Northern Virginia Data Platform MeetUp

2 Days Hands-On Online Workshop: Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio Bootcamp
Date: 8-9 May 2025, 9 AM to 5 PM Central Time
Level: Beginners/Intermediate
Registration Link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hands-on-azure-ai-foundry-and-copilot-studio-bootcamp-tickets-1267311596099?aff=oddtdtcreator ( Use code SaveApril2025 to get $100 discount )
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 AI Agents and 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:
With ChatGPT and other large language models, generative AI has captured the attention of global consumers, enterprises, and C-suite executives. AI has a significant role in the enterprise space and is evolving rapidly. Without understanding the concepts behind these advanced technologies, developers and administrators might find it challenging to assess the true impact of emerging tools and solutions.
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.
Azure AI 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 two-day virtual hands-on workshop, Microsoft AI and Business Applications MVP and Microsoft Certified Trainer, Prashant G Bhoyar, will cover these topics in detail:

1. What are multimodal GenAI applications?
2. What are AI agents?
3. What are autonomous agents?
4. What are custom Copilots?
5. Introduction to Copilot Studio: Learn to create agents, build automations with Power Automate, and extend Microsoft 365 Copilot using enterprise data. Discover how to use prebuilt and custom plugins alongside Azure AI Foundry for powerful, intuitive agent experiences.
6. Azure AI Foundry: An in-depth overview of Azure AI Foundry.
7. Azure OpenAI Services: Explore these services, their architecture, and their role in the broader AI ecosystem.
8. Using models from DeepSeek, Llama, Hugging Face, and other open-source models via Azure AI Foundry.
9. Prompt engineering: An in-depth look at creating effective prompts, understanding their importance, and the factors influencing their performance.
10. Use cases and common architectures: Hands-on labs demonstrating real-world implementations.
11. How to evaluate use cases and determine ROI.
12. Azure OpenAI Service embedding models.
13. Customizing Azure OpenAI Services: Configuration to deployment tailored to specific business needs.
14. Deep dive into Azure OpenAI Services: A detailed look at popular models like o1, GPT, Ada, and DALL-E, discussing their unique features and ideal use cases.
15. Using Azure OpenAI Service to access company data.
16. Azure AI Services overview: Language, Speech, and Vision services and their real-world applications.
17. Conversational AI: Design, train, and refine AI capable of human-like interactions.
18. Azure AI Search: Creating advanced search experiences.
19. Document Intelligence Service: Extracting key-value pairs and table data from documents using machine learning.
20. Azure AI Agent Service: Feature-rich managed capabilities combining models, data, tools, and services for automating complex business processes.
21. Semantic Kernel: An open-source SDK for combining AI services (OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Hugging Face) with programming languages like C# and Python to create advanced AI applications.
22. Model Context Protocol ( MCP )
23. Responsible AI: Ethics and responsible practices in AI use.
24. Enterprise-level applications, Custom Copilots, and AI agents: Learn to develop scalable, multimodal applications using Copilot Studio and Azure AI Foundry, emphasizing industry requirements and best practices.

By the end of the workshop, you'll have practical experience building next-generation multimodal applications, Custom Copilots, and AI Agents using Copilot Studio and Azure AI Foundry.
Workshop Resources:
Access to Copilot Studio, 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.

RSVP only on Eventbrite:
https://sqlserver-azuredataevent.eventbrite.com

Hello everyone! Please join us on Friday, June 13, 2025, from 11:00AM - to 2:30PM EST for a SQL Server / Azure Data Platform Event.

We will discuss SQL Server 2025, SQL Server 2022, Azure Data Services, and Azure Arc for SQL Server.

The guest speaker will be Raj Pochiraju, Microsoft Principal Program Manager. At Microsoft, Raj has primarily responsible for providing seamless database workloads migration experience to Azure Data platforms for our customers through our tools and service.

Raj's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/raj-pochiraju/

We will also have other Microsoft speakers from the Global Cloud Solution Architecture team.

The event will be located in the Microsoft offices, 2nd floor, 11955 Freedom Drive, Reston, VA, 20190. After you check in, signs / event staff will direct you to the presentation rooms. Food and beverage will be served!

This will be a free event. The event is metro accessible on the Silver line. There is ample parking, but it is paid parking.

RSVP only on Eventbrite:
https://sqlserver-azuredataevent.eventbrite.com