Microsoft Unveils .NET AI Essentials: A Unified Foundation for Intelligent App Development

Microsoft has unveiled .NET AI Essentials, highlighting the foundational building blocks that enable developers to seamlessly integrate generative AI into .NET applications. With a unified API and powerful new libraries, the first post in this series dives into the key components of Microsoft.Extensions.AI.

Here’s what you need to know about Microsoft.Extensions.AI:

• What is Microsoft.Extensions.AI?

  MEAI is the foundational library for generative AI in .NET. It replaces earlier Semantic Kernel primitives and brings familiar patterns developers love—dependency injection, middleware, and builders—straight into AI development with ASP.NET, minimal APIs, and Blazor.

• One unified API, many providers

  Stop juggling SDKs. Use a single abstraction to work with OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, OllamaSharp, and more.

• What happens behind the scenes?

  MEAI abstracts provider complexity by managing retries, token limits, and request delegation, while seamlessly integrating with dependency injection and middleware for scalable, production-ready apps.

• Built for multi-modal AI

  AI isn’t just text anymore. MEAI supports multi-modal conversations using AIContent, enabling text, images, audio, and more—ready for modern AI experiences.

• Even more under the hood

  It also includes built-in resilience, error handling, cancellation support, embeddings and vector primitives, plus image generation—so you can focus on building, not plumbing.

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Visual Studio January Update Rolls Out Editor Enhancements for Developers

Microsoft has released its January update for Visual Studio, bringing a series of editor improvements designed to enhance code navigation and overall usability. The latest Visual Studio update focuses on refining the integrated development environment with a range of user-requested adjustments that make working with code smoother and more intuitive.

Here’s what’s new:

• Productivity upgrades

  Your editor just got faster and cleaner. Enjoy fast scrolling, middle-click scroll, HTML-rich copy/paste, syntactic line compression, and a slimmer left margin—making code reviews easier on the eyes and quicker to navigate.

• Colorized code completions

  Code suggestions now come with syntax highlighting, helping you instantly distinguish variables, functions, and other elements. Enable it via Tools > Options > Text Editor > Code Completions > “Use colorized text for code completions”.

• Click-to-accept partial completions

  No more all-or-nothing suggestions. Click directly inside a completion to accept only what you need—each segment highlights on hover so you know exactly what will be inserted.

• Streamlined Markdown previews

  The Markdown editor now offers quicker access to preview modes, Mermaid diagrams, and Copilot Chat markdown—less friction, faster feedback.

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Power BI Rolls Out Modern Visual Tooltips to All Users

Microsoft has announced the general availability of modern visual tooltips in Power BI, introducing a more interactive and streamlined way for users to explore report data. The update enhances report navigation with built-in actions and improved styling, helping organizations uncover insights faster across desktop, web, mobile, and embedded reports.

Here’s what you can do with them:

• Take action directly from tooltips

  Users can now drill down, drill up, and drill through straight from the tooltip using the new Actions footer—no right-clicks or visual headers needed. Data exploration just became faster and more intuitive.

• Consistent, theme-based styling

  Modern tooltips automatically adopt your report’s theme colors for a polished, professional look. You can further customize fonts, colors, and transparency via the Format pane—or fully tailor them by customizing or importing themes from View > Themes.

• No disruption to existing reports

  Your current reports stay exactly the same unless you choose to upgrade. To apply the new tooltip experience, simply select Reset to default in the Format pane to update visuals across the report.

• Available everywhere

  These updated visual tooltips work across Power BI Desktop, Power BI Service, mobile apps, Microsoft Teams, and embedded reports.

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Azure Maps in Power BI Gets Richer Visual Storytelling with Markers

Microsoft has rolled out a new Markers feature for the Azure Maps visual in Power BI, enabling users to replace basic shapes with meaningful icons and dynamic scaling to bring location data to life. The update simplifies map-based storytelling—letting analysts visualize deliveries, assets, or performance metrics without complex GIS tools.

Here’s how it can elevate your map visualizations:

• Markers capability

  Use meaningful icons or custom images, dynamically scale marker sizes, customize colors and transparency, and assign distinct icons by category—all to make your data instantly understandable.

• Real-world use cases

  Markers can be used in logistics and supply chain to visualize delivery routes and shipment volumes using truck icons. In utilities and operations, they help represent asset types, operational statuses, or outage locations. Retail and distribution teams can also use distinct icons and colors to differentiate store categories or performance levels.

• How to get started

  In Power BI Desktop or Web, add the Azure Maps visual to your report and include Latitude, Longitude, and PathID in the Build pane. In the Format pane, go to Markers, select Icon as the marker type, then choose an icon, adjust its size, and use fx on Rotation to bind an angle column for dynamic icon rotation.

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Microsoft Marketplace Positions Itself as Cornerstone for Enterprise AI Strategy

Microsoft is outlining a new framework to help organizations design their AI and agent strategies by leveraging the expanded Microsoft Marketplace catalog of apps, agents, and models. The guidance emphasizes choosing between building custom solutions, buying pre-built tools, or blending both to accelerate adoption while maintaining governance and integration with existing Microsoft infrastructure. Marketplace now positions itself as the central hub for sourcing, deploying, and governing AI solutions in the enterprise cloud ecosystem.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Why Microsoft Marketplace?

  Microsoft Marketplace is the go-to destination for accelerating AI adoption with confidence. Its unified catalog helps you move from concept to production faster—while managing cloud costs and optimizing performance.

• Build custom AI solutions your way

  Access 11,000+ pre-packaged models and 4,000+ AI apps and agents to create tailored AI solutions. Whether you’re building with pro-code APIs or using low-code tools, Marketplace fits seamlessly into the Microsoft ecosystem.

• Buy proven, ready-made AI solutions

  Short on time or resources? You can purchase production-ready AI apps and agents that already deliver real business value.

• Customise your AI strategy with a blended approach

  Most organisations fall between build and buy. A blended strategy lets you extend partner solutions with your own IP , customize what differentiates you, and reuse prebuilt components to reduce engineering effort and speed up time to value.

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Copilot Memories Debuts in Visual Studio to Help Teams Standardize Workflows

Microsoft is rolling out a new feature called Copilot Memories in Visual Studio that helps developers automatically capture and recall coding preferences and project guidelines, reducing repetitive tasks and inconsistencies. The AI-powered capability learns how teams like to work and prompts users to confirm when it detects new patterns or updates, making collaboration smoother and onboarding easier.

Here’s how it helps:

• Learns how you work

  Copilot Memories continuously learns your team’s coding preferences as you prompt. No more repeated reminders or searching through old messages—Copilot remembers what matters so you don’t have to.

• You stay in control

  Every time Copilot wants to save or update a memory, you’ll get a clear confirmation. Review, accept, or tweak it before anything is stored. Nothing happens without your say-so.

• Organised where you expect it

  Preferences can be saved to your personal file (%USERPROFILE%/copilot-instructions.md) or to a repo-level file (/.github/copilot-instructions.md). Copilot intelligently updates or creates these files for you.

• Better consistency, faster onboarding

  Projects become easier to maintain and quicker to onboard. New developers instantly see “how we do things here,” while experienced teams save time by letting Copilot handle the details.

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Copilot Studio Brings Embedded AI Insights to Power Apps

Microsoft has unveiled a new reference architecture that enables contextual, AI-powered experiences directly within model-driven apps. By embedding Copilot Studio into app forms, organisations can surface intelligent insights exactly where users work—without disrupting workflows.

Here’s what you need to know:

• How it works

  This approach uses Power Apps Component Framework (PCF) controls to call Copilot Studio Agent APIs, triggering AI reasoning, returning responses, and enabling optional user actions—all within the app experience.

• Why it matters

  Embedded AI accelerates decision-making, keeps users in flow, and ensures consistent outcomes through reusable, domain-aware agent topics and custom prompts.

• What you’ll need

  A model-driven app, PCF control, Copilot Studio agent, custom prompts, and Dataverse tables—combining deep UI customization with loosely coupled AI logic.

• Real-world use cases

  In healthcare, clinicians receive treatment suggestions based on patient data. In finance, advisors get investment recommendations aligned to portfolio and risk profiles.

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Microsoft Enhances .NET Testing Workflows with Azure DevOps Integration

Microsoft has announced full Azure DevOps support for its modern .NET testing solution, Microsoft.Testing.Platform, marking a major step toward smoother CI/CD testing workflows. The update introduces intelligent handling of test retries and better pipeline integration, aiming to improve reliability and clarity in automated test results.

Here’s what you need to know:

• What’s New in Azure DevOps?

  Azure DevOps now provides first-class support for Microsoft.Testing.Platform, allowing you to run tests with the familiar DotNetCoreCLI task and handle retries intelligently.

• What is Microsoft.Testing.Platform?

  Microsoft.Testing.Platform is a modern, lightweight alternative to VSTest, built for flexibility and performance.

• Running Tests in Azure DevOps

  Run tests using the recommended DotNetCoreCLI task or execute dotnet test directly when custom scripting is needed.

• Understanding Retry Outcomes

  Retry results clearly show whether tests pass on the first run, pass after a retry, or fail after all retry attempts.

• Get Started Today

  Upgrade to .NET SDK 10, add the Retry extension, enable AllowPTRToDetectTestRunRetryFiles, and run tests with the --retry-failed-tests flag.

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Dataverse Search Gets Smarter with Agentic AI at the Core

Microsoft is introducing a major upgrade to Dataverse Search by embedding agentic AI to deliver more intuitive, context-aware responses across Dynamics 365 and Power Apps. The new approach transforms traditional keyword lookups into dynamic, conversational interactions with business data, marking a significant step toward more intelligent enterprise workflows.

Here’s what makes it powerful:

• From queries to real conversations

  Ask questions in natural language and get real-time, actionable insights—no need to understand tables or schemas. You can refine and build on questions as the conversation evolves.

• Agentic architecture

  This isn’t simple text-to-SQL. Each question is treated as a goal. The orchestrator reasons through it using a dynamic loop: plan → execute → refine, delivering smarter, more contextual results.

• Real-world example

  A coffee equipment seller identifies at-risk opportunities, then asks for the positive response rate for Coffee Grinder 02. The system delivers precise answers, including calculated metrics, to support faster decisions.

• Glossaries & enriched schema

  Makers can fine-tune how the Q&A agent understands data. Teach it your company’s terminology, acronyms, and add richer descriptions to tables and columns—so answers align with how your business actually talks.

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The Most-Watched .NET Videos and Live Streams That Defined 2025

2025 was a standout year for .NET video content, with the community tuning in to thousands of hours of learning, announcements, and live discussions. From must-watch beginner content to deep technical sessions and major event live streams, the year delivered some clear favorites. Microsoft has rounded up the top .NET videos and live streams that captured developers’ attention throughout 2025.

Here are the highlights:

• “Start Here” videos

  Evergreen intros continued to dominate—covering C#, .NET, .NET MAUI, and ASP.NET Core—helping new developers get up to speed fast.

• New videos released in 2025

  Conference content stood out, especially from .NET Conf, with popular sessions on .NET 10, Visual Studio 2026, clean architecture with ASP.NET Core 10, and more.

• Series highlights

  Developers followed along with preview and release waves through dedicated .NET 10 series, Aspire-focused Aspire Fridays with community guests, and deep-dive content for those wanting advanced technical insights.

• Top live streams

  Highly watched live sessions featured .NET conferences, .NET 10 discussions, modernization topics, and Model Context Protocol (MCP). Over 30 episodes of On .NET Live brought together product experts and community voices.

• Community-focused content

  .NET Community Standups continued to offer behind-the-scenes updates, open discussions, and a direct line to the teams building the platform..

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