Northern Virginia Data Platform MeetUp

Hands-On Online Workshop: Copilot Studio, Microsoft Fabric, Azure AI : Better Together
Date: 09 May 2026, 10 AM to 5 PM Eastern Time
Level: Beginners/Intermediate
Registration Link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hands-on-copilot-studio-microsoft-fabric-azure-ai-better-together-tickets-1983680029367?aff=oddtdtcreator
Who Should Attend?
This hands-on workshop is open to developers, senior software engineers, IT pros, architects, IT managers, citizen developers, technology product managers, IT leaders, enterprise architects, chief analytics officers, chief information officers, chief technology officers, and decision-makers interested in learning how Generative AI can help infuse artificial intelligence into next-generation apps and agents.
Experience with C#, Python, or JavaScript is helpful but not required. You don't need prior knowledge of AI either. Although this isn't a data & analytics-focused workshop, data scientists, data stewards, and technically-minded data protection officers will also find it very valuable
Description:
An AI agent is a powerful companion capable of managing a variety of interactions and tasks—from handling complex conversations to autonomously deciding the best actions based on instructions and context. Agents coordinate language models along with instructions, context, knowledge sources, topics, actions, inputs, and triggers to achieve your desired outcomes.
Copilot Studio is a graphical, low-code tool designed for creating agents, including building automations with Power Automate and extending Microsoft 365 Copilot with your own enterprise data and scenarios. One standout feature of Copilot Studio is its ability to connect to other data sources through either prebuilt or custom plugins, as well as integration with Azure AI Foundry. This flexibility allows users to easily build sophisticated logic, ensuring that agent experiences are both powerful and intuitive.
Microsoft Fabric is an analytics platform that supports end‑to‑end data workflows, including data ingestion, transformation, real‑time stream processing, analytics, and reporting. It provides integrated experiences such as Data Engineering, Data Factory, Data Science, Real‑Time Intelligence, Data Warehouse, and Databases, which operate over a shared compute and storage model.
Microsoft Foundry is a unified AI platform that includes the Azure AI Foundry portal (formerly Azure AI Studio) and the Azure AI Foundry SDK—a unified SDK featuring pre-built app templates. This SDK gives developers easy access to popular models through a single interface, simplifies the integration of Azure AI into applications, and helps evaluate, debug, and improve application quality and safety throughout development, testing, and production.
In this day-long virtual hands-on workshop, Microsoft AI and Business Applications MVP and Microsoft Certified Trainer, Prashant G Bhoyar, will cover these topics in detail:

1. Key Concepts: Agents, Multimodal Apps, and Autonomous Agents
2. Microsoft Foundry Overview
3. Microsoft Fabric Overview
4. Fundamentals of Prompt Engineering
5. Microsoft Copilot Studio Deep Dive
6. Fundamentals Fabric IQ, Foundry IQ, Work IQ
7. Understanding the Model Context Protocol (MCP)
8. Integrating Foundry, Copilot Studio, and Fabric for End-to-End AI Solutions
9. Evaluating Use Cases and Measuring ROI
10. Implementing evaluation, tracing, and testing frameworks for AI agents
11. Best Practices for Building and Scaling AI Solutions
12. Responsible AI: Ethics and Responsible Deployment

By the end of the workshop, you'll have practical experience building next-generation multimodal applications and AI Agents using Copilot Studio, Microsoft Fabric, and Microsoft Foundry.
Workshop Resources:
Access to Copilot Studio, Microsoft Foundry, Microsoft Fabric, Azure, and Azure OpenAI services (valued at USD 500) will be provided for hands-on labs, allowing you to build enterprise-grade multimodal applications and agents. However, you're encouraged to use your own Copilot Studio and Azure subscriptions if available.
Attendee Workstation Requirements:
You must bring your own computer (Windows or Mac) with:

• Camera, speakers, microphone, and a reliable internet connection. Tablets will not work for this workshop.
• A modern browser (Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Firefox, or Safari).
• Access to www.azure.com and https://copilotstudio.microsoft.com.
• Nice to have is the ability to run C# 10 or Python code, using Visual Studio 2022, VSCode 1.66+, Visual Studio for Mac, Rider, or similar IDE.