Adriatic Tech Summit 2027

05/04/2027, Congress Center Hotel Hills
Ilidža, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Beyond Chatbots: Why Your Agent Still Feels Dumb

Everybody's building agents! But for what? Most enterprise agents know things - but the useful ones actually get things done. We have AI. We have RAG. We have Microsoft 365 Copilot. We have Work IQ. We have MCP. Yet many enterprise agents still behave like glorified FAQ bots. They can answer questions. Sometimes. They can summarize meetings. They might even find a document. But when it comes to understanding what's happening in your organization and taking meaningful action, many agents still fall apart. In this session, we'll explore why. We'll build a custom Microsoft 365 agent using Microsoft 365 Agents SDK and Microsoft Agent Framework, then gradually evolve it from a chatbot into something genuinely useful. Along the way, we'll introduce two of Microsoft's most important investments in the agent space: 1. Work IQ, which gives agents access to workplace context and organizational knowledge 2. MCP (Model Context Protocol), which gives agents a standardized way to discover and use tools We'll implement the same capability using two different MCP architectures: direct MCP integration through Agent Framework and MCP exposed through a Microsoft Foundry agent. By comparing both approaches, we'll examine where context lives, where tools belong, and who should really own orchestration. Finally, we'll answer a question many developers are quietly asking: If Copilot Studio already supports MCP, when is a custom-engine agent actually worth the effort? You'll leave with a practical understanding of how Work IQ, MCP, Agent Framework and Microsoft 365 Agents SDK fit together, and why context, reasoning and action need to work together before an agent starts feeling less like a chatbot and more like a teammate. Takeaways: ✅ See every layer between a Teams message and an MCP tool call No magic. No architecture diagrams with mysterious arrows. We'll follow a real request through Agents SDK, Agent Framework, Work IQ, MCP and Microsoft Foundry. ✅ Learn two ways to make the same agent use the same MCP server We'll build one capability twice and compare what changes architecturally when MCP lives inside your application versus behind a Foundry agent. ✅ Stop guessing when you need code You'll leave with a practical framework for deciding when Copilot Studio is enough and when a custom-engine agent is worth the additional complexity.