This is your shortcut to choosing the Microsoft Ignite sessions to watch next week, whether you’re joining in-person or online. I’ve highlighted my top 5 online favorites, along with the 5 sessions I wish I could attend in San Francisco (if only I’d been that lucky!) and 5 labs I’d be curious to try. Narrowing 1,026 sessions down to 15 highlighted (with a few bonus tips) was not easy, but hopefully this list will be useful to others out there.
Opening Keynote
Since the opening keynote is an obvious must-watch, I’m not going to count it. It usually sets the stage for the rest of the week and includes a high-level overview of the top announcements. “Agentic AI” and “frontier firms” are terms we’re most likely going to hear a few times. 😉
Top 5 sessions to watch online
If you’re in the Power Platform space, building apps and setting up automation, you simply can’t miss Ryan Cunningham talking about the future of Power Platform.
Whether you’re building solutions with apps and automation, or coming from another angle and have stumbled into agent development, listening to what’s new in Copilot Studio will be interesting for you.
If you’re on a journey building apps and agents, you’ll want to learn about the possibilities of managed solutions and secure ops in Power Platform.
You’d also be interested in learning the best practices to secure and govern the apps, agents and flows you build.
From basic to advanced, maybe it’s time to dig deeper into agent development, together with Scott Durow who will be explaining advanced agent development in Copilot Studio.
Other sessions I recommend watching:
- Create apps with M365 Copilot and App Builder
- Deploying and operating Power Platform solutions with DevOps
- Automation in Copilot Studio: Agent flows and computer use
- Deep dive into AI tools in Copilot Studio
- Power Platform: Innovation across apps, automation, and portals
- Building Multi-Agent systems with MCP and Copilot Studio
- Building the most intelligent agents with the latest knowledge sources
- From flows to agents: Modernizing with Copilot Studio + Power Automate
- Making Smarter Model Choices in Azure AI Foundry
- Power Apps: Reimagine the human-agent collaboration
- Power Platform: Innovation across apps, automation, and portals
- Driving agentic innovation with MCP as the backbone of tool-aware AI
- Scott & Mark learn to connect the dots – For all nostalgic people out there
Top 5 sessions In San Francisco only
The 30-minute sessions can give you lots of inspiration. Join April Dunnam to learn how to build an autonomous agent.
Learn how agents think, learn and scale with Copilot Studio and Dataverse.
Learn how to gain full power and secure your agents and apps.
Join Jack Rowbotham for his talk on the five pillars of agent readiness.
Showcasing the Microsoft Agent Framework, this one looks like an interesting session.
Other interesting sessions for in person attendees:
- Conversational AI avatars with Voice Live API in Azure AI Foundry
- Using code interpreter for advanced analysis over structured data
- Multi‑Agent Workflows in Microsoft Copilot Studio
- Deploy and extend Microsoft 365 Copilot to go from governance to ROI
- Empowering Learning with AI: Personalized Journeys for Every Learner
- Community Theater: Ask Me Anything with Scott Hanselman
- Create dynamic app experiences for personal and team productivity
Top 5 labs In San Francisco only
Join April Dunnam and Daniel Laskewitz in this lab to learn more about building custom agents with Copilot Studio, including using tools like agent flows and MCP.
Here’s another one if you’re particularly interested in learning more about MCP.
Here’s a lab that features the Azure AI Foundry Agent Service.
If you want to explore more of the pro-code side of building agents, here’s another lab for you.
Azure AI Search can help take your Copilot Studio agents to the next level. If you’re attending Ignite in person, this lab might be of interest to you.
Other interesting labs:
- Prototyping multimodal agents with Azure AI Foundry and the AI Toolkit
- Safeguard your agents with AI Red Teaming Agent in Azure AI Foundry
Counting down to this year’s Ignite, I can’t help but reflect on last year in Chicago. I had the chance to both proctor labs and attend one, read more about it here. I can highly recommend signing up for a lab. Being there in person truly feels like a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I’m sure this year’s on-site attendees will have an experience just as extraordinary. 🙌
Animated GIF from the Social Swag page.
Carina M. Claesson 