My Microsoft Ignite 2024 Session Picks (before the keynote)

It’s time for another Ignite! Here are my top 5 picks for what to watch this year. I’ve deliberately left out the keynote, as that’s required watching anyway.

The challenge with choosing picks before the keynote starts is that, quite often, sessions are held back until any announcements have been made so that the title and abstract of the session doesn’t give away what is being announced. For that reason there may well be extra juicy sessions that show up later today that I haven’t included. Either way, the ones below are still (I think) worthwhile watching for Microsoft 365 Developers … which right now, really means Copilot Developers.

Unlock the Value of Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Studio

This looks likely to be a keynote of sorts for the Microsoft 365 organisation within Microsoft. It’s likely to be high-level but cover all aspects of Microsoft 365 including pro and no code development. It’s a great place to catch up on what’s been happening across the board and get the sense of direction for the next few months. It is also likely to be a good way to frame the more technical sessions from Ignite.

Developers guide to building your own agents

This is probably the session I’m most looking forward to. It’s likely to be demo heavy and feature some code. I don’t think there are likely to be major new announcements or things we didn’t already know about, but it should be a good way to make sure you’re on top of what capabilities are available to pro-code developers today.

Extending M365 Copilot with Copilot agents: Best practices

I think that this is probably going to be a bit more focused on the low-code approaches to Copilot agents, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable to pro-code developers. Remember, don’t waste time building something that you can put together much faster in a low-code solution, if that’s the right approach of a POC or something that won’t need to be much customised. It’s good to keep up to date with what’s going on the low-code world, and hopefully this session will be a great way to do this. Of course, low-code developers will get a ton of value from this session as well.

Discover GitHub Copilot’s untapped potential in Visual Studio

I’m trying to make overt efforts to adjust how I work, continually questioning if and how AI can help me work more productively. That means remembering to re-evaluate ways of working. As a developer I spend a good amount of time in Visual Studio, and so understanding more about how to use GitHub Copilot within it is of interest (and should be to you too!). I’m hoping that this session will be full of useful tips and tricks, and with Scott H as a co-presenter I’m sure it’ll go at pace and be interesting as well.

Scott and Mark learn responsible AI

I don’t know if it was a conscious decision by someone to take a topic that we should all be paying attention to but probably aren’t, and give it to two of Microsoft’s most well-known and respected speakers, but it’s a good idea. Scott and Mark will – I am sure – take what can be quite a dry subject, and over the course of 45 minutes make sure that we know what we need to, in order to minimise the risks in this space. This is going to be like if Taylor Swift wrote a song about the benefits of flossing.

What have I missed?

There are (as I write this) 373 sessions in the Ignite catalogue, so it’s very possible that I’ve missed something important. Please, let me know! Also, do pass on any other interesting sessions, good speakers or sessions you attended that you think I might like. If you’re attending Microsoft Ingite this week in person, have a fantastic time and remember that sessions are recorded so use your time to network and make friends.