VS 2026 + Copilot: The Enterprise .NET Developer Workflow
Become proficient with Visual Studio 2026 and GitHub Copilot as your enterprise .NET development pair. Learn the four Copilot Chat modes, ground Copilot in your team's codebase with Spaces and custom instructions, request AI-powered code reviews in your PR workflow, and configure bring-your-own-key against an Azure AI Foundry deployment to meet your organization's governance requirements.
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About This Course
Learn to use Visual Studio 2026 and GitHub Copilot together as the foundation of a modern enterprise .NET development workflow. This course grounds a working C# developer in the full Copilot surface: the Chat modes (Ask, Edit, and Agent), repository-level grounding through Copilot Spaces and .github/copilot-instructions.md, AI-assisted code review in the pull-request flow, bring-your-own-key configuration against an Azure AI Foundry deployment, and the enterprise governance surface (content exclusions, audit logs, policy, and IP indemnity).By the end of this course you will be able to configure Visual Studio 2026 for enterprise .NET work, use each Copilot Chat mode on the right kind of task, customize Copilot's responses with codebase-grounded instructions, drive a code review from a pull request, and point Copilot Chat at your own Microsoft Foundry model when compliance requires it.
Course Curriculum
6 Lessons
Why Copilot in VS 2026 — Enterprise Context
Learn why GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio 2026 is the foundation of a modern enterprise .NET developer workflow — and how to evaluate the plan tier, governance surface, and distinguishing capabilities (Agent Mode, BYOK with Microsoft Foundry, Copilot Spaces) your organization needs. By the end of this lesson you will be able to differentiate Copilot's generative mechanism from traditional IntelliSense, compare the six Copilot plan tiers against enterprise security and compliance requirements, and explain the three capabilities that distinguish Visual Studio 2026 Copilot along with their enterprise implications.
VS 2026 Setup + Copilot Chat Modes - Lab Exercises
Note: This lab pre-provisions a Windows VM and a Microsoft Foundry resource with a model deployment at start — allow up to 12 minutes for the environment to become ready before beginning the exercises.
Learn to drive Visual Studio 2026 with GitHub Copilot across all four Chat modes — Ask, Edit, Agent, and the new Agent mode — on real enterprise C# code, with Copilot Chat wired to your own Microsoft Foundry deployment via bring-your-own-key. By the end of this lab you will have connected Copilot Chat to a Foundry-hosted model, seen inline ghost-text completions in action against the Halcyon Insurance claims codebase, used Chat to explain existing code, applied Edit mode to a cross-file refactor, and let Agent mode plan and scaffold a new API endpoint with tests.
This hands-on sits with the "VS 2026 + Copilot: The Enterprise .NET Developer Workflow" course. Your lab environment is a Windows Server 2025 VM with Visual Studio 2026, GitHub CLI, .NET SDKs, Docker Desktop, and the Halcyon claims API starter solution pre-staged — no local installs required. Your personal Microsoft Foundry resource with a gpt-5.4-mini chat deployment is provisioned at lab start. You will sign into the Microsoft Foundry portal (ai.azure.com) from the lab VM using the AzureAIUser credential shown on the Environment tab, open your Foundry project, and copy the project endpoint and primary API key from the project Home page into Copilot Chat's model picker to activate BYOK.
Customizing Copilot for Your Codebase + Model
Learn how to make GitHub Copilot speak your team's dialect — the specific conventions, patterns, and compliance requirements that live in your enterprise codebase but not in Copilot's training data. This lesson covers the three surfaces that ground Copilot in a specific repository (the .github/copilot-instructions.md file, path-scoped .instructions.md files, Copilot Spaces, and reusable .prompt.md prompt files), when to reach for each, and why enterprises bring their own model via Bring-Your-Own-Key (BYOK) with Microsoft Foundry.
By the end of this lesson you will be able to explain why Copilot's defaults fall short on an enterprise codebase, choose the right grounding surface for a given rule's scope, and articulate the compliance, data-residency, and plan-gating facts that drive the BYOK + Foundry conversation at your organization.
Ground Copilot + Configure BYOK with Foundry - Lab Exercises
Note: This lab pre-provisions a Windows VM and Azure AI Foundry resources at start — allow up to 12 minutes for the environment to become ready before beginning the exercises.
Connect Visual Studio 2026 Copilot Chat to a Microsoft Foundry model that was pre-deployed in your own Azure subscription at lab start, then customize Copilot for your team's codebase with a .github/copilot-instructions.md file, a reusable .prompt.md, and a Copilot Space grounded in your project's architecture documentation. By the end of this lab you will be able to point Copilot at any Foundry-deployed model your compliance team approves, make Copilot answer in your team's voice, and compare the Foundry-hosted response against the default Copilot model on a real Halcyon Insurance code task.
Code Review + PR Workflow with Copilot
Learn where GitHub Copilot's AI-powered features fit into the pull-request workflow — PR Summaries, Copilot Code Review, and the custom-instructions files that let your team enforce specific coding standards during review. By the end of this lesson you will be able to explain where each Copilot PR-time feature runs, interpret a Copilot Code Review response, decide which inline comments to accept, dismiss, or escalate, and author a .github/copilot-instructions.md plus path-scoped .instructions.md set that enforces a team coding standard across every pull request.
Request Copilot Code Review + Governance Admin - Lab Exercises
Note: This lab pre-provisions a Windows VM at start — allow up to 10 minutes for the environment to become ready before beginning the exercises.
Learn how enterprise .NET teams use GitHub Copilot inside the pull-request workflow and understand the admin surfaces that make Copilot usable at scale.
This hands-on lab puts you in the role of Dana Reyes at Halcyon Insurance, closing out the AI Enablement rollout. You will drive a prepared Halcyon claims-API pull request through Copilot's PR summary and code-review flow, then tour the organization-level governance surfaces — content exclusion policies, audit logs, and the IP indemnity settings — that your compliance team will want configured before Copilot ships to the rest of engineering.
By the end of this lab you will be able to generate a Copilot pull-request summary, request and triage a Copilot code review, configure organization-level content exclusion policies, locate and interpret Copilot audit log events, and explain what GitHub's IP indemnity does and does not cover.
This course is currently being updated. Check back soon!
This course includes:
- 24/7 AI Instructor Support
- Live Lab Environments
- 3 Hands-on Lessons
- Completion Badge
Earn Your Badge
Complete all lessons to unlock the VS 2026 + Copilot Enterprise Workflow achievement badge.
VS 2026 + Copilot Enterprise Workflow
Awarded for completing "VS 2026 + Copilot: The Enterprise .NET Developer Workflow" — the foundational course of the Modern Enterprise App Development with VS 2026 + Copilot skill path. Earners have demonstrated proficiency with Visual Studio 2026 Insiders, GitHub Copilot's four Chat modes, Copilot Spaces and custom instructions for codebase grounding, Copilot Code Review in the pull-request workflow, bring-your-own-key configuration against Azure AI Foundry, and the enterprise governance surface.
Skills You'll Earn
Complete all lessons in this course to earn this badge