Building Custom Engine Agents with the 365 Agents SDK

As organizations increasingly adopt intelligent assistants, the ability to build tailored, conversational AI agents is becoming a crucial developer skill. This course guides you through creating custom engine agents that connect to your unique data sources and APIs. By reading and practicing with this structured text-only guide, you will transition from a beginner to a developer capable of building, testing, and deploying custom engine agents. You will understand how to leverage the 365 Agents SDK to deliver precise, context-aware conversational experiences. What you'll learn: 1. Understand the foundational architecture of custom engine agents and conversational AI. 2. Configure the 365 Agents SDK and set up your local development environment. 3. Design robust prompt templates and apply foundational prompt engineering techniques. 4. Integrate external APIs and custom data sources using modern Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) patterns. 5. Implement secure authentication and manage session state across user interactions. 6. Test, debug, and package your custom agents for deployment. The course begins with essential terminology and core agent concepts before moving step-by-step through environment setup, API integration, and deployment workflows. You will learn through clear, written explanations and realistic code examples designed for immediate application. This course is designed for software developers and IT professionals who are new to building conversational agents. No prior experience with agent development is required, though a basic understanding of programming concepts is helpful. Start reading today to build your first intelligent custom engine agent and transform your team's workflow automation.