Building Agents with Andrew Connell

About Show #1055

Microsoft offers a surprising number of ways to build agents in Microsoft 365. Which one should you choose? Richard talks to Andrew Connell about the evolving Microsoft 365 Copilot landscape and the four major approaches to building agents. Starting with SharePoint Agents for document-focused scenarios, Andrew walks through Agent Builder inside Microsoft 365 Copilot, the increasingly popular Copilot Studio in the Power Platform ecosystem, and the often-overlooked Agents Toolkit for VS Code. Along the way, he discusses governance, licensing, publishing models, security concerns, and when Azure Foundry makes sense. The result is a practical guide to understanding Microsoft's growing agent platform and choosing the right tool for your organization.

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Recorded Sep 2, 2026

Andrew Connell is a Principal Software Engineer at AvePoint, where his focus is agentic engineering: using AI to build and ship product to market with more velocity than traditional development allows. He's a 23-year recipient of Microsoft's MVP Award and, for the past two decades, has specialized in the Microsoft 365 Developer and Microsoft Azure ecosystems. In 2016, he founded Voitanos, a training platform that has helped thousands of developers become experts in Microsoft 365 through live workshops, on-demand video courses, and a newsletter with over 12,000 subscribers. Andrew continues to write, speak at conferences, and share what he's learning at andrewconnell.com.

About Show #1055

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