Developing Declarative Agents for 365 Copilot using VS Code

AI is changing how we work, but generic assistants do not know your specific business workflows. Learn how to tailor the AI experience directly within your daily productivity suite by building targeted, specialized assistants. In this text-based course, you will learn to design, build, and deploy custom declarative agents that extend 365 Copilot to automate tasks and retrieve specialized knowledge. What you'll learn: - Understand the foundational architecture of declarative agents and how they interact with 365 Copilot. - Configure agent manifests and definition files using Visual Studio Code. - Apply basic prompt engineering principles to define clear instructions and system behaviors. - Integrate external knowledge sources and custom APIs using structured JSON schemas. - Implement modern security scopes and data privacy best practices for enterprise environments. You will start with core terminology and foundational concepts before moving into step-by-step written guides on writing manifest files, structuring configuration schemas, and testing your agents. This course is designed for developers, technical administrators, and IT professionals who are new to agent development, with no prior AI engineering experience required. Start building your first custom agent today.