Digital Deep Dive: Copilot Control System (CCS)
Join us for two days of insights, demos, and deep dives on Copilot Control System (CCS)! Learn how to secure, manage, and analyze Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Chat, Microsoft Copilot Studio, and agents across your organization using the Copilot Control System (CCS). This two-day digital skilling event kicks off with a guided overview of CCS—your framework for managing Copilot securely, at scale, and with clarity. Day 1 dives into security, governance, and preparing your environment for Copilot and agents. Day 2 shifts to management controls, agent lifecycle, reporting, and user enablement. We’ll close with key takeaways and resources to support your next steps. What to Expect A breakdown of the Copilot Control System and how it applies across workloads Technical guidance for managing oversharing, insider risks, and web search settings Practical ways to build and secure enterprise-scale agents Lifecycle management approaches for Copilot agents and Copilot Studio makers Insights on measurement, analytics, and usage trends Guidance on enabling users and aligning AI adoption with organizational goals Live AMAs with Microsoft product team members throughout the event Day 1: Foundations & Security – Tuesday, June 17, 2025 (PT) Time Session Title Speaker(s) Description 8:00–8:30 AM PT Introduction to Copilot Control System Ben Summers Overview of the event structure, CCS components, and session navigation tips. 8:30–9:30 AM PT Secure Microsoft 365 Copilot and agents Sophie Ke, Dave Minasyan Addressing oversharing risks using SAM and Purview. 9:30–10:30 AM PT Prevent data loss and insider risks for Microsoft 365 Copilot Erica Toelle Using Microsoft Purview to mitigate insider threats and enforce protections. 10:30–11:00 AM PT Understanding web search controls in Microsoft 365 Copilot Alex Pozin, Suhel Parekh Configuring and governing Copilot's web search behavior. 11:00 AM–12:00 PM PT Build enterprise-scale agents securely Mik Ferland Best practices for secure agent lifecycle management and governance. Day 2: Management & Adoption – Wednesday, June 18, 2025 (PT) Time Session Title Speaker(s) Description 8:00–9:00 AM PT Copilot agent management and controls James Bell, Ganesh Krishnamurthy How to manage Copilot agents in the Microsoft 365 admin center. 9:00–10:00 AM PT Empower Copilot Studio makers with enterprise-grade management controls Asaf Tzuk Governance, visibility, and cost management in Copilot Studio. 10:00–11:00 AM PT Measure usage and impact of Copilot and agents Mike Walsh, Samer Baroudi Using Copilot Analytics to assess adoption, usage, and impact. 11:00 AM–12:00 PM PT Practical guidance for AI and collaboration adoption Karuana Gatimu Real-world strategies for enabling collaboration and AI adoption. 12:00–12:15 PM PT That’s a wrap! What’s next for your Copilot Control System journey Efe Abugo Key takeaways, resources, and how to continue learning after the event. How to Participate Register for the Microsoft Tech Community using your email if you haven’t already. This allows you to post comments and ask questions. Visit each individual session page during its scheduled time to join the conversation. You can post your questions in the comments, and product team members will respond live during the AMA. Watch the session live or catch the recording on demand after the event. Keep the conversation going in the Microsoft 365 Copilot Tech Community discussion space after the sessions conclude. It’s a great place to follow up, share what’s working, and connect with others exploring similar topics. Hope to see you there! Come ready to learn and ask our experts all of your burning questions! Access session presentations Looking for session materials or presentations? Visit the new Copilot Control System page on AMC to download resources and explore more content from the event.AI Toolkit Extension Pack for Visual Studio Code: Ignite 2025 Update
Unlock the Latest Agentic App Capabilities The Ignite 2025 update delivers a major leap forward for the AI Toolkit extension pack in VS Code, introducing a unified, end-to-end environment for building, visualizing, and deploying agentic applications to Microsoft Foundry, and the addition of Anthropic’s frontier Claude models in the Model Catalog! This release enables developers to build and debug locally in VS Code, then deploy to the cloud with a single click. Seamlessly switch between VS Code and the Foundry portal for visualization, orchestration, and evaluation, creating a smooth roundtrip workflow that accelerates innovation and delivers a truly unified AI development experience. Download the http://aka.ms/aitoolkit today and start building next-generation agentic apps in VS Code! What Can You Do with the AI Toolkit Extension Pack? Access Anthropic models in the Model Catalog Following the Microsoft, NVIDIA and Anthropic strategic partnerships announcement today, we are excited to share that Anthropic’s frontier Claude models including Claude Sonnet 4.5, Claude Opus 4.1, and Claude Haiku 4.5, are now integrated into the AI Toolkit, providing even more choices and flexibility when building intelligent applications and AI agents. Build AI Agents Using GitHub Copilot Scaffold agent applications using best-practice patterns, tool-calling examples, tracing hooks, and test scaffolds, all powered by Copilot and aligned with the Microsoft Agent Framework. Generate agent code in Python or .NET, giving you flexibility to target your preferred runtime. Build and Customize YAML Workflows Design YAML-based workflows in the Foundry portal, then continue editing and testing directly in VS Code. To customize your YAML-based workflows, instantly convert it to Agent Framework code using GitHub Copilot. Upgrade from declarative design to code-first customization without starting from scratch. Visualize Multi-Agent Workflows Envision your code-based agent workflows with an interactive graph visualizer that reveals each component and how they connect Watch in real-time how each node lights up as you run your agent. Use the visualizer to understand and debug complex agent graphs, making iteration fast and intuitive. Experiment, Debug, and Evaluate Locally Use the Hosted Agents Playground to quickly interact with your agents on your development machine. Leverage local tracing support to debug reasoning steps, tool calls, and latency hotspots—so you can quickly diagnose and fix issues. Define metrics, tasks, and datasets for agent evaluation, then implement metrics using the Foundry Evaluation SDK and orchestrate evaluations runs with the help of Copilot. Seamless Integration Across Environments Jump from Foundry Portal to VS Code Web for a development environment in your preferred code editor setting. Open YAML workflows, playgrounds, and agent templates directly in VS Code for editing and deployment. How to Get Started Install the AI Toolkit extension pack from the VS Code marketplace. Check out documentation. Get started with building workflows with Microsoft Foundry in VS Code 1. Work with Hosted (Pro-code) Agent workflows in VS Code 2. Work with Declarative (Low-code) Agent workflows in VS Code Feedback & Support Try out the extensions and let us know what you think! File issues or feedback on our GitHub repo for Foundry extension and AI Toolkit extension. Your input helps us make continuous improvements.Build Smarter with Azure HorizonDB
By: Maxim Lukiyanov, PhD, Principal PM Manager; Abe Omorogbe, Senior Product Manager; Shreya R. Aithal, Product Manager II; Swarathmika Kakivaya, Product Manager II Today, at Microsoft Ignite, we are announcing a new PostgreSQL database service - Azure HorizonDB. You can read the announcement here, and in this blog you can learn more about HorizonDB’s AI features and development tools. Azure HorizonDB is designed for the full spectrum of modern database needs - from quickly building new AI applications, to scaling enterprise workloads to unprecedented levels of performance and availability, to managing your databases efficiently and securely. To help with building new AI applications we are introducing 3 features: DiskANN Advanced Filtering, built-in AI model management, and integration with Microsoft Foundry. To help with database management we are introducing a set of new capabilities in PostgreSQL extension for Visual Studio Code, as well as announcing General Availability of the extension. Let’s dive into AI features first. DiskANN Advanced Filtering We are excited to announce a new enhancement in the Microsoft’s state of the art vector indexing algorithm DiskANN – DiskANN Advanced Filtering. Advanced Filtering addresses a common problem in vector search – combining vector search with filtering. In real-world applications where queries often include constraints like price ranges, ratings, or categories, traditional vector search approaches, such as pgvector’s HNSW, rely on multiple step retrieval and post-filtering, which can make search extremely slow. DiskANN Advanced Filtering solves this by combining filter and search into one operation - while the graph of vectors is traversed during the vector search, each vector is also checked for filter predicate match, ensuring that only the correct vectors are retrieved. Under the hood, it works in a 3-step process: first creating a bitmap of relevant rows using indexes on attributes such as price or rating, then performing a filter-aware graph traversal against the bitmap, and finally, validating and ordering the results for accuracy. This integrated approach delivers dramatically faster and more efficient filtered vector searches. Initial benchmarks show that enabling Advanced Filtering on DiskANN reduces query latency by up to 3x, depending on filter selectivity. AI Model Management Another exciting feature of HorizonDB is AI Model Management. This feature automates Microsoft Foundry model provisioning during database deployment and instantly activates database semantic operators. This eliminates tens of setup and configuration steps and simplifies the development of new AI apps and agents. AI Model Management elevates the experience of using semantic operators within PostgreSQL. When activated, it provisions key models for embedding, semantic ranking and generation via Foundry, installs and configures the azure_ai extension to enable the operators, establishes secure connections, integrates model management, monitoring and cost management within HorizonDB. What would otherwise require significant manual effort and context-switching between Foundry and PostgreSQL for configuration, management, and monitoring is now possible with just a few clicks, all without leaving the PostgreSQL environment. You can also continue to bring your own Foundry models, with a simplified and enhanced process for registering your custom model endpoints in the azure_ai extension. Microsoft Foundry Integration Microsoft Foundry offers a comprehensive technology stack for building AI apps and agents. But building modern agents capable of reasoning, acting, and collaborating is impossible without connection to data. To facilitate that connection, we are excited to announce a new PostgreSQL connector in Microsoft Foundry. The connector is designed using a new standard in data connectivity – Model Context Protocol (MCP). It enables Foundry agents to interact with HorizonDB securely and intelligently, using natural language instead of SQL, and leveraging Microsoft Entra ID to ensure secure connection. In addition to HorizonDB this connector also supports Azure Database for PostgreSQL (ADP). This integration allows Foundry agents to perform tasks like: Exploring database schemas Retrieving records and insights Performing analytical queries Executing vector similarity searches for semantic search use cases All through natural language, without compromising enterprise security or compliance. To get started with Foundry Integration, follow these setup steps to deploy your own HorizonDB (requires participation in Private Preview) or ADP and connect it to Foundry in just a few steps. PostgreSQL extension for VS Code is Generally Available We’re excited to announce that the PostgreSQL extension for Visual Studio Code is now Generally Available. This extension garnered significant popularity within the PostgreSQL community since it’s preview in May’25 reaching more than 200K installs. It is the easiest way to connect to a PostgreSQL database from your favorite editor, manage your databases, and take advantage of built-in AI capabilities without ever leaving VS Code. The extension works with any PostgreSQL whether it's on-premises or in the cloud, and also supports unique features of Azure HorizonDB and Azure Database for PostgreSQL (ADP). One of the key new capabilities is Metrics Intelligence, which uses Copilot and real-time telemetry of HorizonDB or ADP to help you diagnose and fix performance issues in seconds. Instead of digging through logs and query plans, you can open the Performance Dashboard, see a CPU spike, and ask Copilot to investigate. The extension sends a rich prompt that tells Copilot to analyze live metrics, identify the root cause, and propose an actionable fix. For example, Copilot might find a full table scan on a large table, recommend a composite index on the filter columns, create that index, and confirm the query plan now uses it. The result is dramatic: you can investigate and resolve the CPU spike in seconds, with no manual scripting or guesswork, and with no prior PostgreSQL expertise required. The extension also makes it easier to work with graph data. HorizonDB and ADP support open-source graph extension Apache AGE. This turns these services into fully managed graph databases. You can run graph queries against HorizonDB and immediately visualize the results as an interactive graph inside VS Code. This helps you understand relationships in your data faster, whether you’re exploring customer journeys, network topologies, or knowledge graphs - all without switching tools. In Conclusion Azure HorizonDB brings together everything teams need to build, run, and manage modern, AI-powered applications on PostgreSQL. With DiskANN Advanced Filtering, you can deliver low-latency, filtered vector search at scale. With built-in AI Model Management and Microsoft Foundry integration, you can provision models, wire up semantic operators, and connect agents to your data with far fewer steps and far less complexity. And with the PostgreSQL extension for Visual Studio Code, you get an intuitive, AI-assisted experience for performance tuning and graph visualization, right inside the tools you already use. HorizonDB is now available in private preview. If you’re interested in building AI apps and agents on a fully managed, PostgreSQL-compatible service with built-in AI and rich developer tooling, sign-up for Private Preview: https://aka.ms/PreviewHorizonDB.
