Copilot studios and Azure OpenAI Assistants

LeedsSharp are proud to present 2 speakers: Paul Michaels in "Copilot Studio" and Saeed Esmaeelinejad in "Azure OpenAI Assistants: Embedding AI into Your Production .NET Application"

We will meet 6pm on the mezzanine for pizza and drinks, the talks will start at 6.45 on the first floor. Some of us go to the Brewery tap pub afterwards at 8pm.

Abstract 1:
Copilot Studio
Meet Askin, Kwizik, and Denny Know—three copilots that redefine “helpful.” Askin is a history buff who never quite answers your question but happily shares irrelevant historical trivia. Kwizik only answers questions with more questions. And Denny Know… well, Denny just doesn’t know anything.
In this session, we’ll use Microsoft CoPilot Studio to bring these gloriously unhelpful bots to life. You’ll learn how to craft distinct personalities through prompt design, extend behaviour with custom API calls, and explore how CoPilot Studio handles data, context, and conversation flow.
Whilst all this is fun, tools like Copilot can allow you to target LLMs to your own knowledge base. By using the three bots above, we can see that, whilst Askin rambles on about history, he might also have an FAQ document that he uses to answer questions. Whilst Kwizik answers questions with questions, they might well be a front door to a customer service agent. Finally, whilst Denny Know doesn't know anything, we can look at how we can deal with the phenomenon of a bot that doesn't have the answer and how to deal with that.

Bio 1: Paul Michaels
Paul Michaels is a Microsoft MVP, and Head of Technology at HX Travel, working across multiple technology stacks, including Microsoft.
He is a published author, speaker, and second rate cyclist.
He's been programming professionally since 1997, and likes finding neat solutions to problems.

Abstract 2:
Azure OpenAI Assistants: Embedding AI into Your Production .NET Application
AI is moving from experiment to production, but integrating it into real-world applications requires more than simple API calls. In this session, we’ll explore how Azure OpenAI Assistants can be embedded into .NET applications to create secure, scalable, and user-centric AI experiences. We’ll discuss the key difference between stateless interactions and stateful assistants, showing how session-aware AI enables every user to have their own personalized companion inside your app. Through practical .NET examples, you’ll learn how to bring AI into production in a way that feels natural, maintains context, and delivers real business value.

Bio 2: Saeed Esmaeelinejad
Saeed is a Senior Software Engineer and Microsoft MVP, specializing in high-performance and scalable software systems. With over 9 years of experience, his expertise spans C#/.NET, ASP.NET Core, microservices, and cloud-native applications. He has contributed to open-source projects, spoken at global conferences like .NET Conf, and led teams in developing cutting-edge solutions.