NodeJS (although you absolutely can do them with C#/Visual Studio). We'll include the getting started configuration, and a brief word about CommonJS vs ESModules. We'll then discuss security considerations by showing basic Entra ID application registration but discuss how we can implement Managed Identity using Azure Identity to securely access other parts of your tenant. The session will also include a detailed look at the OBO Flow. We'll finish up by discussing queues and requeuing options.

Join me to gain a comprehensive understanding of how Azure Functions can be used to extend Microsoft 365, improve efficiency, and enhance security.

Wednesday 3:15 PM - 3:35 PM · Sponsor Stage

Azure-centric, Cyber Resiliency, and Protection for Microsoft 365, Server, and Endpoints

Strengthening your Microsoft 365 cyber-resiliency through reliable data protection is crucial. Learn how to enable zero and low-cost storage for protection, recovery, archiving, compliance, and content search. In this session, we will feature live demonstrations with Azure, including:

• Granular, release independent restores for Microsoft 365 apps and file data surrounding Microsoft 365
• How to use Microsoft OneDrive as an innovative, smart, free and secure storage target
• The options and benefits of public and private cloud storage
• How to enable a full turnkey data protection SaaS solution
• The easy way to search across data within Microsoft 365 for E-discovery and compliance
• Smart, tiered archiving for legacy data within Microsoft 365, SharePoint, and Exchange
• How to meet compliance and data sovereignty requirements

Wednesday 4:00 PM - 5:10 PM · Room A311

Learn When, Why, and How to Create Custom Engine Agents for M365 Copilot

Developers can create agents for Microsoft 365 Copilot to implement specific scenarios for your users. One option, declarative agents (DA), enable you to define knowledge sources for grounding & teach it new skills, but your users still need a Microsoft 365 Copilot license or configure the consumption pricing. But did you know, a custom engine agent (CEA) might be a better choice not just for costs, but for additional control!

In this developer-focused session, learn what doors CEA unlock giving you more options and power than DAs or agents built with Copilot Studio, all with zero licensing requirements (you pay for the resources that implement it). In many cases, this could limit your costs, give you more control! Learn how why CEA’s could be an option for your organization, when they make the most sense, and how to create them!

Wednesday 4:00 PM - 5:10 PM · GSU Classroom

Understanding the Voice of the Customer with Power BI and Azure Cognitive Services

Understanding the voice of the customer is critical for improving products, services, and overall experience. Integrating Azure Cognitive Services with Power BI enables organizations to analyze unstructured text data such as survey responses, call transcripts, chats, and meeting notes at scale. Through a single API call, sentiment, key phrases, and themes can be extracted from large datasets, transforming raw text into structured insights. These insights can then be visualized in dynamic Power BI dashboards, revealing patterns in customer feedback and enabling data-driven decisions that align with customer needs and expectations.

Thursday 9:00 AM - 10:10 AM · Room A402

Expanding SharePoint Framework Web Parts in Teams, Office and Outlook

SharePoint Framework is not just a SharePoint development framework as it could seem from the name.

It allows to develop solutions that are available in Teams, Outlook and office.com.

Join me during this session to learn how to easily implement SPFx web part and expose it in all available hosts.

Thursday 10:50 AM - 12:00 PM · GSU Classroom

Navigating SharePoint Framework: Best Practices and Hidden Gems

I've seen it all... the good, bad, and ugly parts of the SharePoint Framework. Join me for a dive deep into the SharePoint Framework and find out what works, what doesn't, and how to pivot when things go sideways. You've likely been warned about what 'never' to do, but we go beyond warnings to provide actionable steps to turn potential mistakes into triumphs. This session is packed with practical tips, nifty tricks, and insightful hacks designed to elevate your SharePoint Framework projects and streamline your development process.

Thursday 1:00 PM - 2:10 PM · Room A402

Harnessing Change Events in Microsoft 365 for Enterprise-Scale Workflow Management

Mature organizations that use Microsoft 365 often need to run custom workflows when events happen in Microsoft 365, like updating list items, adding users, updating groups, or changing files. When there's only a single list or library, or other single event items, it can make sense to use a tool like Power Automate or an Azure Logic Apps. However, these tools require connecting a workflow to a specific entity (list, library, drive) making these solutions difficult to manage when there are many of the same types of items to monitor. Enter stage left: Change Events.

To be clear, change events (Webhooks) are not a power user tool; they require the ability to architect and manage cloud resources and write enterprise level code. But the benefits and scalability make it well worth the time investment! In this session you'll learn about: • What change events are and what are some of the common use cases they can help solve • What common architectural pattern for managing your subscriptions and events looks like • What cloud services are commonly used to support the common architecture • What boilerplate code looks like to establish and manage subscriptions and react to event notifications • Where and how you might implement custom handlers for establishing what subscriptions are needed and what happens when an event is fired. Don't miss this opportunity to learn how to manage workflows at scale to reduce risk and simplify management!

Thursday 2:20 PM - 3:30 PM · Room A316

Azure-centric, Cyber Resiliency, and Protection for Microsoft 365, Server, and Endpoints

Strengthening your Microsoft 365 cyber-resiliency through reliable data protection is crucial. Learn how to enable zero and low-cost storage for protection, recovery, archiving, compliance, and content search. In this session, we will feature live demonstrations with Azure, including:

• Granular, release independent restores for Microsoft 365 apps and file data surrounding Microsoft 365
• How to use Microsoft OneDrive as an innovative, smart, free and secure storage target
• The options and benefits of public and private cloud storage
• How to enable a full turnkey data protection SaaS solution
• The easy way to search across data within Microsoft 365 for E-discovery and compliance
• Smart, tiered archiving for legacy data within Microsoft 365, SharePoint, and Exchange
• How to meet compliance and data sovereignty requirements

Friday 9:00 AM - 10:10 AM · GSU Classroom

Microsoft 365 PnP for SharePoint Framework Developer

The SharePoint Framework (SPFx) is a development model for building solutions across Microsoft 365 suite. It allows building applications for SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Viva Connections. But the additional beauty of SPFx is the community support! This session will cover resources that Microsoft 365 PnP Community provides for SPFx developers.

Friday 10:20 AM - 11:30 AM · GSU Classroom

Build Solutions for Microsoft 365 with a Fluent API Library

For the most part, your imagination is the limit when it comes to extending the Microsoft 365 platform. Join me for a complete look at the PnPjs library, a collection of fluent libraries for consuming SharePoint and Microsoft Graph REST APIs that make building solutions 10x easier and faster. This free, open-source initiative, part of the Microsoft 365 & Power Platform Community can be used within the SharePoint Framework, NodeJS, or any JavaScript/TypeScript based project.

This session will cover using the library within the SharePoint Framework and Azure Functions NodeJS project. We'll cover: • How to get started, your project template, and establishing context • An overview of all the packages available and outline the ease of use • More advanced scenarios like batching and cross site execution.

Friday 12:30 PM - 1:40 PM · Room A402

Explore SharePoint Embedded App Development: From Setup to Production Ready Apps

SharePoint Embedded (SPE) offers a headless, API-only pattern for building content apps that integrate management capabilities like collaboration, security, and compliance into any app by storing content within an enterprise’s existing Microsoft 365 tenant. Ready to see how to build your first app? In this session, you’ll learn how to setup SPE in your tenant and build a your first document-centric app that can read, write, and search for files in SPE Containers, render previews, and work with metadata!

Friday 1:50 PM - 3:00 PM · Room A312

Git Integration and Azure DevOps for Power BI - Implementing CI/CD

Can BI development follow application development lifecycle? Answer is "YES!" Power BI Deployment Pipelines help us achieve the "Deploy" part of the CI/CD life cycle in a manual way, but with Fabric the Git integration now makes it easy to use Azure Devops. Versioning, automation of deployment can be achieved and enterprise BI teams can bring application lifecycle management to their power BI environments. The session will focus mainly on Power BI objects (reports, datasets) in the a Fabric workspace. Agenda: Understand Git Integration Manage workspace with git Test & Deploy Type : Light on slides, heavy on demo This session is perfect for those who are looking bring application life cycle management (ALM) to the their Power BI development space.