Tomorrow: Join Us at HELish Summit 2026!

The long wait (what am I talking about, it feels like I got the acceptance email just yesterday!) is finally over and the HELish Summit 2026 is tomorrow! On Thursday, September 17, I will be at the HELish Summit 2026 for a full day of Microsoft community sessions, and we would love to see you there.

If you missed my original post about the session, here is the short version: we will show how to extend Microsoft 365 Copilot with declarative agents and Copilot Connectors, without immediately signing up for a custom agent runtime and a small infrastructure project.

No backend, no problem... Right? 😅

When and where?

This is where I'd usually have some sort of Call-to-Action like "Sign up for free here:", but the event's registration was already closed because it is FULL! Quite stoked about that, actually - just hope they'll have enough Karelian pirogi and chimichangas for everyone.

Anyway - the conference runs from 8:30 to 17:30 at the Clarion Hotel Helsinki Airport in Vantaa. Our session starts at 13:45 in Runway 1 - hope to see you there if you did get a ticket!

What is the session about?

I was lucky enough to speak at the event last year, and it was one of my favorite speaking gigs of the year! I got to even provide some actual value by holding the mic for Gautam while he was presenting the demos on stage (hence the article photo 😆).

Our session this year is called Baby Steps to Copilot Mastery: Easy Wins with M365 Agents Toolkit & Copilot Connectors. The goal is to make Copilot extensibility feel practical and approachable, especially if you are not looking to become a full-time AI or Software engineer before getting your first useful result.

We will cover:

• Declarative agents: what they are, how their instructions and knowledge work, and when they are a better fit than a custom-coded agent.
• Copilot Connectors: how to bring content from existing systems into Microsoft 365 Copilot so it can actually find and use that information.
• The Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit: how it helps you scaffold, package, validate, test, and deploy declarative agents.
• Declarative skills: how REST APIs, Microsoft Graph actions, and workflows can give an agent useful capabilities without building a full pro-code runtime.

The overall message is simple: start with the least complicated option that solves the problem, then add complexity when the use case earns it. A radical position in enterprise software, apparently.

See you there?

Come to the session, find us in the hallway, or just say hi if you spot us. We are happy to talk about Copilot extensibility, declarative agents, connectors, the Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit, and all the other naming collisions that make this space such a joy to explain.

See you tomorrow at HELish Summit!

(PS. You can find the complete schedule on the HELish Summit website)