Level Up Your Python Game with Generative AI Free Livestream Series This October!
If you've been itching to go beyond basic Python scripts and dive into the world of AI-powered applications, this is your moment. Join Pamela Fox and Gwyneth Peña-Siguenza Gwthrilled to announce a brand-new free livestream series running throughout October, focused on Python + Generative AI and this time, we’re going even deeper with Agents and the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Whether you're just starting out with LLMs or you're refining your multi-agent workflows, this series is designed to meet you where you are and push your skills to the next level. 🧠 What You’ll Learn Each session is packed with live coding, hands-on demos, and real-world examples you can run in GitHub Codespaces. Here's a taste of what we’ll cover: 🎥 Why Join? Live coding: No slides-only sessions — we build together, step by step. All code shared: Clone and run in GitHub Codespaces or your local setup. Community support: Join weekly office hours and our AI Discord for Q&A and deeper dives. Modular learning: Each session stands alone, so you can jump in anytime. 🔗 Register for the full series 🌍 ¿Hablas español? We’ve got you covered! Gwyneth Peña-Siguenza will be leading a parallel series in Spanish, covering the same topics with localized examples and demos. 🔗 Regístrese para la serie en español Whether you're building your first AI app or architecting multi-agent systems, this series is your launchpad. Come for the code, stay for the community — and leave with a toolkit that scales. Let’s build something brilliant together. 💡 Join the discussions and share your exprience at the Azure AI Discord CommunityJS AI Build-a-thon: Project Showcase
In the JS AI Build-a-thon, quest 9 was all about shipping faster, smarter, and more confidently. This quest challenged developers to skip the boilerplate and focus on what really matters, solving real-world problems with production-ready AI templates and cloud-native tools. And wow, did our builders deliver, with a massive 28 projects. From personalized chatbots to full-stack RAG applications, participants used the power of the Azure Developer CLI (azd) and robust templates to turn ideas into fully deployed AI solutions on Azure, in record time. What This Quest Was About Quest 9 focused on empowering developers to: Build AI apps faster with production-ready templates Use Azure Developer CLI (azd) to deploy with just a few commands Leverage Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) to provision everything from databases to APIs Follow best practices out of the box — scalable, secure, and maintainable Participants explored a curated gallery of templates and learned how to adapt them to their unique use cases. No Azure experience? No problem. azd made setup, deployment, and teardown as simple as azd up. 🥁And the winner is..... With the massive votes from the community, the winning project as AI Academic advisor by Aryanjstar AI Career Navigator - Your Personal AI Career Coach by Aryanjstar [Project Submission] AI Career Navigator - Your Personal AI Career Coach · Issue #47 · Azure-Samples/JS-AI-Build-a-thon Aryan, a Troop Leader of the Geo Cyber Study Jam, created the AI Career Navigator to address common challenges faced by developers in the tech job market, such as unclear skill paths, resume uncertainty, and interview anxiety. Built using the Azure Search OpenAI Demo template, the tool offers features like resume-job description matching, skill gap analysis, and dynamic interview preparation. The project leverages a robust RAG setup and Azure integration to deliver a scalable, AI-powered solution for career planning. 🥉 Other featured projects: Deepmine-sentinel by Josephat-Onkoba [Project Submission] Deepmine-Sentinel · Issue #29 · Azure-Samples/JS-AI-Build-a-thon DeepMine Sentinel AI is an intelligent safety assistant designed to tackle the urgent risks facing workers in the mining industry, one of the most hazardous sectors globally. Built by customizing the “Get Started with Chat” Azure template, this solution offers real-time safety guidance and monitoring to prevent life-threatening incidents like cave-ins, toxic gas exposure, and equipment accidents. In regions where access to safety expertise is limited, DeepMine Sentinel bridges the gap by delivering instant, AI-powered support underground, ensuring workers can access critical information and protocols when they need it most. With a focus on accessibility, real-world impact, and life-saving potential, this project demonstrates how AI can be a powerful force for good in high-risk environments. PetPal - Your AI Pet Care Assistant by kelcho-spense [Project Submission] PetPal - Your AI Pet Care Assistant · Issue #70 · Azure-Samples/JS-AI-Build-a-thon PetPal is an AI-powered pet care assistant designed to support pet owners, especially first-timers, by offering instant, reliable answers to common pet-related concerns. From health and nutrition advice to emergency support and behavioral training, PetPal uses a serverless architecture powered by LangChain.js, Azure OpenAI, and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to deliver accurate, context-aware responses. The app features a warm, pet-themed interface built with Lit and TypeScript, and includes thoughtful customizations like pet profile management, personalized chat history, and species-specific guidance. With backend services hosted on Azure Functions and data stored in Azure Cosmos DB, PetPal is production-ready, scalable, and focused on reducing anxiety while promoting responsible and informed pet ownership. MLSA LearnBot by Shunlexxi [Project Submission] MLSA LearnBot · Issue #67 · Azure-Samples/JS-AI-Build-a-thon Navigating the Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors program can be overwhelming. To solve this, a student built an Intelligent Chatbot Q&A App using a Microsoft azd template, transforming a generic AI chatbot into a tailored assistant for Student Ambassadors and aspiring members. By integrating essential documentation, FAQs, and natural language support with Azure services like App Service, AI Search, and OpenAI, this tool empowers students to get instant, reliable answers and navigate their roles with ease. The front end was customized to reflect a student-friendly brand, and deployment was simplified using azd for a seamless, production-ready experience. You okay? Meet Vish AI, your mental health companion by ToshikSoni [Project Submission] You okay? Meet Vish AI, your mental health companion · Issue #38 · Azure-Samples/JS-AI-Build-a-thon Vish.AI is an empathetic GenAI companion designed to support emotional well-being, especially for individuals facing depression, loneliness, and mental burnout. Built using Azure’s AI Chat RAG template and enhanced with LangChain for conversational memory, the assistant offers a deeply personalized experience that remembers past interactions and responds with both emotional intelligence and informed support. By integrating a curated collection of resources on mental health into its RAG system, Vish.AI provides meaningful guidance and a comforting presence, available anytime, anywhere. Created to bridge the gap for those who may not feel comfortable opening up to friends or family, this project combines AI with a human touch to offer always-accessible care, demonstrating how thoughtful technology can help make life a little lighter for those quietly struggling. Want to Catch Up? If you missed the Build-a-thon or want to explore other quests (there are 9!), check them out here: 👉 GitHub - Azure-Samples/JS-AI-Build-a-thon If you want to catch up with how the challenge went and how you can get started, check out 👉JS AI Build‑a‑thon: Wrapping Up an Epic June 2025! | Microsoft Community Hub Join the Community The conversation isn’t over. The Quests are now self-paced. We’re keeping the momentum going over on Discord in the #js-ai-build-a-thon channel. Drop your questions, showcase your builds, or just come hang out with other builders. 👉 Join the community on Join the Azure AI Foundry Discord Server! Additional Resources 🔗 Microsoft for JavaScript developers 📚 Generative AI for Beginners with JavaScriptMicrosoft Build 2024: Essential Guide for AI Developers at Startups and Cloud-First Companies
Generative AI is advancing fast, with OpenAI’s GPT-4o leading the way. GPT-4o boasts improved multilingual understanding, faster responses, lower costs, and real-time processing of text, audio, and images. This boosts new Generative AI (GenAI) use cases. Explore cutting-edge solutions like models, frameworks, vector databases, and LLM observability platforms. Born-in-the-cloud companies are at the forefront of this AI revolution. Be part of the future at Microsoft Build 2024!🤖 Agent Loop Demos 🤖
We announced the public preview of agent loop at Build 2025. Agent Loop is a new feature in Logic Apps to build AI Agents for use cases that span across industry domains and patterns. Here are some resources to learn more about them Agent loop concepts Agent loop how-to Agent loop public preview announcement In this article, share with you use cases implemented in Logic Apps using agent loop and other features. This video shows an autonomous Loan Approval Agent specifically that handles auto loans for a bank. The demo features an AI Agent that uses an Azure Open AI model, company's policies, and several tools to process loan application. For edge cases, huma in involved via Teams connector. This video shows an autonomous Product Return Agent for Fourth Coffee company. The returns are processed by agent based on company policy, and other criterions. In this case also, a human is involved when decisions are outside the agent's boundaries This video shows a commercial agent that grants credits for purchases of groceries and other products, for Northwind Stores. The Agent extracts financial information from an IBM Mainframe and an IBM i system to assess each requestor and updates the internal Northwind systems with the approved customers information. Multi-Agent scenario including both a codeful and declarative method of implementation. Note: This is pre-release functionality and is subject to change. If you are interested in further discussing Logic Apps codeful Agents, please fill out the following feedback form. Operations Agent (part 1): In this conversational agent, we will perform Logic Apps operations such as repair and resubmit to ensure our integration platform is healthy and processing transactions. To ensure of compliance we will ensure all operational activities are logged in ServiceNow. Operations Agent (part 2): In this autonomous agent, we will perform Logic Apps operations such as repair and resubmit to ensure our integration platform is healthy and processing transactions. To ensure of compliance we will ensure all operational activities are logged in ServiceNow.🚀 Announcement: Azure Logic Apps Document Indexer in Azure Cosmos DB
We’re excited to announce the public preview of Azure Logic Apps as a document indexer for Azure Cosmos DB! With this release, you can now use Logic Apps connectors and templates to ingest documents directly into Cosmos DB’s vector store—powering AI workloads like Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) with ease. This new capability orchestrates the full ingestion pipeline—from fetching documents to parsing, chunking, embedding, and indexing—allowing you to unlock insights from unstructured content across your enterprise systems. Check out the announcement from Azure Cosmos team about this capability! How It Works Here’s how Logic Apps powers the ingestion flow: Connect to Source Systems While Logic Apps has more than 1400+ prebuilt connectors to pull documents from various systems, this experience streamlines the entire process via out of box templates to pull data from sources like Azure Blob Storage. Parse and Chunk Documents AI-powered parsing actions extract raw text. Then, the Chunk Document action: Tokenizes content into language model-friendly units Splits it into semantically meaningful chunks This ensures optimal size and quality for embedding and retrieval. Generate Embeddings with Azure OpenAI The chunks are passed to Azure OpenAI via connector to generate embeddings (e.g., using text-embedding-3-small). These vectors capture the meaning of your content for precise semantic search. Write to Azure Cosmos DB Vector Store Embeddings and metadata (like title, tags, and timestamps) are indexed in Cosmos DB’s, using a schema optimized for filtering, semantic ranking, and retrieval. Logic Apps Templates: Fast Start, Full Flexibility We’ve created ready-to-use templates to help you get started fast: 📄 Blob Storage – Simple Text Parsing 🧾 Blob Storage – OCR with Azure Document Intelligence 📁 SharePoint – Simple Text Parsing 🧠 SharePoint – OCR with Azure Document Intelligence Each template is customizable—so you can adapt it to your business needs or expand it with additional steps. We’d Love Your Feedback We’re just getting started—and we’re building this with you. Tell us: What data sources should we support next? Are there specific formats or verticals you need (e.g., legal docs, invoices, contracts)? What enhancements would make ingestion even easier? 👉 Reply to this post or share feedback through this form. Your input shapes the future of AI-powered document indexing in Cosmos DB.🎙️ Announcement: Logic Apps connectors in Azure AI Search for Integrated Vectorization
We’re excited to announce that Azure Logic Apps connectors are now supported within AI Search as data sources for ingestion into Azure AI Search vector stores. This unlocks the ability to ingest unstructured documents from a variety of systems—including SharePoint, Amazon S3, Dropbox and many more —into your vector index using a low-code experience. This new capability is powered by Logic Apps templates, which orchestrate the entire ingestion pipeline—from extracting documents to embedding generation and indexing—so you can build Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) applications with ease. Grounding AI with RAG: Why Document Ingestion Matters Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has become a cornerstone technique for building grounded and trustworthy AI systems. Instead of generating answers from the model’s pretraining alone, RAG applications fetch relevant information from external knowledge bases—giving LLMs access to accurate and up-to-date enterprise data. To power RAG, enterprises need a scalable way to ingest and index documents into a vector store. Whether you're working with policy documents, legal contracts, support tickets, or financial reports, getting this content into a searchable, semantic format is step one. Simplified Ingestion with Integrated Vectorization Azure AI Search’s Integrated Vectorization capability automates the process of turning raw content into semantically indexed vectors: Chunking: Documents are split into meaningful text segments Embedding: Each chunk is transformed into a vector using an embedding model like text-embedding-3-small or a custom model Indexing: Vectors and associated metadata are written into a searchable vector store Projection: Metadata is preserved to enable filtering, ranking, and hybrid queries This eliminates the need to build or maintain custom pipelines, making it significantly easier to adopt RAG in production environments. Ingest from Anywhere: Logic Apps + AI Search With today’s release, we’re extending ingestion to a variety of new data sources by integrating Logic Apps connectors directly with AI Search. This allows you to retrieve unstructured content from enterprise systems and seamlessly ingest it into the vector store. Here’s how the ingestion process works with Logic Apps: Connect to Source Systems Using prebuilt connectors, Logic Apps can fetch content from various data sources including Sharepoint document libraries, messages from Service Bur or Azure Queues, files from OneDrive or SFTP Server and more. You can trigger ingestion on demand or at schedule. Parse and Chunk Documents Next, Logic Apps uses built-in AI-powered document parsing actions to extract raw text. This is followed by the “Chunk Document” action, which: Tokenizes the document based on language model-friendly units Splits the content into semantically coherent chunks This ensures optimal chunk size for downstream embedding and retrieval. Note – Currently we default to a chunk size of 5000 in the workflows created for document ingestion. We’ll be updating the default chunk size to a smaller number in our next release. Meanwhile, you can update it in the workflow if you need a smaller chunk size. Generate Embeddings with Azure OpenAI The chunked text is then passed to the Azure OpenAI connector, where the text-embedding-3-small or another configured embedding model is used to generate high-dimensional vector representations. These vectors capture the semantic meaning of the content and are key to enabling accurate retrieval in RAG applications. Write to Azure AI Search Finally, the embeddings, along with any relevant metadata (e.g., document title, tags, timestamps), are written into the AI Search index. The index schema is created for you ——and can include fields for filtering, sorting, and semantic ranking. Logic Apps Templates: Fast Start, Flexible Design To help you get started, we’ve created Logic Apps templates specifically for RAG ingestion. These templates: Include all the steps mentioned above Are customizable if you want to update the default configuration Whether you’re ingesting thousands of PDFs from SharePoint or syncing files from Amazon S3 bucket, these templates provide a production-grade foundation for building your pipeline. Getting Started Here is step by step detailed documentation to get started using Integrated Vectorization with Logic Apps data sources 👉 Get started with Logic Apps data sources for AI Search ingestion 👉 Learn more about Integrated Vectorization in Azure AI Search We'd Love Your Feedback We're just getting started. Tell us: What other data sources would you like to ingest? What enhancements would make ingestion easier for your use case? Are there specific industry templates or formats we should support? 👉 Reply to this post or share your ideas through our feedback form We’re building this with you—so your feedback helps shape the future of AI-powered automation and RAG.📢Announcement: Power your Agents in Azure AI Foundry Agent Service with Azure Logic Apps
We’re excited to announce the Public Preview of two major integrations that bring the power of Azure Logic Apps to AI Agents in Foundry: Logic Apps as tools: You can now use Logic Apps workflows—and their 1400+ connectors—as tools within the Azure Foundry AI Agent Service. This unlocks seamless integration between AI agents and enterprise-grade automation—enabling agents to reason and act through Logic Apps. AI Agent Service connector: A new Logic Apps connector for the AI Agent Service is now available, allowing you to build workflows that can trigger agents based on events across hundreds of applications. This enables your agents to respond proactively and continuously—bringing event-driven autonomy to your AI solutions. Checkout the blogpost for these announcements from Foundry as well. Logic Apps as tool for Agents in Foundry Logic Apps now powers the tool layer for AI Agents in Foundry Agent Service —bringing together the strengths of business process automation and intelligent reasoning. AI agents need more than powerful models to be effective—they need the ability to act and the context to act appropriately. Tools play a critical role in this: they don’t just let agents perform actions—they provide the inputs, signals, and structure that anchor the agent’s reasoning and guide consistent behavior. Well-designed tools help ensure that agents make decisions based on reliable, real-world data and aligned business rules. With over 1400+ connectors, Logic Apps lets agents tap into real-world enterprise systems—such as reading records from a SQL database, retrieving order data from an ERP system like SAP, managing support tickets in ServiceNow, or triggering actions in CRM platforms like Dynamics or Salesforce. This integration transforms agents from passive responders into intelligent actors that can take meaningful, context-aware action across your organization. Requirements for using Logic Apps as Tools To use a Logic App as a tool within the AI Agent Service, your workflow must meet the following criteria: Consumption SKU: Currently, only Logic Apps in Consumption plan are supported. Request Trigger: The workflow must begin with a Request trigger so that it can be invoked by the agent via a REST call. Tool Description: Each workflow should include a clear, concise description to help the agent understand its purpose and appropriate usage. Getting Started with Logic Apps in AI Foundry There are two ways to bring Logic Apps into your agents’ toolset. You can find step by step instructions in the docs here. To summarize, Use prebuilt Microsoft authored templates Select from a library of curated Logic Apps templates designed for agent scenarios. After selecting a template: Configure the tool’s name and description Authenticate any services used in the workflow Set required parameters Once configured, the workflow will be deployed to your selected subscription and resource group, ready to be used by your agent. Import existing workflows If you already have Logic Apps powering key operations in your business, you can import them directly: Go to the Your Actions tab Select your existing workflow Provide a name and description for agent usage This makes it easy to extend your existing APIs and business logic to AI agents—no need to start from scratch. Tool Calling Demo In this demo video we build an AI Agent that can respond to any questions about GitHub issues and send an email report about them. The opportunities to unlock scenarios are endless and we can’t wait to hear from you. Logic Apps as a trigger for Agents in Foundry We’re excited to launch the AI Agent Service connector in Logic Apps—making it easier than ever to bring autonomy to your business processes. With this connector, you can now use any Logic Apps trigger—from HTTP requests to Service Bus messages, file drops, or scheduled events—to kick off a workflow that invokes an AI agent. This means your agents can now respond to real-world events in near real time, making decisions and taking actions based on dynamic context. Whether it’s processing a new order, reviewing a document, or triaging support tickets, Logic Apps + AI Agent Service gives you the power to build truly autonomous, intelligent workflows. Start Building Ready to try it out? Check out the documentation for step-by-step guidance on using Logic Apps as tools in the AI Agent Service. We’d love to hear what you build! Try the feature and share your feedback—your input helps shape the future of AI-powered automation in Azure.Mastering Query Fields in Azure AI Document Intelligence with C#
Introduction Azure AI Document Intelligence simplifies document data extraction, with features like query fields enabling targeted data retrieval. However, using these features with the C# SDK can be tricky. This guide highlights a real-world issue, provides a corrected implementation, and shares best practices for efficient usage. Use case scenario During the cause of Azure AI Document Intelligence software engineering code tasks or review, many developers encountered an error while trying to extract fields like "FullName," "CompanyName," and "JobTitle" using `AnalyzeDocumentAsync`: The error might be similar to Inner Error: The parameter urlSource or base64Source is required. This is a challenge referred to as parameter errors and SDK changes. Most problematic code are looks like below in C#: BinaryData data = BinaryData.FromBytes(Content); var queryFields = new List<string> { "FullName", "CompanyName", "JobTitle" }; var operation = await client.AnalyzeDocumentAsync( WaitUntil.Completed, modelId, data, "1-2", queryFields: queryFields, features: new List<DocumentAnalysisFeature> { DocumentAnalysisFeature.QueryFields } ); One of the reasons this failed was that the developer was using `Azure.AI.DocumentIntelligence v1.0.0`, where `base64Source` and `urlSource` must be handled internally. Because the older examples using `AnalyzeDocumentContent` no longer apply and leading to errors. Practical Solution Using AnalyzeDocumentOptions. Alternative Method using manual JSON Payload. Using AnalyzeDocumentOptions The correct method involves using AnalyzeDocumentOptions, which streamlines the request construction using the below steps: Prepare the document content: BinaryData data = BinaryData.FromBytes(Content); Create AnalyzeDocumentOptions: var analyzeOptions = new AnalyzeDocumentOptions(modelId, data) { Pages = "1-2", Features = { DocumentAnalysisFeature.QueryFields }, QueryFields = { "FullName", "CompanyName", "JobTitle" } }; - `modelId`: Your trained model’s ID. - `Pages`: Specify pages to analyze (e.g., "1-2"). - `Features`: Enable `QueryFields`. - `QueryFields`: Define which fields to extract. Run the analysis: Operation<AnalyzeResult> operation = await client.AnalyzeDocumentAsync( WaitUntil.Completed, analyzeOptions ); AnalyzeResult result = operation.Value; The reason this works: The SDK manages `base64Source` automatically. This approach matches the latest SDK standards. It results in cleaner, more maintainable code. Alternative method using manual JSON payload For advanced use cases where more control over the request is needed, you can manually create the JSON payload. For an example: var queriesPayload = new { queryFields = new[] { new { key = "FullName" }, new { key = "CompanyName" }, new { key = "JobTitle" } } }; string jsonPayload = JsonSerializer.Serialize(queriesPayload); BinaryData requestData = BinaryData.FromString(jsonPayload); var operation = await client.AnalyzeDocumentAsync( WaitUntil.Completed, modelId, requestData, "1-2", features: new List<DocumentAnalysisFeature> { DocumentAnalysisFeature.QueryFields } ); When to use the above: Custom request formats Non-standard data source integration Key points to remember Breaking changes exist between preview versions and v1.0.0 by checking the SDK version. Prefer `AnalyzeDocumentOptions` for simpler, error-free integration by using built-In classes. Ensure your content is wrapped in `BinaryData` or use a direct URL for correct document input: Conclusion In this article, we have seen how you can use AnalyzeDocumentOptions to significantly improves how you integrate query fields with Azure AI Document Intelligence in C#. It ensures your solution is up-to-date, readable, and more reliable. Staying aware of SDK updates and evolving best practices will help you unlock deeper insights from your documents effortlessly. Reference Official AnalyzeDocumentAsync Documentation. Official Azure SDK documentation. Azure Document Intelligence C# SDK support add-on query field.Feedback Loops in GenAI with Azure Functions, Azure OpenAI and Neon serverless Postgres
Generative Feedback Loops (GFL) are focused on optimizing and improving the AI’s outputs over time through a cycle of feedback and learning based on the production data. Learn how to build GenAI solution with feedback loops using Azure OpenAI, Azure Functions and Neon Serverless Postgres
