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👀 WHAT? Custom UX with React in #Copilot chat using MCP Apps? 😱 YUP! Watch this 👇 That's right ▶ you can have a web app (in my case, using React), running right inside the chat experience. It's a great option for summarizing & visualizing information, collecting data from the user via forms with data validation, and more! I had a great time delivering a full-day workshop yesterday at the M365 Community Conference in Orlando, FL... especially showing off a new demo incorporating MCP Apps into the #Copilot chat experience! In this video, you see how we leverage single sign-on to read/write data to a SharePoint list using the Microsoft Graph (no code!) and use widgets to provide a better-than-natural-language interface with a custom agent and MCP Apps. Want to learn how to do this? I'm covering this in my 3-day virtual workshop next week: Build Declarative Agents for M365 Copilot, April 28-30, 2026! Here's what you'll learn: 1️⃣ DAY 1: Understanding the Copilot Stack - How Microsoft 365 Copilot processes prompts and generates responses - The role of Microsoft Graph grounding and RAG patterns - Evaluating your extensibility options: declarative vs custom engine agents 2️⃣ DAY 2: Adding Knowledge and Skills - Building Microsoft Graph Connectors to index external content - Creating API plugins that integrate with LOB systems - Designing actions that teach Copilot new capabilities - Best practices for OpenAPI specifications and authentication 3️⃣ DAY 3: Building Declarative Agents - Combining instructions, knowledge, and actions - Using the Agents Toolkit for development - Read/write to SharePoint lists with the Microsoft Graph without writing ANY code - Integrate UX widgets into the chat experience with MCP Apps - Testing and debugging your agents - Deployment strategies and governance considerations This isn't just slides and theory. Every concept is demonstrated with working code. You'll see exactly how to implement each piece, what the gotchas are, and how to avoid common mistakes. Plus, you get direct access to ask questions about your specific scenarios during live Q&A sessions. What previous attendees are saying: 💬 "Andrew does a great job of explaining the why's and not just the how's so that you can have those a-ha moments." - Mark Rackley, Director Microsoft Practice at Protiviti 💬 "The sessions were very informative and practical, especially the guidance on when and why various tools and approaches are required." - Sai Chundur, Service Offering Lead at Cognizant 🗓️ April 28-30, 2026 🕚 11a - 2:30p ET (2x 90-minute LIVE sessions daily) 📚 Instructor-led demos/optional hands-on homework to apply what you learn 🔴 All live sessions recorded for future reference 🎟️ $349/student (links in the first comment below 👇) If you're serious about getting real value from your Microsoft 365 Copilot investment, this workshop will show you how. #mcpapps #mcp #microsoft365

Sneak Peek 👉 Episode 028 - Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit v6.6.0 Release Review Microsoft shipped the Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit (ATK) v6.6.0, skipping v6.5 entirely, and it's the clearest signal yet of where the toolkit is headed: agents, agents, agents. In this episode, Andrew Connell and Julie Turner break down the headline features: Government Cloud (GCC-M) support, embedded knowledge for declarative agents, and MCP integration reaching GA, plus the massive template cleanup that removed 61 project templates to consolidate around agent-focused development. They also dig into whether betting the toolkit's future on Copilot extensibility is the right call, given recent reports of declining Copilot adoption among enterprise users. #podcast #podcastclips #atk #ai #agenttoolkit #news #microsoft365 #microsoft365dev

Microsoft is pushing you into a false choice with #Copilot - and it's costing you. Either accept the out-of-the-box limitations and watch your Copilot investment underdeliver, or jump into the deep end with custom engine agents and assume a lot more complexity. That's quite the dichotomy of two choices. Here's what Microsoft doesn't emphasize enough: there's a middle path that gives you 80% of the customization with 20% of the complexity. It's called declarative agents. #DeclarativeAgents let you teach #Microsoft365Copilot new skills and extend its knowledge to include your organizational data - without building a custom engine agent from scratch. You can connect your manuals, SOPs, and contracts. You can integrate real-time data from your ERP, CRM, and inventory systems. You can add custom actions that execute business logic. Wanna learn? Join me for my 3-day workshop, April 28-30, 2026, and learn how to create declarative agents! #agents #microsoft365

Most developers I talk to are building their Microsoft 365 Copilot agents with the wrong tool. Not because Copilot Studio is bad, but because they don't realize the authoring tool they pick determines which orchestrator processes their prompts. I've been teaching this for months now, and the reaction is always the same: "Wait, what?" Here's the short version. Declarative agents built with VS Code and the Agents Toolkit use Microsoft's first-class orchestrator, internally called Sydney. It's the same one powering Researcher, Analyst, and every agent Microsoft builds for itself. Agents built in Copilot Studio use a different orchestrator with different retrieval capabilities and different limitations. Same instructions. Same knowledge sources. Different results. I've watched it happen live in workshops. And despite what the name "pro-code" implies, declarative agents are mostly JSON and text files. There's no C# or TypeScript required for most scenarios. If you can edit a config file, you can build one. Here's what a declarative agent actually lets you do that the default Copilot chat doesn't: → Custom instructions that scope the agent to a specific business scenario → Knowledge sources you control, including embedded files and SharePoint content → Graph connectors that bring CRM, ERP, and LOB data into the semantic index → API actions that connect to any REST endpoint with proper auth (API keys, OAuth, SSO) → TypeSpec for a real developer experience with type safety and IntelliSense That last one is where things get interesting. TypeSpec does for declarative agents what Bicep did for ARM templates. You write typed code, it compiles to all the JSON and YAML automatically. Once you've tried it, you won't go back. I'm running my next live workshop on this: Build Declarative Agents for Microsoft 365 Copilot, April 28-30. ✅ three days, ✅ six 90-minute live sessions (all recorded) ✅ self-paced instructor-led demos to apply what you learn You'll build working agents from scratch, connect them to external data, debug the orchestrator, and walk away with agents you can actually deploy. I've taught over 150 developers in 2025 how to build declarative agents through this workshop. What's new in the next cohort in April? ✅ add embedded knowledge to your agent! ✅ use MCP servers in addition to API plugins! 💰 Early bird pricing is $299 (saving $50), but only a handful of early bird seats are left. Details and registration link in the comments 👇 What's holding you back from building declarative agents? Genuinely curious, because every time I hear the specific blocker, it's something we cover in the first session. #agents #copilot #microsoft365copilot

Huge thanks to the AvePoint team for having me at Nasdaq for the opening bell ceremony! It was the perfect way to kick off #AgentConNYC and celebrate the launch of AvePoint AgentPulse. Excited to discuss how AvePoint and other industry leaders are helping customers adopt agentic AI securely, efficiently, and at scale. 🚀🚀 #AgenticAI Today at #AgentConNYC, I'm presenting on the real choices companies have when creating agents for Microsoft 365 Copilot. You aren't limited to just #CopilotStudio & #MicrosoftFoundry - there's a middle ground that many companies I talk to is the perfect solution: Declarative Agents created using VS Code and the Agents Toolkit (#ATK)! #Microsoft365Copilot #Copilot #DeclarativeAgents