Dustin Willard
Microsoft MVP, Director, Global Microsoft Alliances - Cambay Solutions
Hampton, New Hampshire, United States
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Dustin Willard is a Microsoft MVP and a 16-year veteran in the SharePoint and M365 space, with experience in the development, design, and architecture of enterprise solutions across many Microsoft technologies and industry verticals. Bringing together a solid information architecture with the technology has always been at the forefront of every solution he has built and is his passion. He has deep expertise in intranet builds, enterprise content management, and search. Dustin’s focus these days is on SharePoint and M365 Copilot. which is MVP designation. He also wrote the first Microsoft Syntex book in partnership with fellow colleagues and in collaboration with the Microsoft product and marketing teams.
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MCP vs. Connectors vs. Direct API: A Decision Framework for Agent Integration
With Model Context Protocol now GA in Copilot Studio, practitioners face a new question: when should I use MCP versus connectors versus direct API calls? This session provides a practical decision framework based on Microsoft's guidance. We'll explore why MCP shines for centrally-managed tools (update once, all agents get the change), when connectors win for rapid prototyping, and where direct API calls still make sense. Through side-by-side demos of the same integration built three ways, you'll leave with a decision tree for your architecture choices.
Getting Your Organization to Actually Use the Agents You Build
You built the agent. It works beautifully. Six weeks post-deployment, adoption is at 12%. Sound familiar? This session tackles the uncomfortable truth that building agents is easy—changing human behavior is hard. We'll cover the psychology of AI resistance, how to recruit agent champions, training approaches that stick, building organizational prompt libraries, and measuring real usage beyond vanity metrics. You'll leave with an adoption playbook template and metrics dashboard design you can implement immediately.
Agent 365: The Operating System for AI Workforce Management
Microsoft Agent 365 extends Microsoft 365 infrastructure to manage AI agents at enterprise scale. Learn how to gain complete visibility into your agent fleet including shadow agents, enforce risk-based access controls, and protect against threats using Microsoft Defender, Entra, and Purview. This session covers the five pillars of Agent 365—Registry, Access Control, Visualization, Interoperability, and Security—with real-world Fortune 500 deployment examples. Discover how to prevent agent sprawl, implement governance frameworks, and build executive business cases for comprehensive AI governance that balances innovation with security and compliance.
Agent 365: The Operating System for AI Workforce Management
Microsoft Agent 365 extends Microsoft 365 infrastructure to manage AI agents at enterprise scale. Learn how to gain complete visibility into your agent fleet including shadow agents, enforce risk-based access controls, and protect against threats using Microsoft Defender, Entra, and Purview. This session covers the five pillars of Agent 365—Registry, Access Control, Visualization, Interoperability, and Security—with real-world Fortune 500 deployment examples. Discover how to prevent agent sprawl, implement governance frameworks, and build executive business cases for comprehensive AI governance that balances innovation with security and compliance.
Agent 365: The Operating System for AI Workforce Management
As agents proliferate across every workflow, IT leaders face a critical dilemma: how to accelerate AI innovation without introducing unmanageable risk. Microsoft Agent 365 extends infrastructure designed for managing users to managing agents—providing the industry's first comprehensive control plane for enterprise AI governance. This session reveals how organizations gain complete visibility into their agent fleet (including shadow agents), enforce risk-based conditional access policies, visualize connections between agents, people and data, and protect against agent compromise using Microsoft Defender, Entra, and Purview.
Transform Content into Secure Actionable Information with SharePoint Premium
Businesses and organizations need secure and effective processes to manage and organize varying types of content. Being able to easily make sure people have proper access to this content is key to succeeding in today’s fast paced world. AI and Machine learning is used to tag unstructured content, resulting in structured knowledge that is refinable and searchable.
Viva Topics - Understanding Your Organization With AI
In today's dynamic and information-rich business landscape, organizations face a pressing challenge: harnessing the collective knowledge of their workforce to drive productivity, innovation, and informed decision-making. Microsoft Viva Topics, powered by cutting-edge AI technology, emerges as a game-changer in the realm of knowledge management and organizational understanding.
Join us for an expert speaker session that delves deep into the transformative capabilities of Microsoft Viva Topics. In this enlightening session, you will gain invaluable insights into how AI can revolutionize your organization's ability to comprehend, harness, and leverage its knowledge resources.
Key Takeaways:
Introduction to Microsoft Viva Topics: Discover what Viva Topics is and how it fits into Microsoft's broader vision for the modern workplace. Understand its role in shaping the future of knowledge management.
AI-Powered Knowledge Discovery: Explore how AI algorithms can automatically identify and classify topics within your organization's content, creating a dynamic knowledge network that evolves with your organization.
Enhancing Knowledge Accessibility: Learn how Viva Topics makes it easier for employees to find the information they need, reducing time wasted searching for data and documents and enabling better decision-making.
Knowledge Enrichment: See how AI can enrich your content by extracting key information and metadata, making it more valuable and relevant to your organization's needs.
Personalized Knowledge Recommendations: Discover how Viva Topics delivers personalized knowledge recommendations to employees, helping them stay informed and up-to-date with relevant content.
Data Security and Compliance: Explore how Microsoft ensures the security and compliance of your organization's sensitive data while leveraging AI-powered knowledge management.
Q&A and Interactive Discussion: Engage with Dustin Willard, MVP, and fellow attendees in a live Q&A session to address your queries and challenges related to knowledge management and AI implementation.
By the end of this session, you'll be equipped with the knowledge and insights needed to embark on your own Viva Topics journey.
Granite State M365 Users Group User group Sessionize Event Upcoming
AI Agent & Copilot Summit 2026 Sessionize Event Upcoming
Microsoft 365 Ottawa Event 2023 Sessionize Event
2023 NH Cybersecurity Symposium Sessionize Event
Microsoft User Group Utah (#MUGUT) User group Sessionize Event
Dustin Willard
Microsoft MVP, Director, Global Microsoft Alliances - Cambay Solutions
Hampton, New Hampshire, United States
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