Join Me @ ESPC in Amsterdam in DEC 2026 - M365 Copilot Dev
Join me in NOV+DEC in Amsterdam for ESPC 2026! Learn how to get the most value from M365 Copilot when when to use Copilot Studio or using Visual Studio Code!
I’m excited to head back to the European SharePoint Conference (ESPC) Amsterdam, Netherlands in November/December 2026 presenting a full-day tutorial & breakout session!
But you’re interested in the workshop & session… so, here you go!
Full-day Workshop: Extend Microsoft 365 Copilot with Custom Agents: Copilot Studio and the Agents Toolkit Side-by-Side
I’m thrilled to co-present this full-day workshop with Mark Rackley! This workshop is updated with the latest demos & news on both Copilot Studio and the Agents Toolkit for VS Code from our most-attended workshop at lat year’s ESPC conference in Dublin!
Microsoft 365 Copilot knows what’s in Microsoft Graph: your emails, Teams chats, and some SharePoint files. But the data that actually runs your business, your SOPs, CRM records, inventory systems, and line-of-business applications, lives outside that boundary. Extending Copilot to reach that data is where agents come in.
The challenge? Microsoft offers two primary tools for building agents, Copilot Studio and the Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit (ATK) for VS Code, and their documentation rarely gives you a clear side-by-side comparison. Which one fits your team? Which one fits your scenario? What are the real tradeoffs?
In this full-day workshop, Microsoft MVPs Mark Rackley and Andrew Connell answer those questions by building the same agent with both tools, live, throughout the day. You’ll see every decision point, every capability difference, and every tradeoff as it happens. This isn’t a pitch for one tool over the other. It’s an honest comparison designed to help you make the right call for your organization.
We’ll start with how Microsoft 365 Copilot actually works and what customization options exist. Then Mark and Andrew will work through the same scenarios in parallel: adding custom instructions, connecting knowledge sources, integrating external data through actions and connectors, and extending Copilot’s capabilities for real business use cases. We’ll also cover the practical realities that matter for planning: licensing requirements, cost implications, and the skills your team needs for each approach.
This workshop is designed for a broad audience. Whether you’re a developer evaluating pro-code tooling, a power user building agents in Copilot Studio, or a project manager charting your organization’s Copilot extensibility strategy, you’ll walk away knowing what’s possible, what each option requires, and which approach fits your situation.
Breakout Session: Bringing Declarative Agents to Life with the SharePoint Framework
There’s a growing divide in how people interact with Microsoft 365: some live in chat, others still rely on portals and pages. What if your solution could meet users wherever they are?
In this session, you’ll learn how the SharePoint Framework (SPFx) is expanding to support declarative agents for Microsoft 365 Copilot, giving developers the ability to build visual, interactive components that work across both experiences.
We’ll walk through how SPFx developers can create UX-rich agent experiences that go beyond text-based chat responses, and why this evolution represents a major opportunity for the SPFx developer community. If you’ve been wondering where SPFx fits in the age of AI and Copilot, this is your answer.