Read how the Retrieval API gives developers a secure, compliant and scalable way to integrate enterprise content into their AI workflows. The post Microsoft 365 Copilot APIs: Unlocking enterprise knowledge for AI with the Retrieval API — Now in Public Preview appeared first on Microsoft 365 Developer Blog.  ( 26 min )

This week in Model Mondays, we focus on the Model Context Protocol (MCP) — and learn how to securely connect AI models to real-world tools and services using MCP, Azure AI Foundry, and industry-standard authorization. Read on for my recap   About Model Mondays Model Mondays is a weekly series designed to help you build your Azure AI Foundry Model IQ step by step. Here’s how it works: 5-Minute Highlights – Quick news and updates about Azure AI models and tools on Monday 15-Minute Spotlight – Deep dive into a key model, protocol, or feature on Monday 30-Minute AMA on Friday – Live Q&A with subject matter experts from Monday livestream If you want to grow your skills with the latest in AI model development, Model Mondays is the place to start. Want to follow along? Register Here - to watc…  ( 31 min )

💡 Why This Approach? Traditional deployments often include models inside the app, leading to: Large container sizes Long build times Slow cold starts Painful updates when models change With Azure Blob Storage, you can offload the model and only fetch it at runtime — reducing size, improving flexibility, and enabling easier updates. What You will Need An ML model (model.pkl, model.pt, etc.) An Azure Blob Storage account A Python web app (FastAPI, Flask, or Streamlit) Azure Web App (App Service for Python) Azure Python SDK: azure-storage-blob Step 1: Save and Upload Your Model to Blob Storage First, save your trained model locally: # PyTorch example import torch torch.save(model.state_dict(), "model.pt") Then, upload it to Azure Blob Storage: from azure.storage.blob import BlobServiceC…  ( 26 min )

Introduction Organizations enforcing Entra ID authentication on their Application Insights resources often face a sudden problem: browser-based telemetry stops flowing. This happens when local authentication is disabled — a necessary step to enforce strict identity controls — but sending data from browser environments comes with inherent security challenges, and the Application Insights JavaScript SDK is no exception. As a result, telemetry from web clients is silently dropped, leaving gaps in monitoring and frustrated teams wondering how to re-enable secure telemetry ingestion. This article provides a solution: using Azure API Management (APIM) as a secure proxy that authenticates telemetry using a managed identity before forwarding it to Application Insights. This pattern restores observ…  ( 34 min )

Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4 are now available in GitHub Copilot Chat for JetBrains IDEs and Eclipse. Model Availability✨ Claude Sonnet 4: Available for users on Pro, Pro+, Business, and Enterprise plans. Claude Opus 4: Available for users on Pro+ and Enterprise plans. For full details, please see this documentation. How to Get Started🚀 JetBrains IDEs: Click the GitHub Copilot icon –> Open GitHub Copilot Chat-> […] The post Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4 and Opus 4 Now Available in GitHub Copilot for JetBrains and Eclipse appeared first on Microsoft for Java Developers.  ( 23 min )

Shortcut transformations is a new capability in Microsoft Fabric that simplifies the process of converting raw files, starting with .CSV files, into Delta tables. This feature eliminates the need for traditional ETL pipelines, enabling users to transform data directly on top of files with minimal setup. Why use Shortcut transformations Shortcut transformations help users: What … Continue reading “Announcing Shortcut Transformations: from files to Delta tables. Always in sync, no pipelines required.”  ( 7 min )

Introduction and Motivation The explosive growth of data-driven applications has pushed distributed database systems to their limits, especially as organizations demand real-time consistency, high availability, and efficient resource utilization across global infrastructures. The CAP theorem—asserting that a distributed system can guarantee at most two out of consistency, availability, and partition tolerance—forces architects to make challenging trade-offs. Traditional distributed databases rely on static policies and heuristics, which cannot adapt to the dynamic nature of modern workloads and evolving data relationships. Recent advances in Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) offer a new paradigm for modeling and optimizing distributed systems. Unlike conventional machine learning, GNNs naturall…  ( 30 min )

We are delighted to announce the availability of the Voice Conversion (VC) feature in Azure AI Speech service, which is currently in preview. What is voice Conversion Voice Conversion (or voice changer, speech to speech conversion) is the process of transforming the voice characteristics of a given audio to a target voice speaker, and after Voice Conversion, the resulting audio reserves source audio’s linguistic content and prosody while the voice timbre sounds like the target speaker. Below is a diagram of Voice Conversion.   The purpose of Voice Conversion There are 3 reasons users need Voice Conversion functionality: Voice Conversion can replicate your content using a different voice identity while maintaining the original prosody and emotion. For instance, in education, teachers can …  ( 30 min )

Proactively manage and secure all your devices — whether they run Windows, macOS, iOS, or Android. With cross-platform analytics, multi-device queries, and in-depth troubleshooting tools, you can pinpoint problems fast and take targeted action at scale.  Even without deep technical expertise, you can generate complex queries, identify vulnerabilities, and deploy remediations — all in a few clicks. With built-in Copilot support, daily tasks like policy validation, device comparison, and risk analysis become faster, smarter, and easier to act on.  Jeremy Chapman, Director of Microsoft 365, shares how to stay ahead of potential issues and keep endpoints running smoothly.  Spot and fix performance issues before users contact support.  Use Advanced Analytics in Microsoft Intune. Check it out.…  ( 42 min )

The June 2025 release of the on-premises data gateway is (version 3000.274). What’s New Fabric pipeline – Azure database for PostgreSQL connector version 2.0 is now generally available. This new version is enhanced to support TLS 1.3, new table action – upsert, as well as the script activity in data pipeline.  Fabric pipeline – Enhanced … Continue reading “On-premises data gateway June 2025 release”  ( 6 min )

The Microsoft Fabric Extension for VS Code introduces two new features that enhance the management of Fabric items directly within the editor. Users can now perform CRUD operations on Fabric items and switch between multiple tenants easily. These updates aim to improve workflow efficiency and are based on customer feedback, inviting further suggestions for enhancement.  ( 6 min )

Introducing Dev Proxy v0.29, with a major architectural overhaul, control over language model prompts, and improved diagnostics. The post Dev Proxy v0.29 with refactored architecture, MCP server, and exposed LM prompts appeared first on Microsoft 365 Developer Blog.  ( 24 min )

Building robust, scalable AI apps is tough, especially when you want to move fast, follow best practices, and avoid being bogged down by endless setup and configuration. In this quest, you’ll discover how to accelerate your journey from prototype to production by leveraging ready-made templates and modern cloud tools. Say goodbye to decision fatigue and hello to streamlined, industry-approved workflows you can make your own. 👉 Want to catch up on the full program or grab more quests? https://aka.ms/JSAIBuildathon 💬 Got questions or want to hang with other builders? Join us on Discord — head to the #js-ai-build-a-thon channel. 🚀 What You’ll Build A fully functional AI application deployed on Azure, customized to solve a real problem that matters to you.  A codebase powered by a producti…  ( 23 min )

Building robust, scalable AI apps is tough, especially when you want to move fast, follow best practices, and avoid being bogged down by endless setup and configuration. In this quest, you’ll discover how to accelerate your journey from prototype to production by leveraging ready-made templates and modern cloud tools. Say goodbye to decision fatigue and hello to streamlined, industry-approved workflows you can make your own. 👉 Want to catch up on the full program or grab more quests? https://aka.ms/JSAIBuildathon 💬 Got questions or want to hang with other builders? Join us on Discord — head to the #js-ai-build-a-thon channel. 🚀 What You’ll Build A fully functional AI application deployed on Azure, customized to solve a real problem that matters to you.  A codebase powered by a producti…  ( 23 min )

Azure DevOps will no longer depend on the Azure Resource Manager (ARM) resource (https://management.azure.com) when you sign in or refresh Microsoft Entra access tokens. Previously, Azure DevOps required the ARM audience during sign-in and token refresh flows. This requirement meant administrators had to allow all Azure DevOps users to bypass ARM-based Conditional Access policies (CAPs) […] The post Removing Azure Resource Manager reliance on Azure DevOps sign-ins appeared first on Azure DevOps Blog.  ( 23 min )

One of the highly requested features in Microsoft Fabric is now available: the ability to encrypt data in OneLake using your own keys. As organizations face growing data volumes and tighter regulatory expectations, Customer-Managed Keys (CMK) offer a powerful way to enforce enterprise-grade security and ensure strict ownership of encryption keys and access. With Microsoft’s … Continue reading “Customer Managed Keys in OneLake: Strengthening Data Protection and Control”  ( 7 min )

We’re excited to introduce Data Source Instructions, a powerful new feature in the Fabric Data Agent that helps you get more precise, relevant answers from your structured data. What are Data Source instructions? When you use the Data Agent to ask questions in natural language, the agent must determine which data source to use and … Continue reading “New in Fabric Data Agent: Data source instructions for smarter, more accurate AI responses”  ( 6 min )

Welcome to the June 2025 update. The June 2025 Fabric update introduces several key enhancements across multiple areas. Power BI celebrates its 10th anniversary with a range of community events, contests, expert-led sessions, and special certification exam discounts. In Data Engineering, Fabric Notebooks now support integration with variable libraries in preview, empowering users to manage … Continue reading “Fabric June 2025 Feature Summary”  ( 17 min )

Special credit to Rory Preddy for creating the GitHub resource that enable us to learn more about Azure Sora. Reach him out on LinkedIn to say thanks. Introduction Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing content creation, and video generation is at the forefront of this transformation. OpenAI's Sora, a groundbreaking text-to-video model, allows creators to generate high-quality videos from simple text prompts. When paired with the powerful infrastructure of Azure AI Foundry, you can harness Sora's capabilities with scalability and efficiency, whether on a local machine or a remote setup.   In this blog post, I’ll walk you through the process of generating AI videos using Sora on Azure AI Foundry. We’ll cover the setup for both local and remote environments. Requirements: Azure AI …  ( 26 min )

We’re excited to announce a significant update to Semantic Kernel Python’s vector store implementation. Version 1.34 brings a complete overhaul that makes working with vector data simpler, more intuitive, and more powerful. This update consolidates the API, improves developer experience, and adds new capabilities that streamline AI development workflows. What Makes This Release Special? The […] The post Semantic Kernel Python Gets a Major Vector Store Upgrade appeared first on Semantic Kernel.  ( 25 min )

Surface the highest-risk alerts across your environment, no matter their default severity, and take action. Customize how your agents reason, teach them what matters to your organization, and continuously refine to reduce time-to-resolution.    Talhah Mir, Microsoft Purview Principal GPM, shows how to triage, investigate, and contain potential data risks before they escalate.  Focus on the most high-risk alerts in your queue.  Save time by letting Alert Triage Agents for DLP and IRM surface what matters. Watch how it works. Stay in control.  Tailor triage priorities with your own rules to focus on what really matters. See how to customize your alert triage agent using Security Copilot. View alert triage agent efficiency stats.  Know what your agent is doing and how well it’s performing…  ( 28 min )

It’s been almost 3 months since we announced OneLake security at FabCon 2025 in Las Vegas, and while the interest has not slowed down, we’ve also been working behind the scenes to improve the feature and address your feedback. In this blog post, we’ll go through some of the latest updates on OneLake security including … Continue reading “OneLake security – updates and news”  ( 6 min )

We’re excited to announce that one of our most-requested features is officially in Public Preview: You can now create Dev Boxes on behalf of your developers. Waiting around to get started is a thing of the past.  Whether you’re onboarding a new hire, running a hackathon, or setting up for a customer demo, this feature makes it […] The post 🎉 Now in Public Preview: Create Dev Boxes on Behalf of Your Developers  appeared first on Develop from the cloud.  ( 23 min )

Authors: Joel Borellis, Mohamad Al Jazaery, Hwasu Kim, Kira Soderstrom  Github Link  This repository is a great starting point. It demonstrates deploying an MCP server with Azure Container Apps and includes three example clients, each using a different agent framework to interact with the server. What’s Inside MCP Server with Sport News ToolsThe sample server, built using the fastmcp package, exposes tools like “Get NFL News”. It supports API key authentication and is designed to be easily extended with additional tools or data sources. You can run it locally or deploy it to Azure Container Apps for scalable, cloud-native hosting.   Three Client SamplesEach example demonstrates how different agent frameworks can consume tools from the MCP server. All the examples use Azure-OpenAI as a…  ( 25 min )

In app-only access scenarios, Shifts Management Graph APIs previously required the MS-APP-ACTS-AS: userId header to indicate the user on whose behalf the application was acting. However, this conflicted with the Microsoft Graph permission model where there is no signed-in user for app-only access scenarios. To align Shifts Graph APIs with this model, the MS-APP-ACTS-AS header […] The post Deprecation of MS-APP-ACTS-AS header in Shifts Management Microsoft Graph APIs appeared first on Microsoft 365 Developer Blog.  ( 24 min )

We’re excited to announce a major enhancement to the deployment experience for Strapi on Azure App Service. Building on the foundation laid out in our  overview, quick start, and FAQ , this update introduces automated and secure secrets management using Azure Key Vault. What’s New? The updated ARM template now provisions an Azure Key Vault instance alongside your Strapi application. This integration enables secure storage of sensitive credentials such as database passwords and Strapi-specific secrets. Here’s what makes this enhancement powerful: Secure by Default: Public access to the Key Vault is disabled out of the box. Instead, private endpoints are configured to ensure secure communication within your virtual network. Auto-Generated Secrets: Strapi secrets are now automatically genera…  ( 24 min )

In our previous blog post Inline Scalar user-defined functions in Microsoft Fabric Warehouse (Preview) we have announced the availability of SQL native scalar UDFs. We also emphasized the importance of inlining and how that can affect scenarios in which UDF can be used. In this post, we aim to highlight common patterns that prevent inlining … Continue reading “How to make your SQL scalar user-defined function (UDF) inlineable in Microsoft Fabric Warehouse “  ( 9 min )

SQL native Scalar user-defined functions (UDFs) in Microsoft Fabric Warehouse and SQL analytics endpoint are now in preview. A scalar UDF is a custom code implemented in T-SQL that accepts parameters, performs an action such as complex calculation, and returns a result of that action as a single value. They can contain local variables, calls … Continue reading “Inline Scalar user-defined functions (UDFs) in Microsoft Fabric Warehouse (Preview)”  ( 8 min )

The JS AI Build-a-thon is in full swing — and we’re turning up the power in Quest 7!If you're just joining us, this is part of an ongoing challenge to help JavaScript and TypeScript developers build AI-powered apps from scratch. Catch up here and join the conversation on Discord.   Last quest, you dipped your toes into agentic development — giving your AI the ability to act and reason.This time, we’re taking it further. In Quest 7, you’ll explore the Model Context Protocol (MCP) — a growing protocol in Agentic development that unlocks standardized tool-usage in AI agents via an MCP server. Available tools for the OS Patrol agent 🎯 What You’ll Build This quest is all about connecting your AI agent to tools that do real things.You’ll: Create and spin up an MCP server using the MCP TypeScri…  ( 25 min )

Let’s face it. Sometimes your Dev Box just… hangs around too long. Whether you’ve moved to a new project, left the company, want to create a new dev box with the latest tools, it’s time to clean things up. 🎯 With Dev Box Auto-Deletion now in public preview, offboarding just got a whole lot easier. […] The post 💻 Spring Cleaning for Dev Boxes: Mastering Manual & Automatic Offboarding appeared first on Develop from the cloud.  ( 24 min )

About Model Mondays Want to know what Reasoning models are and how you can build advanced reasoning scenarios like a Deep Research agent using Azure AI Foundry? Check out this recap from Model Mondays Season 2 Ep 1. Model Mondays is a weekly series to help you build your model IQ in three steps:1. Catch the 5-min Highlights on Monday, to get up to speed on model news2. Catch the 15-min Spotlight on Monday, for a deep-dive into a model or tool3. Catch the 30-min AMA on Friday, for a Q&A session with subject matter experts Want to follow along? Register Here- to watch upcoming livestreams for Season 2 Visit The Forum- to see the full AMA schedule for Season 2 Register Here - to join the AMA on Friday Jun 20 Spotlight On: Advanced Reasoning This week, the Model Mondays spotlight was on Adv…  ( 31 min )

If you're curious about building AI solutions but don’t know where to start, Microsoft’s AI Toolkit is a great place to begin. Whether you’re a student, developer, or just someone exploring AI for the first time, this toolkit helps you build real-world solutions using Microsoft’s powerful AI services. In this blog, I’ll Walk you through what the AI Toolkit is, how you can get started, and where you can find helpful demos and ready-to-use code samples. What is the AI Toolkit? The AI Toolkit is a collection of tools, templates, and sample apps that make it easier to build AI-powered applications and copilots using Microsoft Azure. With the AI Toolkit, you can: Build intelligent apps without needing deep AI expertise. Use templates and guides that show you how everything works. Quickly proto…  ( 24 min )

Table of Contents Abstract Introduction Using Ansys Access with Azure NetApp Files Architecture Diagram Ansys Redhawk Scenario Details Overview and Context HPC Simulation Environment Cloud Shift Drivers Why Azure NetApp Files Capacity and Scale Fits for Ansys Access to support RedHawk-SC Use Cases Power Integrity Simulations Transient Simulations with Frequent Checkpoints Multiple Concurrent Simulation Runs End-to-End Engineering Workflows Azure Well-Architected Pillars And Considerations Performance Efficiency Parallel I/O and Low Latency Large Volumes Dynamic Service Levels and Volume Resizing Protocol Optimization Performance Isolation and QoS Cluster Right-Sizing Cost Optimization Pay-As-You-Go Model Storage Efficiency for data protection Reserved Capacity Tiering for Cold Data Archiva…  ( 41 min )

As organizations scale their development efforts, managing access to cloud resources becomes critical. Platform engineers need to strike a balance between enforcing governance and enabling developer agility. At Build 2025, we announced the general availability of project policies in Microsoft Dev Box, which provides a powerful way to improve resource control and governance for cloud […] The post Balance governance and flexibility with Dev Box project policies appeared first on Develop from the cloud.  ( 24 min )

Cost is one of the most important concerns in any cloud-native rollout. IT admins need powerful tools to control costs without slowing development. At Build 2025, we were excited to announce the general availability of hibernation in Microsoft Dev Box. This feature empowers platform engineers to optimize resource usage while empowering developers to get what […] The post Control cloud costs with Dev Box hibernation features appeared first on Develop from the cloud.  ( 23 min )

Our Team (Sorted Alphabetically): Ashkan Allahyari| ashkan.allahayri@ru.nl Ole Bekker| ole.bekker2@ru.nl Robin Elster| robin.elster@ru.nl Waad Hegazy| waad.hegazy@ru.nl Lea Hierl| lea.hierl@ru.nl Linda Pham| linda.pham@ru.nl  Master Business Analysis & Modelling, Radboud University Master Strategic Human Resources Leadership, Radboud University Student Exchange at Radboud University Project Overview At Radboud University, our team in the course Data-Driven Analytics for Responsible Business Solutions, embraced a unique opportunity to apply our passion for data analytics to a real-world challenge. Tasked with analyzing employee turnover at VenturaGear—a company committed to fostering a thriving workplace—we conducted an in-depth study to uncover the root causes of attrition. By le…  ( 36 min )

What is the Root Cert API? The Root Cert API allows customers to programmatically add root certificates to their ASE, making them available during the startup of apps. Root certificates are public certificates that identify a root certificate authority (CA). These are essential for establishing trust in secure communications. By adding root certificates to your ASE, all web apps hosted within that ASE will have them installed in their root store. This ensures that apps can securely communicate with internal services or APIs that use certificates issued by private or enterprise CAs. Previously, this functionality was only available in private preview through a workaround involving certificate uploads and a special app setting and included a number of limitations. With the new Root Cert API,…  ( 27 min )

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is rapidly becoming the prominent framework for building truly agentic, interoperable AI applications.   Many articles document MCP servers for single-server use, this project stands out as the starter template that combines Azure OpenAI integration with a Multi-Server MCP architecture on a custom interface, enabling you to connect and orchestrate multiple tool servers—through a customized UI.   Here, we will deep dive into Multi Server MCP implementation, connecting both local custom and ready MCP Servers in a single client session through the MultiServerMCP library from Langchain adapters, enabling agentic orchestration across different domains. While most triggers to OOB MCP servers leveraged Github Copilot for input, this project allows for custom app i…  ( 31 min )

In 2022, we announced the deprecation of LUIS by September 30, 2025 with a recommendation to migrate to conversational language understanding (CLU). In response to feedback from our valued customers, we have decided to extend the availability of certain functionalities in LUIS until March 31, 2026. This extension aims to support our customers in their smooth migration to CLU, ensuring minimal disruption to their operations.  Extension Details  Here are some details on when and how the LUIS functionality will change:  October 2022: LUIS resource creation is no longer available. October 31, 2025: The LUIS portal will no longer be available.  LUIS Authoring (via REST API only) will continue to be available. March 31, 2026: LUIS Authoring, including via REST API, will no longer be available.  LUIS Runtime will no longer be available.  Before these retirement dates, please migrate to conversational language understanding (CLU), a capability of Azure AI Service for Language. CLU provides many of the same capabilities as LUIS, plus enhancements such as:  Enhanced AI quality using state-of-the-art machine learning models  The LLM-powered Quick Deploy feature to deploy a CLU model with no training Multilingual capabilities that allow you to train in one language and predict in 99+ others  Built-in routing between conversational language understanding and custom question answering projects using orchestration workflow  Access to a suite of features available on Azure AI Service for Language in the Azure AI Foundry  Looking Ahead  On March 31, 2026, LUIS will be fully deprecated, and any LUIS inferencing requests will return an error message. We encourage all our customers to complete their migration to CLU as soon as possible to avoid any disruptions.  We appreciate your understanding and cooperation as we work together to ensure a smooth migration.   Thank you for your continued support and trust in our services.  ( 21 min )

Introduction As sustainability becomes a core priority for organizations worldwide, Azure Migrate now empowers customers to quantify environmental impact alongside cost savings when planning their cloud journey. With the new Sustainability Benefits capability in Azure Migrate's Business Case, customers can now view estimated emissions savings when migrating from on-premises environments to Azure — making sustainability a first-class consideration in cloud transformation. Align with Global Sustainability Goals With governments and enterprises racing to meet net-zero targets — including a 55% emissions reduction target by 2030 in the EU and net-zero goals in the US and UK by 2050 — cloud migration offers a meaningful path to emissions reduction. With Azure’s carbon-efficient infrastructure p…  ( 25 min )

What is Azure AI Foundry and Foundry Local? Azure AI Foundry is Microsoft’s comprehensive platform for enterprise AI development and deployment, enabling organizations to build, customize, and operate AI solutions at scale. It provides tools, services, and infrastructure to develop, fine-tune and deploy AI models in production environments with enterprise-grade security and compliance. Foundry Local […] The post Connect Spring AI to Local AI Models with Foundry Local appeared first on Microsoft for Java Developers.  ( 25 min )

A few weeks ago at BUILD, we announced the upcoming Azure DevOps MCP Server: 👉 Azure DevOps with GitHub Repositories – Your path to Agentic AI Today, we’re excited to share that the local Azure DevOps MCP Server is now available in public preview. This lets GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code […] The post Azure DevOps MCP Server, Public Preview appeared first on Azure DevOps Blog.  ( 23 min )

Promoting an application or infrastructure change into production often comes with a requirement to follow a change control process. This ensures that changes to production are properly reviewed and that they adhere to required approvals, change windows and QA process. Often this change request (CR) process will be conducted using a system for recording and auditing the change request and the outcome. When deploying a release, there will often be places in the process to go through this change control workflow. This may be as part of a release pipeline, it may be managed in a pull request or it may be a manual process. Ultimately, by the time the actual changes are made to production infrastructure or applications, they should already be approved. This relies on the appropriate controls an…  ( 40 min )

TLDR Create an Azure Kubernetes Service cluster with GPU nodes and connect it to Azure Machine Learning to run distributed ML training workloads. This integration provides a managed data science platform while maintaining Kubernetes flexibility under the hood, enables multi-node training that spans multiple GPUs, and bridges the gap between infrastructure and ML teams. The solution works for both new and existing clusters, supporting specialized GPU hardware and hybrid scenarios. Why Should You Care? Integrating Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) clusters with GPUs into Azure Machine Learning (AML) offers several key benefits: Utilize existing infrastructure: Leverage your existing AKS clusters with GPUs via a managed data science platform like AML Flexible resource sharing: Allow both AKS wo…  ( 34 min )

Co-author: Alexei Robsky, Data Scientist Manager Overview  As organizations increasingly rely on real-time data to drive decisions, the need for intelligent, responsive systems has never been greater. At the heart of this transformation is Fabric Real-Time Intelligence (RTI), a platform that empowers users to act on data as it arrives. Today, we’re excited to announce … Continue reading “Introducing MCP Support for Real-Time Intelligence (RTI) “  ( 7 min )

The Eventstreams artifact in the Microsoft Fabric Real-Time Intelligence experience lets you bring real-time events into Fabric, transform them, and then route them to various destinations such as Eventhouse, without writing any code (no-code). You can ingest data from an Eventstream to Eventhouse seamlessly either from Eventstream artifact or Eventhouse Get Data Wizard. This capability … Continue reading “Fabric Eventhouse now supports Eventstream Derived Streams in Direct Ingestion mode (Preview)”  ( 7 min )

Have you ever found yourself frustrated by inconsistent item creation? Maybe you’ve struggled to select the right workspace or folder when creating a new item or ended up with a cluttered workspace due to accidental item creation. We hear you—and we’re excited to introduce the new item creation experience in Fabric! This update is designed … Continue reading “Introducing new item creation experience in Fabric”  ( 6 min )

We’re excited to announce Surge Protection for background operations is now Generally Available (GA). Using surge protection, capacity admins can limit overuse by background operations in their capacities.  ( 6 min )

Scenario Once a loan application is submitted, financial institutions must process a variety of supporting documents—including pay stubs, tax returns, credit reports, and bank statements—before a loan can be approved. This post-application phase is often fragmented and manual, involving data retrieval from multiple systems, document verification, eligibility calculations, packet compilation, and signing. Each step typically requires coordination between underwriters, compliance teams, and loan processors, which can stretch the processing time to several weeks. This solution automates the post-application loan processing workflow using Azure services and Generative AI agents. Intelligent agents retrieve and validate applicant data, extract and summarize document contents, calculate loan eli…  ( 42 min )

The June 2025 release includes Copilot chat tools in the Python extension, project creation from a template, language server based terminal suggest, and more! The post Python in Visual Studio Code – June 2025 Release appeared first on Microsoft for Python Developers Blog.  ( 24 min )

Result Set Caching is now available in preview for Microsoft Fabric Data Warehouse and Lakehouse SQL analytics endpoint. This performance optimization works transparently to cache the results of eligible T-SQL queries. When the same query is issued again, it directly retrieves the stored result, instead of recompiling and recomputing the original query. This operation drastically … Continue reading “Result Set Caching for Microsoft Fabric Data Warehouse (Preview)”  ( 6 min )

In this quest, you'll teach your AI app to talk to external data using the Retreival Augmented Generation (RAG) technique. You'll overcome the limitations of pre-trained language models by allowing them to reference your own data, using it as context to deliver accurate, fact-based responses.   👉 Want to catch up on the full program or grab more quests? https://aka.ms/JSAIBuildathon 💬 Got questions or want to hang with other builders? Join us on Discord — head to the #js-ai-build-a-thon channel. 🔧 What You’ll Build In this quest, you’ll: Connect your AI app to external documents (like PDFs) Allow your app to “read” and respond using your real-world content Why does this matter? Because LLMs are powerful, but they don’t know your business, reports, or research papers, etc. With RAG, yo…  ( 25 min )

Prompty is a powerful tool for managing prompts in AI applications. Not only does it allow you to easily test your prompts during development, but it also provides observability, understandability and portability. Here's how to use Prompty with Foundry Local to support your AI applications with on-device inference. Foundry Local At the Build '25 conference, Microsoft announced Foundry Local, a new tool that allows developers to run AI models locally on their devices. Foundry Local offers developers several benefits, including performance, privacy, and cost savings. Why Prompty? When you build AI applications with Foundry Local, but also other language model hosts, consider using Prompty to manage your prompts. With Prompty, you store your prompts in separate files, making it easy to test a…  ( 27 min )

The Fashion Trends Discovery Scenario In this walkthrough, we'll explore a sample application that demonstrates the power of combining Computer Use (CUA) models with Playwright browser automation to autonomously compile trend information from the internet, while leveraging MCP integration to intelligently catalog and store insights in Azure Blob Storage. The User Experience A fashion analyst simply provides a query like "latest trends in sustainable fashion" to our command-line interface. What happens next showcases the power of agentic AI—the system requires no further human intervention to: Autonomous Web Navigation: The agent launches Pinterest, intelligently locates search interfaces, and performs targeted queries Intelligent Content Discovery: Systematically identifies and interacts …  ( 43 min )

Let me walk you through 12 features that have become indispensable in my daily coding life. Understanding Code Changes & History Inline Blame Annotations: GitLens adds small annotations at the end of each line of code, showing who last modified that line, when, and in which commit. This feature provides instant context about the code's history without leaving your editor. While working on an e-commerce platform's checkout process, I noticed an unexpected behavior. With inline blame, I quickly identified that the change was introduced in a recent sprint, saving hours of backtracking.  Heatmap: This feature adds a color-coded heatmap to the scroll bar, visually representing the age of the code. Newer changes appear in warmer colors, while older code is shown in cooler colors, helping you q…  ( 30 min )

In this quest, you’ll give your Gen AI prototype a polished chat interface using Vite and Lit. Along the way, you’ll also manage application infrastructure with Bicep and Azure Developer CLI (azd), making your prototype more structured and ready for deployment. This step is all about UX, making your AI prototype not just functional, but interactive and user-friendly. 👉 Want to catch up on the full program or grab more quests? https://aka.ms/JSAIBuildathon 💬 Got questions or want to hang with other builders? Join us on Discord — head to the #js-ai-build-a-thon channel. 🔧 What You’ll Build By the end of this quest, you’ll have: A chat UI built with Vite and Lit  A structured codebase with infrastructure-as-code (IaC) using Bicep  Seamless local deployment workflow using the Azure Develop…  ( 26 min )

Over the course of the last year, we have launched several Cohere models on Azure as Serverless Standard (pay-go) offering. We’re excited to announce that Cohere's latest models—Command A, Rerank 3.5, and Embed 4—are now available on Azure AI Foundry models via Managed Compute.   This launch allows enterprises and developers to now deploy Cohere models instantly with their own Azure quota, with per-hour GPU pricing that compensates the model provider—unlocking a scalable, low-friction path to production-ready GenAI.    What is Managed Compute?  Managed Compute is a deployment option within Azure AI Foundry Models that lets you run large language models (LLMs), SLMs, HuggingFace models and custom models fully hosted on Azure infrastructure.    Why Use Managed Compute?  Azure Managed Compute…  ( 23 min )

Introduction Quarkus is a general-purpose Java framework focused on efficient use of resources, fast startup, and rapid development. It allows developers to create and run services in the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) or native binary executables (native mode). In this blog post we are going to focus on using Quarkus to create and monitor a […] The post Monitor your Quarkus native application on Azure appeared first on Microsoft for Java Developers.  ( 25 min )

This post goes over situations where you may notice jobs being terminated or stopped briefly and some things that can be done to help alleviate interruptions.  ( 7 min )

Introduction Integrating Azure API Management (APIM) with Microsoft Fabric’s API for GraphQL can significantly enhance your API’s capabilities by providing robust scalability and security features such as identity management, rate limiting, and caching. This post will guide you through the process of setting up and configuring these features. You may not be familiar with API … Continue reading “Integrating Azure API Management with Fabric API for GraphQL”  ( 8 min )

Introduction Whether you’re building analytics pipelines or conversational AI systems, the risk of exposing sensitive data is real. AI models trained on unfiltered datasets can inadvertently memorize and regurgitate PII, leading to compliance violations and reputational damage. This blog explores how to build scalable, secure, and compliant data workflows using PySpark, Microsoft Presidio, and Faker—covering … Continue reading “Privacy by Design: PII Detection and Anonymization with PySpark on Microsoft Fabric”  ( 9 min )

📍 Milano, Sala Luigiana @ Coperni.co Centrale - Via Copernico 38📅 17 Giugno 2025 dalle 9:00 alle 17:30🧠 Focus: AI Agents per sviluppatori, ricercatori, imprenditori e professionisti IT La serie globale AgentCon – AI Agents World Tour arriva a Milano per una giornata interamente dedicata a chi costruisce il futuro con l’intelligenza artificiale. Dopo il successo delle tappe internazionali in Kenya, Olanda e Brasile, il tour approda in Italia per offrire contenuti tecnici, demo dal vivo e networking con esperti del settore. Perché partecipare? AgentCon non è una conferenza qualsiasi. È il luogo dove si parla di casi d'uso concreti e esempi pratici di codice. L’evento è pensato per sviluppatori, architetti software, data scientist e professionisti IT che vogliono andare oltre i modelli e s…  ( 22 min )

Earlier this year, we released AI functions in public preview, allowing Fabric customers to apply LLM-powered transformations to OneLake data simply and seamlessly, in a single line of code. Since then, we’ve continued iterating on AI functions in response to your feedback. Let’s explore the latest updates, which make AI functions more powerful, more cost-effective, … Continue reading “Introducing upgrades to AI functions for better performance—and lower costs”  ( 7 min )

Introduction Let’s take a closer look at an exciting development in the AI space. Embedding models are the key to transforming complex data into usable insights, driving innovations like smarter chatbots and tailored recommendations. With Azure AI Foundry, Microsoft’s powerful platform, you’ve got the tools to build and scale these models effortlessly. Add in Open Web UI, a intuitive interface for engaging with AI systems, and you’ve got a winning combo that’s hard to beat. In this article, we’ll explore how embedding models on Azure AI Foundry, paired with Open Web UI, are paving the way for accessible and impactful AI solutions for developers and businesses. Let’s dive in!   To proceed with configuring the embedding model from Azure AI Foundry on Open Web UI, please firstly configure the…  ( 24 min )

Today we are releasing patches that impact the latest version of our self-hosted product, Azure DevOps Server. We strongly encourage and recommend that all customers use the latest, most secure release of Azure DevOps Server. You can download the latest version of the product, Azure DevOps Server 2022.2 from the Azure DevOps Server download page. […] The post June Patches for Azure DevOps Server appeared first on Azure DevOps Blog.  ( 22 min )

Enforce MFA, block legacy authentication, and apply risk-based Conditional Access policies to reduce exposure from stale accounts and weak authentication methods. Use built-in tools for user, group, and device administration to detect and clean up identity sprawl — like unused credentials, inactive accounts, and expired apps — before they become vulnerabilities.  Jeremy Chapman, Microsoft 365 Director, shares steps to clean up your directory, strengthen authentication, and improve overall identity security.  Prioritize top risks.  Take action across MFA, risk policies, and stale objects with Microsoft Entra recommendations. Start here. Block over 99% of identity attacks.  Enforce MFA for admins and users in Microsoft Entra. Detect and delete stale user accounts.  See how to fix account …  ( 45 min )

The Azure Incubations team is proud to share that Drasi has officially been accepted into the Cloud Native Computing Foundation Sandbox. The post Drasi accepted into CNCF sandbox for change-driven solutions  appeared first on Microsoft Open Source Blog.  ( 13 min )

With Azure Container Apps we can run containerized applications, completely serverless. The platform itself handles all the orchestration needed to dynamically scale based on your set triggers (such as KEDA) and even scale-to-zero! I have been working a lot with customers recently on using Azure API Management (APIM) and the topic of how we can leverage Azure APIM to manage our internal APIs without having to expose a public IP and stay within compliance from a security standpoint, which leads to the use of a Self-Hosted Gateway. This offers a managed gateway deployed within their network, allowing a unified approach in managing their APIs while keeping all API communication in-network. The self-hosted gateway is deployed as a container and in this article, we will go through how to provis…  ( 27 min )

Migrating applications to the cloud or modernizing infrastructure requires thorough preparation. Whether it’s a cloud platform, a new data center, or a hybrid infrastructure — is a complex process. While organizations focus on optimizing performance, costs, and scalability, security often takes a backseat, leading to potential risks post-migration. One crucial step before migration is conducting a pre-migration scan to identify security vulnerabilities, licensing risks, and code quality issues. Several tools help in pre-migration scanning, including Blackduck, Coverity, Gitleaks, and Semgrep. In this article, we will explore the role of these tools in migration readiness. Why Perform a Pre-Migration Scan? When an application moves from an on-premises environment to the cloud, it interacts…  ( 31 min )

We're thrilled to announce the Public Preview of Azure Migrate Explore with an AI assistant! This exciting update enhances our existing Azure Migrate Explore (AME) utility, making migration assessments smarter, faster, and more impactful. What is Azure Migrate? Azure Migrate serves as a comprehensive hub designed to simplify the migration journey of on-premises infrastructure, including servers, databases, and web applications, to Azure Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) targets at scale. It provides a unified platform with a suite of tools and features to help you identify the best migration path, assess Azure readiness, estimate the cost of hosting workloads on Azure, and execute the migration with minimal downtime and risk. Revolutionizing Executive Pres…  ( 22 min )

Microsoft and F5 are collaborating on Phase 2 of the OpenTelemetry with Apache Arrow project. The post Microsoft and F5 join forces on OpenTelemetry with Apache Arrow in Rust appeared first on Microsoft Open Source Blog.  ( 12 min )

Add deep AI integration with built-in vector search and DiskANN optimizations, plus native support for large object JSON and new Change Event Streaming for live data updates.  Join and analyze data faster with the Lakehouse shortcuts in Microsoft Fabric that unify multiple databases — across different SQL Server versions, clouds, and on-prem — into a single, logical schema without moving data. Build intelligent apps, automate workflows, and unlock rich insights with Copilot and the unified Microsoft data platform, including seamless Microsoft Fabric integration, all while leveraging your existing SQL skills and infrastructure.  Bob Ward, lead SQL engineer, joins Jeremy Chapman to share how the latest SQL Server 2025 innovations simplify building complex, high-performance workloads with les…  ( 57 min )

We’re excited to announce that the long-awaited refresh SQL analytics endpoint metadata REST API is now available in preview. You can now programmatically trigger a refresh of your SQL analytics endpoint to keep tables in sync with any changes made in the parent artifact, ensuring that you can keep your data up to date as needed. … Continue reading “Refresh SQL analytics endpoint Metadata REST API (Preview)”  ( 6 min )

Debugging your code is a big deal, especially when you’re working with user data functions. You want to make sure everything works as it should and that’s where local debugging lets you catch problems in your code without messing with the live environment. In this blog post, I’ll walk you through the steps to make local debugging easier, faster, and less of a headache.  ( 7 min )

Artificial Intelligence is evolving, and so are the ways we build intelligent agents. On a recent Microsoft YouTube Live session, developers and AI enthusiasts gathered to explore the power of custom tools in AI agents using Azure AI Studio. The session walked through concepts, use cases, and a live demo that showed how integrating custom tools can bring a new level of intelligence and adaptability to your applications. 🎥 Watch the full session here:  https://www.youtube.com/live/MRpExvcdxGs?si=X03wsQxQkkshEkOT What Are AI Agents with Custom Tools? AI agents are essentially smart workflows that can reason, plan, and act — powered by large language models (LLMs). While built-in tools like search, calculator, or web APIs are helpful, custom tools allow developers to tailor agents for busin…  ( 23 min )

Part of the JS AI Build-a-thon, this quest is where the rubber meets the road. Whether you're here to explore the raw power of local models or just curious what Generative AI looks like under the hood, this guide is for you. 👉 Want to catch up on the full program or grab more quests? Start here💬 Got questions or just want to hang with other builders? Join us on Discord — head to the #js-ai-build-a-thon channel. 🧩 What You’ll Build in This Quest   In this quest, you’ll build a fully working local Gen AI prototype — no cloud APIs, no credits needed. You’ll explore the GitHub Models catalog, run local inference using an open model, and convert a hand-drawn UI sketch into a working webpage. Along the way, you’ll get hands-on with AI developer tooling built right into Visual Studio Code. Wh…  ( 31 min )

Part of the JS AI Build-a-thon, this quest is where the rubber meets the road. Whether you're here to explore the raw power of local models or just curious what Generative AI looks like under the hood, this guide is for you. 👉 Want to catch up on the full program or grab more quests? Start here💬 Got questions or just want to hang with other builders? Join us on Discord — head to the #js-ai-build-a-thon channel. 🧩 What You’ll Build in This Quest   In this quest, you’ll build a fully working local Gen AI prototype — no cloud APIs, no credits needed. You’ll explore the GitHub Models catalog, run local inference using an open model, and convert a hand-drawn UI sketch into a working webpage. Along the way, you’ll get hands-on with AI developer tooling built right into Visual Studio Code. Wh…  ( 31 min )

Want to build next-gen apps using AI and JavaScript (or TypeScript)? The JS AI Build-a-thon is your launchpad — a hands-on, quest-driven journey designed to take you from curious coder to AI-powered app builder. It’s self-paced, community-backed, and packed with real-world use cases. No fluff. Just code, context, and creative exploration. 👾 Ready to roll? Here's your setup guide: 🔧 Step 1: Start Your Journey Head to aka.ms/JSAIBuild-a-thon and find the GitHub repository. Before you hit “Start Course,” take a moment to scroll through the README — it’s packed with useful info, including a global list of Study Jams where you can connect with other developers learning alongside you. Find one near you or join virtually to level up with the community. Screenshot off available study jams Once y…  ( 25 min )

Overview Azure VMware Solution is a VMware validated first party Azure service from Microsoft that provides private clouds containing VMware vSphere clusters built from dedicated bare-metal Azure infrastructure. It enables customers to leverage their existing investments in VMware skills and tools, allowing them to focus on developing and running their VMware-based workloads on Azure. VMware HCX is the mobility and migration software used by the Azure VMware Solution to connect remote VMware vSphere environments to the Azure VMware Solution. These remote VMware vSphere environments can be on-premises, co-location or cloud-based instances.     Figure 1 – Azure VMware Solution with VMware HCX Service Mesh Broadcom has announced the end-of-life (EOL) for VMware HCX version 4.10.x, effective …  ( 27 min )

We are pleased to announce that Azure VMware Solution is now available in Korea Central. Now in 34 Azure regions, Azure VMware Solution empowers you to seamlessly extend or migrate existing VMware workloads to Azure without the cost, effort or risk of re-architecting applications or retooling operations.  Azure VMware Solution supports: Rapid cloud migration of VMware-based workloads to Azure without refactoring. Datacenter exit while maintaining operational consistency for the VMware environment. Business continuity and disaster recovery for on-premises VMware environments. Attach Azure services and innovate applications at your own pace. Includes the VMware technology stack and lets you leverage existing Microsoft licenses for Windows Server and SQL Server. For updates on current and upcoming region availability, visit the product by region page here.   Streamline migration with new offers and licensing benefits, including a 20% discount. We recently announced the VMware Rapid Migration Plan, where Microsoft provides a comprehensive set of licensing benefits and programs to give you price protection and savings as you migrate to Azure VMware Solution. Azure VMware Solution is a great first step to the cloud for VMware customers, and this plan can help you get there. Learn More  ( 19 min )

Use Cases: From Automation to Edge AI   Generative AI is transforming industries through: Content creation, summarization, and translation Customer engagement via chatbots and personalization Edge deployment for low-latency, privacy-sensitive applications Domain-specific tasks like legal, medical, or technical document processing LLMs vs. SLMs: Choosing the Right Fit FeatureLLMsSLMs ParametersBillions (e.g., GPT-4)Millions PerformanceHigh accuracy, nuanced understandingFast, efficient for simpler tasks DeploymentCloud-based, resource-intensiveIdeal for edge and mobile CostHigh compute and energyCost-effective SLMs are increasingly viable thanks to optimized runtimes and hardware, making them perfect for on-device AI. Azure AI Foundry: Your AI Launchpad Azure AI Foundry offers: A model catalogue with open-source and proprietary models   Tools for fine-tuning, evaluation, and deployment Integration with GitHub, VS Code, and Azure DevOps Support for both cloud and local inferencing Local AI: The Edge Advantage With tools like Foundry Local and Windows AI Foundry, developers can: Run models on-device with ONNX Runtime Use APIs for summarization, translation, and more Optimize for CPU, GPU, and NPU Ensure privacy, low latency, and offline capability Customization: RAG vs. Fine-Tuning FeatureRAGFine-Tuning Knowledge UpdatesDynamicStatic InterpretabilityHighLow LatencyHigherLower Hallucination RiskLowerModerate Use CaseReal-time, external dataDomain-specific tasks Both methods enhance model relevance RAG by retrieving external data, and fine-tuning by adapting model weights. Developer Resources Get started with: Foundry Local SDK Windows AI Foundry | Microsoft Developer AI Toolkit for VS Code Windows ML Azure AI Learn Courses Join the Azure AI Discord Community  ( 21 min )

As organizations continue to strengthen their security posture, restricting usage of personal access tokens (PATs) has become a critical area of focus. With the latest public preview of the Restrict personal access token creation policy in Azure DevOps, Project Collection Administrators (PCAs) now have another powerful tool to reduce unnecessary PAT usage and enforce tighter […] The post Restricting PAT Creation in Azure DevOps Is Now in Preview appeared first on Azure DevOps Blog.  ( 25 min )

Orchestrate multi-agent apps and high-scale inference solutions using open-source and proprietary models, no infrastructure management needed. With Azure, connect frameworks like Semantic Kernel to models from DeepSeek, Llama, OpenAI’s GPT-4o, and Sora, without provisioning GPUs or writing complex scheduling logic. Just submit your prompt and assets, and the models do the rest. Using Azure’s Model as a Service, access cutting-edge models, including brand-new releases like DeepSeek R1 and Sora, as managed APIs with autoscaling and built-in security. Whether you’re handling bursts of demand, fine-tuning models, or provisioning compute, Azure provides the capacity, efficiency, and flexibility you need. With industry-leading AI silicon, including H100s, GB200s, and advanced cooling, your solut…  ( 57 min )

In the world of software development, flexibility and adaptability are key. Developers often face challenges when it comes to updating plugin metadata dynamically without disrupting services or requiring redeployment. This is where SemanticPluginForge, an open-source project, steps in to improve the way we manage plugin metadata. LLM Function Calling Feature The function calling feature in LLMs […] The post Enhancing Plugin Metadata Management with SemanticPluginForge appeared first on Semantic Kernel.  ( 25 min )

Smarter SK Agents with Contextual Function Selection In today’s fast-paced AI landscape, developers are constantly seeking ways to make AI interactions more efficient and relevant. The new Contextual Function Selection feature in the Semantic Kernel Agent Framework is here to address this need. By dynamically selecting and advertising only the most relevant functions based on […] The post Smarter SK Agents with Contextual Function Selection appeared first on Semantic Kernel.  ( 24 min )

As data volume and complexity soar, protecting sensitive information has become non-negotiable. With the latest enhancements to Purview Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Policies in Microsoft Fabric, organizations now have the power to proactively secure their data in Onelake. Whether you’re just getting started or looking to take your data governance to the next level, following … Continue reading “Secure Your Data from Day One: Best Practices for Success with Purview Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Policies in Microsoft Fabric”  ( 7 min )

Quick Links To RSVP for each episode: EP1: Advanced Reasoning Models: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/reactor/events/25905/  EP2: Model Context Protocol:https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/reactor/events/25906/  EP3: SLMs (and Reasoning):https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/reactor/events/25907/  Get All The Details: https://aka.ms/model-mondays    Azure AI Foundry offers the best model choice  Did you manage to catch up on all the talks from Microsoft Build 2025? If, like me, you are interested in building AI-driven applications on Azure, you probably started by looking at what’s new in Azure AI Foundry.  I recommend you read Asha Sharma’s post for the top 10 things you need to know in this context. And it starts with New Models & Smarter Models!  New Models | Azure AI Foundr…  ( 28 min )

The latest version of Dev Proxy introduces a new ability to help you understand language models’ usage and costs in your applications, alongside many improvements to mocking, TypeSpec generation, and plugin flexibility. The post Dev Proxy v0.28 with LLM usage and costs tracking appeared first on Microsoft 365 Developer Blog.  ( 25 min )

Why should I care?   ⚡️In under 15 minutes, you’ll have a Cypher-powered, semantically rich knowledge graph you can query interactively.   How can graphRAG help? GraphRAG extracts structured knowledge from raw, unstructured data like .txt files by building a knowledge graph. This enables more precise and context-aware retrieval, making it easier to surface relevant insights from messy or disconnected content. What are the challenges? While the standard graphRAG indexing process typically expects input and output directories, some users already store their data in a DB (database) and prefer to run graphRAG directly against using the DB for both input and output. This eliminates the need for intermediate blob storage and simplifies the pipeline. Additionally, customers often request support …  ( 48 min )

Why should I care?   ⚡️In under 15 minutes, you’ll have a Cypher-powered, semantically rich knowledge graph you can query interactively.   How can graphRAG help? GraphRAG extracts structured knowledge from raw, unstructured data like .txt files by building a knowledge graph. This enables more precise and context-aware retrieval, making it easier to surface relevant insights from messy or disconnected content. What are the challenges? While the standard graphRAG indexing process typically expects input and output directories, some users already store their data in a DB (database) and prefer to run graphRAG directly against using the DB for both input and output. This eliminates the need for intermediate blob storage and simplifies the pipeline. Additionally, customers often request support …

If you haven't seen my previous blog post introducing MCP on Azure App Service, check that out here for a quick overview and getting started. In this blog post, I’m excited to share some updates for our App Service MCP samples: new language samples, updated functionality to replace deprecated methods, and built-in authentication and authorization—all designed to make it easier for developers to host MCP servers on Azure App Service. 🔄 Migrating from SSE to Streamable HTTP The original .NET sample I shared used Server-Sent Events (SSE) for streaming responses. However, SSE has since been deprecated in favor of streamable HTTP, which offers better compatibility and performance across platforms. To align with the latest MCP specification, I’ve updated the .NET sample to use streamable HTTP: …  ( 23 min )

If you haven't seen my previous blog post introducing MCP on Azure App Service, check that out here for a quick overview and getting started. In this blog post, I’m excited to share some updates for our App Service MCP samples: new language samples, updated functionality to replace deprecated methods, and built-in authentication and authorization—all designed to make it easier for developers to host MCP servers on Azure App Service. 🔄 Migrating from SSE to Streamable HTTP The original .NET sample I shared used Server-Sent Events (SSE) for streaming responses. However, SSE has since been deprecated in favor of streamable HTTP, which offers better compatibility and performance across platforms. To align with the latest MCP specification, I’ve updated the .NET sample to use streamable HTTP: …

Take a deep dive into Athena, an AI-powered collaborative agent, to learn how it was built and how to create your own version of Athena right within Microsoft Teams. The post Build like Microsoft: Developer agents in action appeared first on Microsoft 365 Developer Blog.  ( 23 min )

Optimizing JVM Configuration for Azure Deployments Tuning the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) for cloud deployments is notoriously challenging. Over 30% of developers tend to deploy Java workloads with no JVM configuration at all, therefore relying on the default settings of the HotSpot JVM.  The default settings in OpenJDK are intentionally conservative, designed to work across a wide range of environments and scenarios. However, these defaults often lead to suboptimal resource utilization in cloud-based deployments, where memory and CPU tend to be dedicated for application workloads (use of containers and VMs) but still require intelligent management to maximize efficiency and cost-effectiveness. To address this, we are excited to introduce jaz, a new JVM launcher optimized specifically for …  ( 26 min )

Optimizing JVM Configuration for Azure Deployments Tuning the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) for cloud deployments is notoriously challenging. Over 30% of developers tend to deploy Java workloads with no JVM configuration at all, therefore relying on the default settings of the HotSpot JVM.  The default settings in OpenJDK are intentionally conservative, designed to work across a wide range of environments and scenarios. However, these defaults often lead to suboptimal resource utilization in cloud-based deployments, where memory and CPU tend to be dedicated for application workloads (use of containers and VMs) but still require intelligent management to maximize efficiency and cost-effectiveness. To address this, we are excited to introduce jaz, a new JVM launcher optimized specifically for …

Do you ever wish you could simply tell your agent to send an email, without the hassle of typing everything — from recipient list to the subject and the body? If so, this guide on building an email-sending agent might be exactly what you’re looking for. Technically, this guide won’t deliver a fully automated agent right out of the box - you’ll still need to add a speech-to-text layer and carefully curate your prompt instructions. By the end of this post, you’ll have an agent capable of interacting with users through natural conversation and generating emails with dynamic subject lines and content. Overview Azure AI Agent Services offers a robust framework for building conversational agents, making it an ideal choice for developers seeking enterprise-grade security and compliance. This ensu…  ( 29 min )

Do you ever wish you could simply tell your agent to send an email, without the hassle of typing everything — from recipient list to the subject and the body? If so, this guide on building an email-sending agent might be exactly what you’re looking for. Technically, this guide won’t deliver a fully automated agent right out of the box - you’ll still need to add a speech-to-text layer and carefully curate your prompt instructions. By the end of this post, you’ll have an agent capable of interacting with users through natural conversation and generating emails with dynamic subject lines and content. Overview Azure AI Agent Services offers a robust framework for building conversational agents, making it an ideal choice for developers seeking enterprise-grade security and compliance. This ensu…

We’re excited to announce that OneLake security capabilities have been extended to support mirrored data through Azure Mirrored Databricks Catalog. This enhancement brings the full suite of OneLake’s enterprise-grade security features to these mirrored assets, empowering organizations to manage access using table, column, or row level security across all engines.  What’s New?  With this update, Azure … Continue reading “Secure Mirrored Azure Databricks Data in Fabric with OneLake security “  ( 6 min )

In our previous blog, we discussed how to debug live issues in the Azure WebJobs Storage Extensions SDK. This approach is particularly effective when issues can be consistently reproduced. However, for intermittent problems, live debugging may not be the most efficient solution. In such cases, integrating custom logging can provide deeper insights and facilitate troubleshooting.   In this blog post, we will provide a step-by-step guide on how to implement custom logging within the Azure WebJobs Storage Extensions SDK. This will help you capture valuable information and better understand the behavior of your applications.   If you encounter any issues while using the Azure WebJobs Extensions SDK, the best way to report them is via GitHub Issues. You can report bugs, request features, or ask…  ( 27 min )

In our previous blog, we discussed how to debug live issues in the Azure WebJobs Storage Extensions SDK. This approach is particularly effective when issues can be consistently reproduced. However, for intermittent problems, live debugging may not be the most efficient solution. In such cases, integrating custom logging can provide deeper insights and facilitate troubleshooting.   In this blog post, we will provide a step-by-step guide on how to implement custom logging within the Azure WebJobs Storage Extensions SDK. This will help you capture valuable information and better understand the behavior of your applications.   If you encounter any issues while using the Azure WebJobs Extensions SDK, the best way to report them is via GitHub Issues. You can report bugs, request features, or ask…

Microsoft just held its annual Microsoft Build event for developers. The live event might be over, but we have highlights and other content that will keep the excitement going. Explore on-demand sessions, learn about recent product announcements, watch deep technical demos, and discover fresh resources for learning cutting-edge developer skills.   Microsoft Build opening keynoteThe world of development—its tools and its possibilities—is rapidly evolving. In the Microsoft Build keynote, Satya Nadella discusses the agentic web, current dev tools, the dev landscape right now, and where it’s headed.   GitHub Copilot: Meet the new coding agentCheck out the exciting new coding agent for GitHub Copilot. Just assign a task or issue to Copilot and it will run in the background, pushing commits to a…  ( 25 min )

Microsoft just held its annual Microsoft Build event for developers. The live event might be over, but we have highlights and other content that will keep the excitement going. Explore on-demand sessions, learn about recent product announcements, watch deep technical demos, and discover fresh resources for learning cutting-edge developer skills.   Microsoft Build opening keynoteThe world of development—its tools and its possibilities—is rapidly evolving. In the Microsoft Build keynote, Satya Nadella discusses the agentic web, current dev tools, the dev landscape right now, and where it’s headed.   GitHub Copilot: Meet the new coding agentCheck out the exciting new coding agent for GitHub Copilot. Just assign a task or issue to Copilot and it will run in the background, pushing commits to a…

Whenever I teach Python workshops, tutorials, or classes, I love to use GitHub Codespaces. Every repository on GitHub can be opened inside a GitHub Codespace, which gives the student a full Python environment and a browser-based VS Code. Students spend less time setting up their environment and more time actually coding - the fun part! In this post, I'll walk through my tips for using Codespaces for teaching Python, particularly for classes about web apps, data science, or generative AI. Getting started You can start a GitHub Codespace from any repository. Navigate to the front page of the repository, then select "Code" > "Codespaces" > "Create codespace on main": By default, the Codespace will build an environment based off a universal Docker image, which includes Python, NodeJS, Java, a…  ( 51 min )

Whenever I teach Python workshops, tutorials, or classes, I love to use GitHub Codespaces. Every repository on GitHub can be opened inside a GitHub Codespace, which gives the student a full Python environment and a browser-based VS Code. Students spend less time setting up their environment and more time actually coding - the fun part! In this post, I'll walk through my tips for using Codespaces for teaching Python, particularly for classes about web apps, data science, or generative AI. Getting started You can start a GitHub Codespace from any repository. Navigate to the front page of the repository, then select "Code" > "Codespaces" > "Create codespace on main": By default, the Codespace will build an environment based off a universal Docker image, which includes Python, NodeJS, Java, a…

The Microsoft Fabric Community Conference is back for its third year—and we’re bringing everything and everybody you’ve loved at past events with us to Atlanta, Georgia. After unforgettable experiences at FabCon in Las Vegas and Stockholm, the Fabric community proved just how powerful it can be when we come together. With more than 13,000 attendees across our last three conferences, it’s clear: the Microsoft Fabric community is here to drive the future of data!    And yes, we’re pleased to announce; it’s happening again! Mark your calendars … Continue reading “Microsoft Fabric Community Conference Comes to Atlanta!”  ( 6 min )

We’re thrilled to announce that we have made Azure Synapse Runtime for Apache Spark 3.5 for our Azure Synapse Spark customers in preview, while they get ready and prepare for migrating to Microsoft Fabric Spark. Apache Spark 3.5 You can now create Azure Synapse Runtime for Apache Spark 3.5. The essential changes include features which come from … Continue reading “Azure Synapse Runtime for Apache Spark 3.5 (Preview)”  ( 5 min )

Following the changes to GitHub Advanced Security on GitHub, we’re launching the standalone security products of GitHub Secret Protection and GitHub Code Security for Azure DevOps today. You can bring the protection of Advanced Security to your enterprise with the flexibility to enable the right level of protection for your repositories. GitHub Secret Protection for […] The post GitHub Secret Protection and GitHub Code Security for Azure DevOps appeared first on Azure DevOps Blog.  ( 23 min )

The pace at which innovative AI models are being developed is outstanding! DeepSeek-R1 is one such model that focuses on complex reasoning tasks, providing a powerful tool for developers to build intelligent applications. The week, we announced its availability on GitHub Models as well as on Azure AI Foundry. In this article, we’ll take a look at how you can deploy and use the DeepSeek-R1 models in your JavaScript applications. TL;DR key takeaways DeepSeek-R1 models focus on complex reasoning tasks, and is not designed for general conversation You can quickly switch your configuration to use Azure AI, GitHub Models, or even local models with Ollama. You can use OpenAI Node SDK or LangChain.js to interact with DeepSeek models. What you'll learn here Deploying DeepSeek-R1 model on Azure. …  ( 32 min )

The pace at which innovative AI models are being developed is outstanding! DeepSeek-R1 is one such model that focuses on complex reasoning tasks, providing a powerful tool for developers to build intelligent applications. The week, we announced its availability on GitHub Models as well as on Azure AI Foundry. In this article, we’ll take a look at how you can deploy and use the DeepSeek-R1 models in your JavaScript applications. TL;DR key takeaways DeepSeek-R1 models focus on complex reasoning tasks, and is not designed for general conversation You can quickly switch your configuration to use Azure AI, GitHub Models, or even local models with Ollama. You can use OpenAI Node SDK or LangChain.js to interact with DeepSeek models. What you'll learn here Deploying DeepSeek-R1 model on Azure. …

Introduction Azure Container Apps provides a serverless platform for running containers at scale, and one of the big benefits is that you can easily scale workloads to zero when they are not getting any traffic. Scaling to zero ensures you only pay when your workloads are actively receiving traffic or performing work. However, for some workloads, scaling to zero might not be possible for a variety of reasons. Some workloads must always be able to respond to requests quickly, and the time it takes to scale from 0 to 1 replicas, while short, is too long. Some applications need to be able to always respond to health checks, and so removing all replicas is not possible. In these scenarios, there may still be time periods where there is no traffic, or the application isn't doing any work. While…  ( 39 min )

Introduction Azure Container Apps provides a serverless platform for running containers at scale, and one of the big benefits is that you can easily scale workloads to zero when they are not getting any traffic. Scaling to zero ensures you only pay when your workloads are actively receiving traffic or performing work. However, for some workloads, scaling to zero might not be possible for a variety of reasons. Some workloads must always be able to respond to requests quickly, and the time it takes to scale from 0 to 1 replicas, while short, is too long. Some applications need to be able to always respond to health checks, and so removing all replicas is not possible. In these scenarios, there may still be time periods where there is no traffic, or the application isn't doing any work. While…

Introduction Ensuring reliable, high-performance serverless applications is central to our work on Azure Functions. With new plans like Flex Consumption expanding the platform’s capabilities, it's critical to continuously validate that our infrastructure can scale—reliably and efficiently—under real-world load. To meet that need, we built PerfBench (Performance Benchmarker), a comprehensive benchmarking system designed to measure, monitor, and maintain our performance baselines—catching regressions before they impact customers. This infrastructure now runs close to 5,000 test executions every month, spanning multiple SKUs, regions, runtimes, and workloads—with Flex Consumption accounting for more than half of the total volume. This scale of testing helps us not only identify regressions ea…  ( 51 min )

Introduction Ensuring reliable, high-performance serverless applications is central to our work on Azure Functions. With new plans like Flex Consumption expanding the platform’s capabilities, it's critical to continuously validate that our infrastructure can scale—reliably and efficiently—under real-world load. To meet that need, we built PerfBench (Performance Benchmarker), a comprehensive benchmarking system designed to measure, monitor, and maintain our performance baselines—catching regressions before they impact customers. This infrastructure now runs close to 5,000 test executions every month, spanning multiple SKUs, regions, runtimes, and workloads—with Flex Consumption accounting for more than half of the total volume. This scale of testing helps us not only identify regressions ea…

Vector embeddings have become very popular over the last few years, but most of us developers are brand new to the concept. In this post, I'll give a high-level overview of embedding models, similarity metrics, vector search, and vector compression approaches. Vector embeddings A vector embedding is a mapping from an input (like a word, list of words, or image) into a list of floating point numbers. That list of numbers represents that input in the multidimensional embedding space of the model. We refer to the length of the list as its dimensions, so a list with 1024 numbers would have 1024 dimensions.   Embedding models Each embedding model has its own dimension length, allowed input types, similarity space, and other characteristics. word2vec For a long time, word2vec was the most well-…  ( 47 min )

Vector embeddings have become very popular over the last few years, but most of us developers are brand new to the concept. In this post, I'll give a high-level overview of embedding models, similarity metrics, vector search, and vector compression approaches. Vector embeddings A vector embedding is a mapping from an input (like a word, list of words, or image) into a list of floating point numbers. That list of numbers represents that input in the multidimensional embedding space of the model. We refer to the length of the list as its dimensions, so a list with 1024 numbers would have 1024 dimensions.   Embedding models Each embedding model has its own dimension length, allowed input types, similarity space, and other characteristics. word2vec For a long time, word2vec was the most well-…

Introduction AI agentic grounding, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) apps/copilots, and enterprise search are game-changers, but they stay safe only when every response obeys the file-level permissions you already set in your data source. Without built-in help, developers have to hand-code security trimming, unravel nested groups, and tweak the logic whenever someone’s role shifts. Starting with REST API version 2025-05-01-preview, Azure AI Search introduces native Microsoft Entra-based POSIX-style Access Control List (ACL) and Azure Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) support, alongside expanded capabilities in the Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 (ADLS Gen2) built-in indexer. These enhancements make it easier to enforce document-level security across ingestion and query workflows, whether yo…  ( 40 min )

Introduction AI agentic grounding, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) apps/copilots, and enterprise search are game-changers, but they stay safe only when every response obeys the file-level permissions you already set in your data source. Without built-in help, developers have to hand-code security trimming, unravel nested groups, and tweak the logic whenever someone’s role shifts. Starting with REST API version 2025-05-01-preview, Azure AI Search introduces native Microsoft Entra-based POSIX-style Access Control List (ACL) and Azure Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) support, alongside expanded capabilities in the Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 (ADLS Gen2) built-in indexer. These enhancements make it easier to enforce document-level security across ingestion and query workflows, whether yo…

We’re excited to announce that Microsoft Fabric Data Pipelines now support both On-Premises Data Gateway (OPDG) and Virtual Network (VNET) Gateway across a broader set of external activity types. What’s New? You can now securely connect to on-premises and network-isolated resources using OPDG or VNET Gateway for the following Fabric Data Factory pipeline activities allowing for secure … Continue reading “New pipeline Activities Now Support OPDG and VNET”  ( 5 min )

Microsoft Fabric and Azure Databricks are widely used data platforms. This article aims to address the requirement of customers who have large data estates in Azure databricks and want to unlock additional use cases in Microsoft Fabric arising out of different business teams. When integrating the two platforms, a crucial security requirement is to ensure … Continue reading “Integrating Fabric with Databricks using private network”  ( 7 min )

We’re thrilled to introduce Automated Table Statistics in Microsoft Fabric Data Engineering — a major upgrade that helps you get blazing-fast query performance with zero manual effort. Whether you’re running complex joins, large aggregations, or heavy filtering workloads, Fabric’s new automated statistics will help Spark make smarter decisions, saving you time, compute, and money. What … Continue reading “Boost performance effortlessly with Automated Table Statistics in Microsoft Fabric”  ( 6 min )

Step into the future of simplicity with Fabric CLI. The Fabric Command Line Interface (CLI) has arrived in preview, bringing with it a seamless way to create SQL databases for your projects. This guide will take you through the steps to get started, ensuring you can leverage the power of Fabric CLI with ease. Prerequisites Before … Continue reading “How to create a SQL database in Fabric using Fabric CLI”  ( 6 min )

Troubleshooting Azure AI Foundry deployments on Azure App Service  ( 4 min )

In our endeavor to increase coverage of OSS workloads in Azure Migrate, we are announcing discovery and modernization assessment of MySQL databases running on Windows and Linux servers. Customers previously had limited visibility into their MySQL workloads and often received generalized VM lift-and-shift recommendations. With this new capability, customers can now accurately identify their MySQL workloads and assess them for right-sizing into Azure Database for MySQL. MySQL workloads are a cornerstone of the LAMP stack, powering countless web applications with their reliability, performance, and ease of use. As businesses grow, the need for scalable and efficient database solutions becomes paramount. This is where Azure Database for MySQL comes into play. Migrating from on-premises to Azur…  ( 25 min )

In our endeavor to increase coverage of OSS workloads in Azure Migrate, we are announcing discovery and modernization assessment of MySQL databases running on Windows and Linux servers. Customers previously had limited visibility into their MySQL workloads and often received generalized VM lift-and-shift recommendations. With this new capability, customers can now accurately identify their MySQL workloads and assess them for right-sizing into Azure Database for MySQL. MySQL workloads are a cornerstone of the LAMP stack, powering countless web applications with their reliability, performance, and ease of use. As businesses grow, the need for scalable and efficient database solutions becomes paramount. This is where Azure Database for MySQL comes into play. Migrating from on-premises to Azur…

Hi everyone, welcome to the June 2025 update for Jakarta EE and Quarkus on Azure. It covers topics such as DevServices support of Quarkus Azure Extension, and comprehensive guides on implementing Quarkus applications monitoring and Liberty applications monitoring. If you’re interested in providing feedback or collaborating on migrating Java workloads to Azure with the engineering […] The post Jakarta EE and Quarkus on Azure – June 2025 appeared first on Microsoft for Java Developers.  ( 24 min )

We are introducing multiple features in Azure AI Search that make AI agent grounding and RAG data preparation easier. Here is what’s new:  The GenAI prompt skill in public preview accesses Azure AI Foundry chat-completion models to enrich content when it’s being indexed  Logic app integration with AI Search in Azure portal for simple data ingestion  Introduction  Azure AI Search is introducing new features and integrations designed to simplify and accelerate the creation of RAG-ready indexes. The GenAI Prompt Skill leverages generative AI during the indexing process, enabling advanced context expansion, image verbalization, and other transformations to enhance multimodal search relevance. The GenAI Prompt Skill enables sophisticated data transformations during the indexing process and fa…  ( 39 min )

We are introducing multiple features in Azure AI Search that make AI agent grounding and RAG data preparation easier. Here is what’s new:  The GenAI prompt skill in public preview accesses Azure AI Foundry chat-completion models to enrich content when it’s being indexed  Logic app integration with AI Search in Azure portal for simple data ingestion  Introduction  Azure AI Search is introducing new features and integrations designed to simplify and accelerate the creation of RAG-ready indexes. The GenAI Prompt Skill leverages generative AI during the indexing process, enabling advanced context expansion, image verbalization, and other transformations to enhance multimodal search relevance. The GenAI Prompt Skill enables sophisticated data transformations during the indexing process and fa…

We're excited to announce two powerful new enhancements in Azure AI Search: Multi-Vector Field Support and Scoring Profiles Integration with Semantic Ranking. Developed based on your feedback, these features unlock more control and enable additional scenarios in your search experiences   Why these Enhancements Matter As search experiences become increasingly sophisticated, handling complex, multimodal data and maintaining precise relevance is crucial. These new capabilities directly address common pain points: Multi-Vector Field Support helps you manage detailed, multimodal, and segmented content more effectively. Scoring Profiles Integration with Semantic Ranking ensures consistent relevance throughout your search pipeline. Multi-Vector Field Support Previously, vector fields `(Collecti…  ( 27 min )

We're excited to announce two powerful new enhancements in Azure AI Search: Multi-Vector Field Support and Scoring Profiles Integration with Semantic Ranking. Developed based on your feedback, these features unlock more control and enable additional scenarios in your search experiences   Why these Enhancements Matter As search experiences become increasingly sophisticated, handling complex, multimodal data and maintaining precise relevance is crucial. These new capabilities directly address common pain points: Multi-Vector Field Support helps you manage detailed, multimodal, and segmented content more effectively. Scoring Profiles Integration with Semantic Ranking ensures consistent relevance throughout your search pipeline. Multi-Vector Field Support Previously, vector fields `(Collecti…

This is Part 2 of our series on integrating Microsoft.Extensions.AI with Semantic Kernel. In Part 1, we explored the relationship between these technologies and how they complement each other. Now, let’s dive into practical examples showing how to use Microsoft.Extensions.AI abstractions with Semantic Kernel in non-agent scenarios. Getting Started with Microsoft.Extensions.AI and Semantic Kernel Before we […] The post Semantic Kernel and Microsoft.Extensions.AI: Better Together, Part 2 appeared first on Semantic Kernel.  ( 25 min )

The field of AI is rapidly evolving, and the need for more sophisticated, collaborative, and flexible agent-based systems is growing. With this in mind, Semantic Kernel introduces a new multi-agent orchestration framework that enables developers to build, manage, and scale complex agent workflows with ease. This post explores the new orchestration patterns, their capabilities, and […] The post Semantic Kernel: Multi-agent Orchestration appeared first on Semantic Kernel.  ( 26 min )

OneLake allows for security to be defined once and enforced consistently across Microsoft Fabric. One of its standout features is its ability to work seamlessly with shortcuts, offering users the flexibility to access and organize data from different locations while maintaining robust security controls. In this blog post, we will look at how OneLake security … Continue reading “Understanding OneLake Security with Shortcuts”  ( 7 min )

Fabric User Data Functions is a serverless platform that allows you to build and run functions on the Fabric platform. You can use your functions to interact with your data and the rest of your Fabric items via native integrations. After the Fabric User Data Functions preview, we have been working on increasing the number … Continue reading “New regions supported for Fabric User Data Functions”  ( 5 min )

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools like Terraform have revolutionized the way developers and organizations deploy and manage infrastructure. With its declarative language and ability to automate provisioning, Terraform reduces human error, ensures consistency, and speeds up deployment across cloud and on-premises environments. In this document, we’ll explore how you can create SQL databases workloads in … Continue reading “Creating SQL database workload in Fabric with Terraform: A Step-by-Step Guide (Preview)”  ( 7 min )

The FinOps toolkit is built on top of the FinOps Framework, providing you a collection of resources to help enterprises facilitate their FinOps Goals. Just announced in the May Updates is an exciting integration with Fabric Real-Time Intelligence. With the latest updates you can now analyze all your cloud spend utilizing Eventhouse. Unlocking the power … Continue reading “Introducing FinOps Toolkit in Fabric”  ( 5 min )

GitHub Copilot has evolved beyond a coding assistant in the IDE into an agentic teammate – providing actionable feedback on pull requests, fixing bugs and implementing new features, creating pull requests and responding to feedback, and much more. These new capabilities will transform every aspect of the software development lifecycle, as we are already seeing […] The post Azure DevOps with GitHub Repositories – Your path to Agentic AI appeared first on Azure DevOps Blog.  ( 26 min )

The GitHub Copilot Global Bootcamp started in February as a fully virtual learning journey — and it was a hit. More than 60,000 developers joined the first edition across multiple languages and regions. Now, we're excited to launch the second edition — bigger and better — featuring both virtual and in-person workshops, hosted by tech communities around the globe. This new edition arrives shortly after the announcements at Microsoft Build 2025, where the GitHub and Visual Studio Code teams revealed exciting news: The GitHub Copilot Chat extension is going open source, reinforcing transparency and collaboration. AI is being deeply integrated into Visual Studio Code, now evolving into an open source AI editor. New APIs and tools are making it easier than ever to build with AI and LLMs. This…  ( 30 min )

The GitHub Copilot Global Bootcamp started in February as a fully virtual learning journey — and it was a hit. More than 60,000 developers joined the first edition across multiple languages and regions. Now, we're excited to launch the second edition — bigger and better — featuring both virtual and in-person workshops, hosted by tech communities around the globe. This new edition arrives shortly after the announcements at Microsoft Build 2025, where the GitHub and Visual Studio Code teams revealed exciting news: The GitHub Copilot Chat extension is going open source, reinforcing transparency and collaboration. AI is being deeply integrated into Visual Studio Code, now evolving into an open source AI editor. New APIs and tools are making it easier than ever to build with AI and LLMs. This…

We’re excited to announce the General Availability (GA) of the Azure Data Factory (Mounting) feature in Microsoft Fabric! This powerful capability allows you to seamlessly connect your existing Azure Data Factory (ADF) pipelines to Fabric workspaces, eliminating the need to manually rebuild or migrate them. What’s New with GA? Once your ADF instance is linked to a Fabric workspace, you … Continue reading “Azure Data Factory Item Mounting (Generally Available)”  ( 5 min )

Summarize, group, and explore data in one step with the new GraphQL aggregations feature We’re excited to launch a powerful new capability in the Fabric API for GraphQL—Aggregations. This feature brings native support for summary-level insights directly into your GraphQL queries, making your data exploration faster, simpler, and more efficient. Why Aggregations? Until now, getting … Continue reading “Introducing Aggregations in Fabric API for GraphQL: Query Smarter, Not Harder”  ( 6 min )

With SQL database in Fabric, the source control integration in Fabric enables you to keep your active work synced to git while following a branching strategy that best matches your team’s environments and deployment requirements. With the complexity of enterprise deployment scenarios, code-first deployment is also available for Fabric objects through tools like the Fabric-CICD … Continue reading “Updates to database development tools for SQL database in Fabric”  ( 6 min )

Co-Author: Maraki Ketema, Principal Product Manager Unlocking Data Value at Scale: Mirroring in Microsoft Fabric  In the modern data era, speed, scale, and simplicity are no longer luxuries—they’re expectations. Organizations want to harness the power of their operational data in real time, without the overhead of complex ETL pipelines or latency-filled data movement. This is … Continue reading “Mirroring in Microsoft Fabric explained: benefits, use cases, and pricing demystified”  ( 9 min )

Turbo charge queries over Delta Lake and Iceberg tables in OneLake Eventhouse accelerated OneLake Table shortcuts aka. Query Acceleration is now Generally Available! OneLake shortcuts are references from an Eventhouse that point to internal Fabric or external sources. Previously, queries run over OneLake shortcuts were less performant than on data that is ingested directly to … Continue reading “Eventhouse Accelerated OneLake Table Shortcuts – Generally Available”  ( 8 min )

In the era of Artificial Intelligence, organizations generate and accumulate large volumes of information every second. From transactional records to user logs and analytics data warehouses serve as a single source of truth that stores this information for a plethora of purposes. However, as data accumulates over time, not all remain relevant and valuable, leading … Continue reading “Intelligent Data Cleanup: Smart Purging for Smarter Data Warehouses”  ( 6 min )

Creating and managing tables in Eventhouse just got even more flexible. While you can create tables using the Get Data wizard – which builds the structure based on a sample file or streaming data – there are times when you need to start from scratch. This could be during basic training, testing, or experimenting with … Continue reading “Eventhouse No-Code table creation and editing”  ( 6 min )

We are happy to announce our public preview for Granular RBAC in Azure Monitor Log Analytics! What is Granular RBAC in Azure Monitor Logs? Many organizations emphasize the need to segregate and control access to data in a fine-grained manner, while maintaining a centralized and consolidated logging platform.  On top of the existing capabilities of workspace and table level access provided over Azure RBAC, you can now maintain all your data in a single Log Analytics workspace and provide least privilege access at any level. This means you can control which users can access which tables and rows, based on your business or security needs and defined criteria, and completely separate data and control plane access, using Azure Attribute-based access control (ABAC) as part of your Azure RBAC role assignment. Granular RBAC in Azure Monitor Logs allows you to filter the data that each user can view or query, based on the conditions that you specify. Common examples are characteristics such as organizational roles and units, geographical locations, or data sensitivity levels.  How to set granular data access in Azure Monitor Logs To set up granular access: Create or edit an Azure role assignment. Under “Conditions”, select “Add condition”. In “Add action”, choose the new DataAction: “Read workspace data”. Under “Build expression”, click “Add expression” to define your access rules. You can use any combination of the “Table Name” and “Column Value” attributes to scope access, leveraging a wide range of supported operators to match your criteria. Once applied, users will only be able to access the data that matches the conditions you've configured.  Get started with Granular RBAC in Azure Monitor Logs Learn more about Granular RBAC and how to set it up in Azure Monitor Logs We hope you enjoy this new addition to Azure Monitor Log Analytics.  ( 21 min )

We are happy to announce our public preview for Granular RBAC in Azure Monitor Log Analytics! What is Granular RBAC in Azure Monitor Logs? Many organizations emphasize the need to segregate and control access to data in a fine-grained manner, while maintaining a centralized and consolidated logging platform.  On top of the existing capabilities of workspace and table level access provided over Azure RBAC, you can now maintain all your data in a single Log Analytics workspace and provide least privilege access at any level. This means you can control which users can access which tables and rows, based on your business or security needs and defined criteria, and completely separate data and control plane access, using Azure Attribute-based access control (ABAC) as part of your Azure RBAC role assignment. Granular RBAC in Azure Monitor Logs allows you to filter the data that each user can view or query, based on the conditions that you specify. Common examples are characteristics such as organizational roles and units, geographical locations, or data sensitivity levels.  How to set granular data access in Azure Monitor Logs To set up granular access: Create or edit an Azure role assignment. Under “Conditions”, select “Add condition”. In “Add action”, choose the new DataAction: “Read workspace data”. Under “Build expression”, click “Add expression” to define your access rules. You can use any combination of the “Table Name” and “Column Value” attributes to scope access, leveraging a wide range of supported operators to match your criteria. Once applied, users will only be able to access the data that matches the conditions you've configured.  Get started with Granular RBAC in Azure Monitor Logs Learn more about Granular RBAC and how to set it up in Azure Monitor Logs We hope you enjoy this new addition to Azure Monitor Log Analytics.

Voice technology is transforming how we interact with machines, making conversations with AI feel more natural than ever before. With the public beta release of the Voice Live API developers now have the tools to create low-latency, multimodal voice experiences in their apps, opening up endless possibilities for innovation. Gone are the days when building a voice bot required stitching together multiple models for transcription, inference, and text-to-speech conversion. With the Realtime API, developers can now streamline the entire process with a single API call, enabling fluid, natural speech-to-speech conversations. This is a game-changer for industries like customer support, education, and real-time language translation, where fast, seamless interactions are crucial. In this blog, we’…  ( 64 min )

Voice technology is transforming how we interact with machines, making conversations with AI feel more natural than ever before. With the public beta release of the Voice Live API developers now have the tools to create low-latency, multimodal voice experiences in their apps, opening up endless possibilities for innovation. Gone are the days when building a voice bot required stitching together multiple models for transcription, inference, and text-to-speech conversion. With the Realtime API, developers can now streamline the entire process with a single API call, enabling fluid, natural speech-to-speech conversations. This is a game-changer for industries like customer support, education, and real-time language translation, where fast, seamless interactions are crucial. In this blog, we’…

Imagine the web as a vast network of pages you click through—until HTML transformed them into living documents you could link and style with simple tags. Announced at Build 2025 during CEO Satya Nadella’s keynote with CTO Kevin Scott, NLWeb is the next leap for conversation—the “HTML for chat”—turning every site into a natural-language endpoint both people and AI agents can query directly. Watch Kevin’s announcement below, or keep reading to learn about our early adopters. NLWeb Pioneer Highlights Tripadvisor: Conversational travel planning, from “Where should I go this fall with kids?” to full itineraries in one go. Read the spotlight. Qdrant: Lightning-fast, intent-aware search via its vector database. Read the spotlight. O’Reilly Media: Queryable technical library, like chatting with a resident expert. Read the spotlight. Eventbrite: Discover events by intent, not keywords. Read the spotlight. Inception Labs: Sub-second conversational queries using diffusion LLMs. Read the spotlight. Delish (Hearst): Instant recipe matches—“quick vegan dinner with mushrooms and pasta”—tailored to your pantry. Read the spotlight. NLWeb instances also double as Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers—exposing your content to AI assistants and enabling peer-to-peer Agent-to-Agent (A2A) workflows across sites. More PioneersChicago Public Media, Common Sense Media, DDM (Allrecipes & Serious Eats), Milvus, Shopify and Snowflake. Together, these collaborators are laying the protocol-based foundation for an open, agentic web—where sites don’t just display content, they converse. Ready to Build?Get started with the new NLWeb GitHub repository.  ( 22 min )

Imagine the web as a vast network of pages you click through—until HTML transformed them into living documents you could link and style with simple tags. Announced at Build 2025 during CEO Satya Nadella’s keynote with CTO Kevin Scott, NLWeb is the next leap for conversation—the “HTML for chat”—turning every site into a natural-language endpoint both people and AI agents can query directly. Watch Kevin’s announcement below, or keep reading to learn about our early adopters. NLWeb Pioneer Highlights Tripadvisor: Conversational travel planning, from “Where should I go this fall with kids?” to full itineraries in one go. Read the spotlight. Qdrant: Lightning-fast, intent-aware search via its vector database. Read the spotlight. O’Reilly Media: Queryable technical library, like chatting with a resident expert. Read the spotlight. Eventbrite: Discover events by intent, not keywords. Read the spotlight. Inception Labs: Sub-second conversational queries using diffusion LLMs. Read the spotlight. Delish (Hearst): Instant recipe matches—“quick vegan dinner with mushrooms and pasta”—tailored to your pantry. Read the spotlight. NLWeb instances also double as Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers—exposing your content to AI assistants and enabling peer-to-peer Agent-to-Agent (A2A) workflows across sites. More PioneersChicago Public Media, Common Sense Media, DDM (Allrecipes & Serious Eats), Milvus, Shopify and Snowflake. Together, these collaborators are laying the protocol-based foundation for an open, agentic web—where sites don’t just display content, they converse. Ready to Build?Get started with the new NLWeb GitHub repository.

Microsoft Build 2025 delivered a powerful vision for the future of data and AI, with Microsoft Fabric and Power BI at the heart of the story. From AI-powered productivity with Copilot to deep integration with Cosmos DB, this year’s announcements reinforced Microsoft’s commitment to unifying the data experience across roles, tools, and industries. Fabric: The … Continue reading “That’s a wrap for Build 2025!”  ( 7 min )

This post is co-authored with Shlomi Elkayam and Henry Hernandez  from Amdocs CCoE. In this blogpost you will learn how Amdocs CCoE team improved their SLA by providing technical support for IT and cloud infrastructure questions and queries. They used Azure AI Agent Service to build an intelligent email agent that helps Amdocs employees with their technical issues. This post will describe the development phases, solution details and the roadmap ahead. About Amdocs CCoE Amdocs is a multinational telecommunications technology company. The company specializes in software and services for communications, media and financial services providers and digital enterprises. CCoE team is responsible for automation, infrastructure and design of all our Azure solutions, either for internal use cases or …  ( 37 min )

This post is co-authored with Shlomi Elkayam and Henry Hernandez  from Amdocs CCoE. In this blogpost you will learn how Amdocs CCoE team improved their SLA by providing technical support for IT and cloud infrastructure questions and queries. They used Azure AI Agent Service to build an intelligent email agent that helps Amdocs employees with their technical issues. This post will describe the development phases, solution details and the roadmap ahead. About Amdocs CCoE Amdocs is a multinational telecommunications technology company. The company specializes in software and services for communications, media and financial services providers and digital enterprises. CCoE team is responsible for automation, infrastructure and design of all our Azure solutions, either for internal use cases or …

As part of the expanding capabilities for agents across Microsoft 365, Office Platform announces add-in actions for Copilot agents are available in preview. This blog is an overview of all the new capabilities across the platform: APIs, developer tools, and add-in distribution options—making it simpler to build new or iterate on JavaScript add-ins. The post Office Add-ins announces Copilot agents with add-in actions and more at Build 2025 appeared first on Microsoft 365 Developer Blog.  ( 31 min )

We’re excited to introduce the Agent Store — a centralized, curated marketplace that features agents built by Microsoft, trusted partners, and customers. The Agent Store offers a new, immersive experience within Microsoft 365 Copilot that enables users to browse, install, and try agents tailored to their needs. The post Introducing the Agent Store: Build, publish, and discover agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot appeared first on Microsoft 365 Developer Blog.  ( 24 min )

With AI-powered capabilities in Data Wrangler, you can now do even more to accelerate exploratory analysis and data preparation in Fabric.  ( 6 min )

The introduction of file-based destinations for Dataflows Gen2 marks a significant step forward in enhancing collaboration, historical tracking, and sharing data for business users. This development begins with SharePoint file destinations in CSV format, offering a streamlined way to share with users on the SharePoint platform. Overview of file-based destinations File-based destinations allow data to … Continue reading “SharePoint files destination the first file-based destination for Dataflows Gen2”  ( 6 min )

Understanding complex data pipelines created by others can often be a challenging task, especially when users must review each activity individually to understand its configurations, settings, and functions. Additionally, manul updates to general settings, such as timeout and retry parameters, across multiple activities can be time-consuming and tedious. Copilot for Data pipeline introduces advanced capabilities … Continue reading “AI-powered development with Copilot for Data pipeline – Boost your productivity in understanding and updating pipeline”  ( 6 min )

During FabCon Las Vegas, we introduced the Fabric CLI — a developer-first command-line tool that brings a familiar, file-system-like experience to working with Microsoft Fabric. Since then, thousands of developers have jumped in: exploring, scripting, and embedding the CLI into local workflows. But for many enterprise teams, one question kept coming up: “When will it … Continue reading “Fabric CLI: explore and automate Microsoft Fabric from your terminal (Generally Available)”  ( 8 min )

As the capabilities of our Fabric Platform Git Integration continue to evolve, we’re happy to share some updates about Fabric’s latest CI/CD capabilities. These advancements are designed to enhance the developer experience and simplify the integration of DevOps practices into everyday workflows. With these innovations, Fabric continues to empower teams to build, test, and deploy … Continue reading “What’s new with Fabric CI/CD – May 2025 “  ( 6 min )

OpenSSL is a powerful tool for working with SSL/TLS, but it can also be used to send custom HTTP requests, which is very useful for debugging and learning how HTTP(S) works at a low level.   1. How It Works Normally, tools like curl or your browser handle everything behind the scenes: they perform the TLS handshake and build the HTTP request. With OpenSSL, you manually create the HTTP request, and OpenSSL only handles the encrypted connection. TLS Handshake: OpenSSL’s s_client command establishes a secure (TLS) connection with the server. Send Request: You pipe (or redirect) a raw HTTP request into s_client. The server processes it and sends a response over the secure channel.   2. Sending a GET Request Here’s how you send a simple GET request to www.bing.com: ( printf "GET / HTTP/1.1\…  ( 23 min )

OpenSSL is a powerful tool for working with SSL/TLS, but it can also be used to send custom HTTP requests, which is very useful for debugging and learning how HTTP(S) works at a low level.   1. How It Works Normally, tools like curl or your browser handle everything behind the scenes: they perform the TLS handshake and build the HTTP request. With OpenSSL, you manually create the HTTP request, and OpenSSL only handles the encrypted connection. TLS Handshake: OpenSSL’s s_client command establishes a secure (TLS) connection with the server. Send Request: You pipe (or redirect) a raw HTTP request into s_client. The server processes it and sends a response over the secure channel.   2. Sending a GET Request Here’s how you send a simple GET request to www.bing.com: ( printf "GET / HTTP/1.1\…

We’re excited to announce the preview of AI powered Actionable Insights in Azure Load Testing—a new capability that helps teams quickly identify performance issues and understand test results through AI-driven analysis.  Performance testing is an essential part of ensuring application reliability and responsiveness, but interpreting the results can often be challenging. It typically involves manually correlating client-side load test telemetry with backend service metrics, which can be both time-consuming and error-prone. Actionable Insights simplifies this process by automatically analyzing test data, surfacing key issues, and offering clear, actionable recommendations—so teams can focus on fixing what matters, not sifting through raw data.  AI-powered diagnostics  Actionable Insights use…  ( 23 min )

We’re excited to announce the preview of AI powered Actionable Insights in Azure Load Testing—a new capability that helps teams quickly identify performance issues and understand test results through AI-driven analysis.  Performance testing is an essential part of ensuring application reliability and responsiveness, but interpreting the results can often be challenging. It typically involves manually correlating client-side load test telemetry with backend service metrics, which can be both time-consuming and error-prone. Actionable Insights simplifies this process by automatically analyzing test data, surfacing key issues, and offering clear, actionable recommendations—so teams can focus on fixing what matters, not sifting through raw data.  AI-powered diagnostics  Actionable Insights use…

Background: We often encounter scenarios where we need to delete blobs that have been idle in a storage account for an extended period. For a small number of blobs, deletion can be handled easily using the Azure Portal, Storage Explorer, or inline scripts such as PowerShell or Azure CLI. However, in most cases, we deal with a large volume of blobs, making manual deletion impractical. In such situations, it's essential to leverage automation tools to streamline the deletion process. One effective option is using Automation Tasks, which can help schedule and manage blob deletions efficiently. Note: Behind the scenes, an automation task is actually a logic app resource that runs a workflow. So, the Consumption pricing model of logic-app applies to automation tasks.    Scenario’s where “Automa…  ( 30 min )

Background: We often encounter scenarios where we need to delete blobs that have been idle in a storage account for an extended period. For a small number of blobs, deletion can be handled easily using the Azure Portal, Storage Explorer, or inline scripts such as PowerShell or Azure CLI. However, in most cases, we deal with a large volume of blobs, making manual deletion impractical. In such situations, it's essential to leverage automation tools to streamline the deletion process. One effective option is using Automation Tasks, which can help schedule and manage blob deletions efficiently. Note: Behind the scenes, an automation task is actually a logic app resource that runs a workflow. So, the Consumption pricing model of logic-app applies to automation tasks.    Scenario’s where “Automa…

Fine-tuning adds new skills to foundational models, simulating experience in the tasks you teach the model to do. This complements Retrieval Augmented Generation, which in real-time uses search to find related information, then add that to your prompts for context. Fine-tuning helps ensure that responses meet your quality expectations for specific repeatable tasks, without needing to be prompting expert. It’s great for drafting complex legal agreements, writing technical documentation, authoring medical papers, and more — using detailed, often lengthy precedent files along with what you teach the model. Using Copilot Studio, anyone can create and deploy these fine-tuned models to use with agents without data science or coding expertise. There, you can teach models using data labeling, grou…  ( 48 min )

Fine-tuning adds new skills to foundational models, simulating experience in the tasks you teach the model to do. This complements Retrieval Augmented Generation, which in real-time uses search to find related information, then add that to your prompts for context. Fine-tuning helps ensure that responses meet your quality expectations for specific repeatable tasks, without needing to be prompting expert. It’s great for drafting complex legal agreements, writing technical documentation, authoring medical papers, and more — using detailed, often lengthy precedent files along with what you teach the model. Using Copilot Studio, anyone can create and deploy these fine-tuned models to use with agents without data science or coding expertise. There, you can teach models using data labeling, grou…

This is the start of a series highlighting the integration between Microsoft Semantic Kernel and Microsoft.Extensions.AI. Future parts will provide detailed examples of using Semantic Kernel with Microsoft.Extensions.AI abstractions.  The most common questions are:  “Do Microsoft’s AI extensions replace Semantic Kernel?”  “When should I use Microsoft’s AI extensions instead of Semantic Kernel?”  This blog post […] The post Semantic Kernel and Microsoft.Extensions.AI: Better Together, Part 1 appeared first on Semantic Kernel.  ( 27 min )

As Semantic Kernel shifts its foundational abstractions to Microsoft.Extensions.AI, we are obsoleting and moving away from our experimental embeddings interfaces to the new standardized abstractions that provide a more consistent and powerful way to work with AI services across the .NET ecosystem. The Evolution of Embedding Generation in Semantic Kernel Semantic Kernel has always aimed […] The post Transitioning to new Extensions AI IEmbeddingGenerator interface appeared first on Semantic Kernel.  ( 23 min )

We’re excited to announce the release of Microsoft.Extensions.VectorData.Abstractions, a foundational library providing exchange types and abstractions for vector stores when working with vector data in AI-powered applications. This release is the result of a close collaboration between the Semantic Kernel and .NET teams, combining expertise in AI and developer tooling to deliver a robust, extensible […] The post Vector Data Extensions are now Generally Available (GA) appeared first on Semantic Kernel.  ( 25 min )

1 Access management Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) supports Microsoft Entra ID integration, which allows you to control access to your cluster resources using Azure role-based access control (RBAC). In this tutorial, you will learn how to integrate AKS with Microsoft Entra ID and assign different roles and permissions to three types of users: An admin user, who will have full access to the AKS cluster and its resources. A backend ops team, who will be responsible for managing the backend application deployed in the AKS cluster. They will only have access to the backend namespace and the resources within it. A frontend ops team, who will be responsible for managing the frontend application deployed in the AKS cluster. They will only have access to the frontend namespace and the resources wi…  ( 48 min )

1 Access management Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) supports Microsoft Entra ID integration, which allows you to control access to your cluster resources using Azure role-based access control (RBAC). In this tutorial, you will learn how to integrate AKS with Microsoft Entra ID and assign different roles and permissions to three types of users: An admin user, who will have full access to the AKS cluster and its resources. A backend ops team, who will be responsible for managing the backend application deployed in the AKS cluster. They will only have access to the backend namespace and the resources within it. A frontend ops team, who will be responsible for managing the frontend application deployed in the AKS cluster. They will only have access to the frontend namespace and the resources wi…

AI Developer Hackathon Windows ML  Hosted by Qualcomm on SnapDragonX We’re excited to announce our support and participation for the upcoming global series of Edge AI hackathons, hosted by Qualcomm Technologies. The first is on June 14-15 in Bangalore.  We see a world of hybrid AI, developing rapidly as new generation of intelligent applications get built for diverse scenarios. These range from mobile, desktop, spatial computing and extending all the way to industrial and automotive. Mission critical workloads oscillate between decision-making in the moment, on device, to fine tuning models on the cloud. We believe we are in the early stages of development of agentic applications that efficiently run on the edge for scenarios needing local deployment and on-device inferencing.  Microsoft W…  ( 27 min )

AI Developer Hackathon Windows ML  Hosted by Qualcomm on SnapDragonX We’re excited to announce our support and participation for the upcoming global series of Edge AI hackathons, hosted by Qualcomm Technologies. The first is on June 14-15 in Bangalore.  We see a world of hybrid AI, developing rapidly as new generation of intelligent applications get built for diverse scenarios. These range from mobile, desktop, spatial computing and extending all the way to industrial and automotive. Mission critical workloads oscillate between decision-making in the moment, on device, to fine tuning models on the cloud. We believe we are in the early stages of development of agentic applications that efficiently run on the edge for scenarios needing local deployment and on-device inferencing.  Microsoft W…

GitHub Copilot has changed how developers write code, but when combined with an MCP (Model Copilot Protocol) server, it also connects your services. With it, Copilot can understand your database schema and generate relevant code for your API, data models, or business logic. In this guide, you'll learn how to use the Neon Serverless Postgres MCP server with GitHub Copilot in VS Code to build a sample REST API quickly. We'll walk through how to create an Azure Function that fetches data from a Neon database, all with minimal setup and no manual query writing. From Code Generation to Database Management with GitHub Copilot AI agents are no longer just helping write code—they’re creating and managing databases. When a chatbot logs a customer conversation, or a new region spins up in the Azure …  ( 29 min )

GitHub Copilot has changed how developers write code, but when combined with an MCP (Model Copilot Protocol) server, it also connects your services. With it, Copilot can understand your database schema and generate relevant code for your API, data models, or business logic. In this guide, you'll learn how to use the Neon Serverless Postgres MCP server with GitHub Copilot in VS Code to build a sample REST API quickly. We'll walk through how to create an Azure Function that fetches data from a Neon database, all with minimal setup and no manual query writing. From Code Generation to Database Management with GitHub Copilot AI agents are no longer just helping write code—they’re creating and managing databases. When a chatbot logs a customer conversation, or a new region spins up in the Azure …

Are you unable to delete AI Search with the following error? LockedSPLResourceFound :Unable to verify management locks on Resource '$Resource_Path '. If you still want to delete the search service, manually delete the SPL resource first and try again.  If you are, this is the right place for you to find a quick resolution! Keep on reading through. [Solution – Delete the Shared Private Link] The error message will appear if you still have Shared Private Link configured in AI Search. AI Search will not let you delete the resource unless you delete the Shared Private Link first. You must delete the Shared Private Link in the Portal manually.Move to Settings > Networking > Shared private access tab.     Once the Shared Private Links are all deleted,  please try again to delete the AI Search. Also please give at least 15 minutes for the Shared Private Links to be deleted completely as it may take longer.   [Extra - I tried to delete Shared Private Links but it’s been pending for a long while] There are occasions where you will see your Shared Private Links are in a state of being deleted for a long time as below. (For example 3 hours plus or more) In this case, please open a case to our Support team mentioning you are having an issue with deleting AI Search due to Shared Private Link not being deleted properly. Our team will take care of the issue from that point on!  ( 20 min )

Are you unable to delete AI Search with the following error? LockedSPLResourceFound :Unable to verify management locks on Resource '$Resource_Path '. If you still want to delete the search service, manually delete the SPL resource first and try again.  If you are, this is the right place for you to find a quick resolution! Keep on reading through. [Solution – Delete the Shared Private Link] The error message will appear if you still have Shared Private Link configured in AI Search. AI Search will not let you delete the resource unless you delete the Shared Private Link first. You must delete the Shared Private Link in the Portal manually.Move to Settings > Networking > Shared private access tab.     Once the Shared Private Links are all deleted,  please try again to delete the AI Search. Also please give at least 15 minutes for the Shared Private Links to be deleted completely as it may take longer.   [Extra - I tried to delete Shared Private Links but it’s been pending for a long while] There are occasions where you will see your Shared Private Links are in a state of being deleted for a long time as below. (For example 3 hours plus or more) In this case, please open a case to our Support team mentioning you are having an issue with deleting AI Search due to Shared Private Link not being deleted properly. Our team will take care of the issue from that point on!

Here is the May 2025 release of the on-premises data gateway (version 3000.270).  ( 6 min )

“One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.” – J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings In the world of code scanning and dependency scanning, your pipeline is the One Ring—a single definition that can orchestrate scans across multiple repositories. […] The post One Pipeline to Rule Them All: Ensuring CodeQL Scanning Results and Dependency Scanning Results Go to the Intended Repository appeared first on Azure DevOps Blog.  ( 26 min )

Read how the Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit, an evolution of Microsoft Teams Toolkit, is designed to help developers build agents and apps for Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Teams, and Microsoft 365. The post Introducing the Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit appeared first on Microsoft 365 Developer Blog.  ( 24 min )

Imagine running advanced AI applications—like intelligent copilots and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)—directly on Android devices, completely offline. With the rapid evolution of Neural Processing Units (NPUs), this is no longer a future vision—it’s happening now. Optimized AI at the Edge: Phi-4-mini on MediaTek Thanks to MediaTek’s conversion and quantization tools, Microsoft’s Phi-4-mini and Phi-4-mini-reasoning models are now optimized for MediaTek NPUs. This collaboration empowers developers to build fast, responsive, and privacy-preserving AI experiences on Android—without needing cloud connectivity. MediaTek’s flagship Dimensity 9400 and 9400+ platform with Dimensity GenAI Toolkit 2.0 delivers excellent performance with the Phi-4 mini (3.8B) model where ​prefill speed is >800 t…  ( 29 min )

Imagine running advanced AI applications—like intelligent copilots and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)—directly on Android devices, completely offline. With the rapid evolution of Neural Processing Units (NPUs), this is no longer a future vision—it’s happening now. Optimized AI at the Edge: Phi-4-mini on MediaTek Thanks to MediaTek’s conversion and quantization tools, Microsoft’s Phi-4-mini and Phi-4-mini-reasoning models are now optimized for MediaTek NPUs. This collaboration empowers developers to build fast, responsive, and privacy-preserving AI experiences on Android—without needing cloud connectivity. MediaTek’s flagship Dimensity 9400 and 9400+ platform with Dimensity GenAI Toolkit 2.0 delivers excellent performance with the Phi-4 mini (3.8B) model where ​prefill speed is >800 t…

We are seeing customers such as Indiana Pacers and Coca-Cola transform customer experiences using Azure AI Speech to power customer interactions. And in the new era of agentic AI, voice is increasingly becoming an important modality to interact with AI Agents in a natural way. Today, we are excited to announce a number to new capabilities in Azure AI Speech that will further propel our customers in the voice-enabled agentic AI era as AI Agents are being rapidly adopted by a wide range of enterprise customers across a wide variety of industries. The updates we are announcing today include the new Voice Live API (Public Preview) which can be used to help simplify creating voice agents that provide fluent and natural speech to speech conversational experiences. To provide a robust conversatio…  ( 47 min )

We are seeing customers such as Indiana Pacers and Coca-Cola transform customer experiences using Azure AI Speech to power customer interactions. And in the new era of agentic AI, voice is increasingly becoming an important modality to interact with AI Agents in a natural way. Today, we are excited to announce a number to new capabilities in Azure AI Speech that will further propel our customers in the voice-enabled agentic AI era as AI Agents are being rapidly adopted by a wide range of enterprise customers across a wide variety of industries. The updates we are announcing today include the new Voice Live API (Public Preview) which can be used to help simplify creating voice agents that provide fluent and natural speech to speech conversational experiences. To provide a robust conversatio…

“We’re excited to be part of Microsoft Build and to demonstrate what’s possible when AI meets every day tech. Built on deep technical integration and shared innovation goals, we’re able to deliver smarter, more intuitive, and responsive audio products for users around the world.”— Dongping Zhao, President of Anker Innovations   Imagine talking to anyone, no matter the language. soundcore, Anker Innovations' audio brand, has incorporated Microsoft Azure AI Speech services into its new devices to eliminate language barriers. These wireless earbuds now offer real-time speech translation and voice interactions, showcasing how cloud-based AI speech technologies can create immersive, multilingual experiences on consumer devices.    Anker’s Mission and Challenges Anker Innovations is a global sma…  ( 28 min )

“We’re excited to be part of Microsoft Build and to demonstrate what’s possible when AI meets every day tech. Built on deep technical integration and shared innovation goals, we’re able to deliver smarter, more intuitive, and responsive audio products for users around the world.”— Dongping Zhao, President of Anker Innovations   Imagine talking to anyone, no matter the language. soundcore, Anker Innovations' audio brand, has incorporated Microsoft Azure AI Speech services into its new devices to eliminate language barriers. These wireless earbuds now offer real-time speech translation and voice interactions, showcasing how cloud-based AI speech technologies can create immersive, multilingual experiences on consumer devices.    Anker’s Mission and Challenges Anker Innovations is a global sma…

As a Product Marketing Director at Azure, I’ve had a front-row seat to the evolution of generative AI—from early text-based bots to today’s intelligent systems that reason across images, documents, and real-world context. But some of the most exciting shifts aren’t just about models—they’re about the web itself. Enter NLWeb, Microsoft’s newly announced open initiative to make websites conversational and AI-native. Imagine asking a recipe site like Delish, “What’s a quick, vegan dinner I can make with mushrooms and pasta?”—and getting a smart, tailored response that pulls directly from your structured content, without relying on rigid keyword search.  Built on familiar tools like Schema.org and vector search, NLWeb is designed to be easy for developers and impactful for users. It’s led by R.V. Guha—the mind behind Schema.org, RSS, and RDF—who recently joined Microsoft to help reimagine the open web for the AI era. The new GitHub repo is now live for developers to explore and build upon. Here’s how NLWeb pioneer Delish is thinking about this shift: Q1: What inspired your team to try NLWeb?  We saw an opportunity to improve discovery for consumers by delivering more relevant results through faceted, natural language queries. Q2: How did the setup process go? Any surprises? Collaborating with the Microsoft engineers was valuable during the test planning, and the initial prototype results were promising as we explored the potential. Q3: What query or interaction made NLWeb click for you?  Users can ask naturally phrased questions—based on cultural moments or food types—and get accurate (and delicious) results. Q4: How are you blending NLWeb with your current experience?  We will actively be testing NLWeb embedded as part of the discovery experience on the Delish site. Q5: If NLWeb reaches its full potential, what could it unlock for your users or the web?  We’re excited about the potential to better serve our customers, drive deeper engagement, increase time spent and grow higher LTV audiences.  ( 21 min )

As a Product Marketing Director at Azure, I’ve had a front-row seat to the evolution of generative AI—from early text-based bots to today’s intelligent systems that reason across images, documents, and real-world context. But some of the most exciting shifts aren’t just about models—they’re about the web itself. Enter NLWeb, Microsoft’s newly announced open initiative to make websites conversational and AI-native. Imagine asking a recipe site like Delish, “What’s a quick, vegan dinner I can make with mushrooms and pasta?”—and getting a smart, tailored response that pulls directly from your structured content, without relying on rigid keyword search.  Built on familiar tools like Schema.org and vector search, NLWeb is designed to be easy for developers and impactful for users. It’s led by R.V. Guha—the mind behind Schema.org, RSS, and RDF—who recently joined Microsoft to help reimagine the open web for the AI era. The new GitHub repo is now live for developers to explore and build upon. Here’s how NLWeb pioneer Delish is thinking about this shift: Q1: What inspired your team to try NLWeb?  We saw an opportunity to improve discovery for consumers by delivering more relevant results through faceted, natural language queries. Q2: How did the setup process go? Any surprises? Collaborating with the Microsoft engineers was valuable during the test planning, and the initial prototype results were promising as we explored the potential. Q3: What query or interaction made NLWeb click for you?  Users can ask naturally phrased questions—based on cultural moments or food types—and get accurate (and delicious) results. Q4: How are you blending NLWeb with your current experience?  We will actively be testing NLWeb embedded as part of the discovery experience on the Delish site. Q5: If NLWeb reaches its full potential, what could it unlock for your users or the web?  We’re excited about the potential to better serve our customers, drive deeper engagement, increase time spent and grow higher LTV audiences.

First introduced in public preview last year, Azure AI Content Understanding enables you to convert unstructured content—documents, audio, video, text, and images—into structured data. The service is designed to support consistent, high-quality output, directed improvements, built-in enrichment, and robust pre-processing to accelerate workflows and reduce cost. A New Chapter in Content Understanding Since our launch we’ve seen customers pushing the boundaries to go beyond simple data extraction with agentic solutions fully automating decisions. This requires more than just extracting fields. For example, a healthcare insurance provider decision to pay a claim requires cross-checking against insurance policies, applicable contracts, patient’s medical history and prescription datapoints. To …  ( 32 min )

First introduced in public preview last year, Azure AI Content Understanding enables you to convert unstructured content—documents, audio, video, text, and images—into structured data. The service is designed to support consistent, high-quality output, directed improvements, built-in enrichment, and robust pre-processing to accelerate workflows and reduce cost. A New Chapter in Content Understanding Since our launch we’ve seen customers pushing the boundaries to go beyond simple data extraction with agentic solutions fully automating decisions. This requires more than just extracting fields. For example, a healthcare insurance provider decision to pay a claim requires cross-checking against insurance policies, applicable contracts, patient’s medical history and prescription datapoints. To …

We just announced NLWeb at Microsoft Build—starting with a GitHub repo to help developers explore it, and a short list of enterprise pioneers testing it out in the real world. Qdrant is one of those early innovators shaping where this goes. Known for their open-source vector database purpose-built for semantic search, Qdrant is helping developers supercharge the intelligence of their search interfaces—without rebuilding their entire stack. By integrating with NLWeb, Qdrant makes it easy to add fast, intent-aware, and context-rich search to websites and apps of any size. Below, the Qdrant team shares how this integration came together, what developers can expect, and why NLWeb might be the unlock that brings semantic search to the mainstream.     Q1: Why Qdrant Sees NLWeb as a Practical St…  ( 27 min )

We just announced NLWeb at Microsoft Build—starting with a GitHub repo to help developers explore it, and a short list of enterprise pioneers testing it out in the real world. Qdrant is one of those early innovators shaping where this goes. Known for their open-source vector database purpose-built for semantic search, Qdrant is helping developers supercharge the intelligence of their search interfaces—without rebuilding their entire stack. By integrating with NLWeb, Qdrant makes it easy to add fast, intent-aware, and context-rich search to websites and apps of any size. Below, the Qdrant team shares how this integration came together, what developers can expect, and why NLWeb might be the unlock that brings semantic search to the mainstream.     Q1: Why Qdrant Sees NLWeb as a Practical St…

We just announced NLWeb at Microsoft Build—starting with a GitHub repo to help developers explore it, and a short list of enterprise pioneers testing it out in the real world. Eventbrite is one of those early innovators shaping where this goes. Known for their global events platform that helps millions discover and attend unique experiences, Eventbrite is now exploring how NLWeb can make that discovery process even more personal, conversational, and precise. Whether you're looking for a date night idea or planning your next creative outing, NLWeb enables natural, expressive search queries that understand intent—not just keywords. Below, Eventbrite shares their journey piloting NLWeb: what made them say yes, how it’s performing in early tests, and what they see on the horizon. Q1: What ins…  ( 27 min )

We just announced NLWeb at Microsoft Build—starting with a GitHub repo to help developers explore it, and a short list of enterprise pioneers testing it out in the real world. Eventbrite is one of those early innovators shaping where this goes. Known for their global events platform that helps millions discover and attend unique experiences, Eventbrite is now exploring how NLWeb can make that discovery process even more personal, conversational, and precise. Whether you're looking for a date night idea or planning your next creative outing, NLWeb enables natural, expressive search queries that understand intent—not just keywords. Below, Eventbrite shares their journey piloting NLWeb: what made them say yes, how it’s performing in early tests, and what they see on the horizon. Q1: What ins…

As a Director of AI Product Marketing at Azure, I have spent the last three years deep in the GenAI ecosystem. From internal chatbots that evolved into multi-model agent orchestrations, I feel like I am witnessing history in my job and life. Every day I wonder what is coming next, to build on top of everything we have developed in just a short amount of time. Now I am excited to share the newest chapter in this incredible run of innovation with the announcement of Microsoft’s launch of NLWeb today, an open project aimed at facilitating the creation of natural language interfaces for websites, enabling users to interact with site content through natural language queries. The initiative strives to empower web publishers by making it easier to develop AI-driven applications that enhance user …  ( 24 min )

As a Director of AI Product Marketing at Azure, I have spent the last three years deep in the GenAI ecosystem. From internal chatbots that evolved into multi-model agent orchestrations, I feel like I am witnessing history in my job and life. Every day I wonder what is coming next, to build on top of everything we have developed in just a short amount of time. Now I am excited to share the newest chapter in this incredible run of innovation with the announcement of Microsoft’s launch of NLWeb today, an open project aimed at facilitating the creation of natural language interfaces for websites, enabling users to interact with site content through natural language queries. The initiative strives to empower web publishers by making it easier to develop AI-driven applications that enhance user …

Over the past three years working in generative AI at Microsoft, I’ve had a front-row seat to some of the most exciting shifts in tech. From chat assistants to multi-modal agents, every layer we’ve built has opened up new questions—and new responsibilities. One of the biggest ones: how do we make the web itself more useful to humans and AI? Enter NLWeb—a new open project from Microsoft that aims to make websites natively conversational. Instead of keyword searches or rigid menus, users (and agents) can query a site’s content in natural language. For developers and web publishers, NLWeb offers a practical way to tap into your existing structured data—like Schema.org markup or product catalogs—and expose that content intelligently, without reinventing your site. I’m especially excited that O…  ( 27 min )

Over the past three years working in generative AI at Microsoft, I’ve had a front-row seat to some of the most exciting shifts in tech. From chat assistants to multi-modal agents, every layer we’ve built has opened up new questions—and new responsibilities. One of the biggest ones: how do we make the web itself more useful to humans and AI? Enter NLWeb—a new open project from Microsoft that aims to make websites natively conversational. Instead of keyword searches or rigid menus, users (and agents) can query a site’s content in natural language. For developers and web publishers, NLWeb offers a practical way to tap into your existing structured data—like Schema.org markup or product catalogs—and expose that content intelligently, without reinventing your site. I’m especially excited that O…

Over the past three years working in generative AI at Microsoft, I’ve had a front-row seat to some of the most exciting shifts in tech. From chat assistants to multi-modal agents, every layer we’ve built has opened up new questions—and new responsibilities. One of the biggest ones: how do we make the web itself more useful to humans and AI? Enter NLWeb—a new open project from Microsoft that aims to make websites natively conversational. Instead of keyword searches or rigid menus, users (and agents) can query a site’s content in natural language. For developers and web publishers, NLWeb offers a practical way to tap into your existing structured data—like Schema.org markup or product catalogs—and expose that content intelligently, without reinventing your site. I’m especially excited that O…

As a Product Marketing Director at Azure, I’ve spent the last few years in the thick of generative AI, from early chatbot experiments to sophisticated agentic systems that now reason across modalities. It’s felt like living inside a tech documentary, with every month adding a new chapter. Today, I’m excited to share what might be one of the most quietly profound shifts yet: NLWeb. Just announced by Microsoft, NLWeb is an open initiative to make the entire web more conversational—enabling users (and AI agents) to interact with websites via natural language instead of dropdowns and keyword searches. For developers and publishers, NLWeb simplifies how you expose your content to AI by using structured data formats like Schema.org, vector indexes, and LLM tools you probably already use. What ma…  ( 29 min )

As a Product Marketing Director at Azure, I’ve spent the last few years in the thick of generative AI, from early chatbot experiments to sophisticated agentic systems that now reason across modalities. It’s felt like living inside a tech documentary, with every month adding a new chapter. Today, I’m excited to share what might be one of the most quietly profound shifts yet: NLWeb. Just announced by Microsoft, NLWeb is an open initiative to make the entire web more conversational—enabling users (and AI agents) to interact with websites via natural language instead of dropdowns and keyword searches. For developers and publishers, NLWeb simplifies how you expose your content to AI by using structured data formats like Schema.org, vector indexes, and LLM tools you probably already use. What ma…

In today’s fast-moving AI landscape, businesses are racing to embed conversational intelligence and automation into every customer touchpoint. However, building a reliable and scalable agent from scratch remains complex and time-consuming. Developers tell us they need a streamlined way to map diverse user intents, craft accurate responses, and support global audiences without wrestling with ad-hoc integrations. At the same time, rising expectations around data privacy and compliance introduce yet another layer of overhead. To meet these challenges, today, we’re excited to announce a suite of powerful new tools and templates designed to help developers build intelligent agents faster than ever with our Azure AI Language service. Working together with Azure AI Agent Service, whether you’re t…  ( 37 min )

We're excited to announce Sora, now available in AI Foundry. Learn more about Sora in Azure OpenAI, and its API and video playground, here. To dive deeper into video playground experience, check out this blog post ​  Why does this matter?  AI is no longer *just* about text. Here’s why: multimodal models enable deeper understanding. Today AI doesn’t just understand words: it understands context, visuals, and motion. From prompt to product, imagine going from a product description to a full marketing campaign.  In many ways, the rise of multimodal AI today is comparable to the inception of photography in the 19th century—introducing a new creative medium that, like photography, didn’t replace painting but expanded the boundaries of artistic expression. Just a little over a month ago, we rele…  ( 29 min )

A New Era of Agent Intelligence We’re thrilled to announce the public preview of Tracing, Evaluation, and Monitoring in Azure AI Foundry Agent Service, features designed to revolutionize how developers build, debug, and optimize AI agents. With detailed traces and customizable evaluators, AgentOps is here to bridge the gap between observability and performance improvement. Whether you’re managing a simple chatbot or a complex multi-agent system, this is the tool you’ve been waiting for. What Makes AgentOps Unique? AgentOps offers an unparalleled suite of functionalities that cater to the challenges AI developers face today. Here are the two cornerstone features: 1. Integrated Tracing Functionality AgentOps provides full execution tracing, offering a detailed, step-by-step breakdown of how…  ( 25 min )

If you’re building an AI agent and need to customize its behavior to specific domains, its interaction tone, or improve its tool selection, you should be fine tuning! Our customers agree, but the challenge faced has been twofold: regional availability and the cost of experimentation. Today, we’re bringing fine tuning of Azure OpenAI models to a dozen new AI Foundry regions with the public previews of Global Training and Developer Tier. With reduced pricing and global availability, AI Foundry makes fine tuning the latest OpenAI models on Azure more accessible and affordable than ever to bring your agents to life. What is Global Training? Global Training expands the reach of model customization with the affordable pricing of our other Global offerings: 🏋️‍♂️ Train the latest OpenAI models …  ( 27 min )

Customers often face challenges deploying AI agents that can handle complex, real-world scenarios due to limited tool access. To empower AI agents with more capabilities, Azure AI Foundry Agent Service now supports a growing set of integrated tools: Grounding with Bing Custom Search (preview), SharePoint (coming soon), Azure Logic Apps (preview), Triggers (preview), and third-party tools, enabling agents to retrieve richer information, take more meaningful actions, and deliver intelligent, goal-driven results. This expansion helps organizations build smarter, more adaptable agents that can better align with dynamic business needs.   Today, we are thrilled to announce Azure AI Foundry Agent Service is now Generally Available including following tools: Azure AI Search, Azure Functions, Code …  ( 43 min )

As organizations increasingly rely on AI to automate complex tasks and scale digital operations, the ability to coordinate multiple agents in a single, cohesive system is becoming critical. Moving beyond single-agent architectures to multi-agent systems enables richer, more dynamic automation – where specialized agents can collaborate, share context, and complete multi-step processes with minimal human intervention. This shift is unlocking the potential for organizations to build full digital workforces that can manage everything from customer support to supply chain automation.   Why Multi-Agents Matter Building a single agent is often straightforward – it’s designed to perform a specific task, like answering common support queries or generating summaries from documents. However, real-wor…  ( 49 min )

Agents are revolutionizing business automation by evolving from simple chatbots into sophisticated, collaborative systems. Fueled by advancements in model reasoning and efficiency, these agents can now handle complex, multi-step processes with speed and accuracy. This marks a shift from isolated tools to dynamic, scalable agent workforces that coordinate tasks, share context, and adapt in real time. This transformation enables businesses to optimize operations and elevate customer experiences through AI-driven workflows. Instead of relying on single-purpose bots, organizations are deploying ecosystems of specialized agents that can interact, reason, and respond to changing conditions with minimal oversight. Yet building and scaling these systems is not without challenges. Developers must i…  ( 39 min )

In today’s fast-moving AI landscape, businesses are racing to embed conversational intelligence and automation into every customer touchpoint. However, building a reliable and scalable agent from scratch remains complex and time-consuming. Developers tell us they need a streamlined way to map diverse user intents, craft accurate responses, and support global audiences without wrestling with ad-hoc integrations. At the same time, rising expectations around data privacy and compliance introduce yet another layer of overhead. To meet these challenges, today, we’re excited to announce a suite of powerful new tools and templates designed to help developers build intelligent agents faster than ever with our Azure AI Language service. Working together with Azure AI Agent Service, whether you’re t…

We're excited to announce Sora, coming soon to AI Foundry. Learn more about Sora in Azure OpenAI, and its API and video playground, here.  Hear how T&Pm, a WPP company, uses Sora in Azure OpenAI to bring their media solutions to the next level   AI is no longer *just* about text. Here’s why: multimodal models enable deeper understanding. Today AI doesn’t just understand words – it understands context, visuals, and motion. From prompt to product, imagine going from a product description to a full marketing campaign.  This shift represents more than just a technical evolution—it’s a creative revolution. In many ways, the rise of multimodal AI today is comparable to the inception of photography in the 19th century—introducing a new creative medium that, like photography, didn’t replace pain…

A New Era of Agent Intelligence We’re thrilled to announce the public preview of Tracing, Evaluation, and Monitoring in Azure AI Foundry Agent Service, features designed to revolutionize how developers build, debug, and optimize AI agents. With detailed traces and customizable evaluators, AgentOps is here to bridge the gap between observability and performance improvement. Whether you’re managing a simple chatbot or a complex multi-agent system, this is the tool you’ve been waiting for. What Makes AgentOps Unique? AgentOps offers an unparalleled suite of functionalities that cater to the challenges AI developers face today. Here are the two cornerstone features: 1. Integrated Tracing Functionality AgentOps provides full execution tracing, offering a detailed, step-by-step breakdown of how…

If you’re building an AI agent and need to customize its behavior to specific domains, its interaction tone, or improve its tool selection, you should be fine tuning! Our customers agree, but the challenge faced has been twofold: regional availability and the cost of experimentation. Today, we’re bringing fine tuning of Azure OpenAI models to a dozen new AI Foundry regions with the public previews of Global Training and Developer Tier. With reduced pricing and global availability, AI Foundry makes fine tuning the latest OpenAI models on Azure more accessible and affordable than ever to bring your agents to life. What is Global Training? Global Training expands the reach of model customization with the affordable pricing of our other Global offerings: 🏋️‍♂️ Train the latest OpenAI models …

Customers often face challenges deploying AI agents that can handle complex, real-world scenarios due to limited tool access. To empower AI agents with more capabilities, Azure AI Foundry Agent Service now supports a growing set of integrated tools: Grounding with Bing Custom Search (preview), SharePoint (coming soon), Azure Logic Apps (preview), Triggers (preview), and third-party tools, enabling agents to retrieve richer information, take more meaningful actions, and deliver intelligent, goal-driven results. This expansion helps organizations build smarter, more adaptable agents that can better align with dynamic business needs.   Today, we are thrilled to announce Azure AI Foundry Agent Service is now Generally Available including following tools: Azure AI Search, Azure Functions, Code …

As organizations increasingly rely on AI to automate complex tasks and scale digital operations, the ability to coordinate multiple agents in a single, cohesive system is becoming critical. Moving beyond single-agent architectures to multi-agent systems enables richer, more dynamic automation – where specialized agents can collaborate, share context, and complete multi-step processes with minimal human intervention. This shift is unlocking the potential for organizations to build full digital workforces that can manage everything from customer support to supply chain automation.   Why Multi-Agents Matter Building a single agent is often straightforward – it’s designed to perform a specific task, like answering common support queries or generating summaries from documents. However, real-wor…

Agents are revolutionizing business automation by evolving from simple chatbots into sophisticated, collaborative systems. Fueled by advancements in model reasoning and efficiency, these agents can now handle complex, multi-step processes with speed and accuracy. This marks a shift from isolated tools to dynamic, scalable agent workforces that coordinate tasks, share context, and adapt in real time. This transformation enables businesses to optimize operations and elevate customer experiences through AI-driven workflows. Instead of relying on single-purpose bots, organizations are deploying ecosystems of specialized agents that can interact, reason, and respond to changing conditions with minimal oversight. Yet building and scaling these systems is not without challenges. Developers must i…

Optimizing JVM Configuration for Azure Deployments Tuning the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) for cloud deployments is notoriously challenging. Over 30% of developers tend to deploy Java workloads with no JVM configuration at all, therefore relying on the default settings of the HotSpot JVM. The default settings in OpenJDK are intentionally conservative, designed to work across […] The post Announcing Azure Command Launcher for Java appeared first on Microsoft for Java Developers.  ( 24 min )

Today, we’re excited to announce that GitHub Copilot Agent Mode and MCP support are now in public preview for both JetBrains and Eclipse! Whether you’re working in IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, WebStorm or Eclipse, you can now access Copilot’s intelligent agent features and seamlessly manage your project workflows, all from within your IDE.  In this post, we’ll […] The post Vibe coding with GitHub Copilot: Agent mode and MCP support in JetBrains and Eclipse appeared first on Microsoft for Java Developers.  ( 24 min )

In the era of big data, efficiently parsing and analyzing JSON data is critical for gaining actionable insights. Leveraging Kusto, a powerful query engine developed by Microsoft, enhances the efficiency of handling JSON data, making it simpler and faster to derive meaningful patterns and trends. Perhaps more importantly, Kusto’s ability to easily parse simple or … Continue reading “Efficient JSON loading to Eventhouse in Fabric Real-Time Intelligence”  ( 8 min )

Copy job is designed to simplify your data ingestion experience without compromise from any source to any destination. It supports multiple data delivery styles, including both batch and incremental copy, providing the flexibility to meet diverse needs. We are excited to introduce the preview of native Change Data Capture (CDC) support in Copy job that … Continue reading “Simplifying Data Ingestion with Copy job – Introducing Change Data Capture (CDC) Support (Preview)”  ( 7 min )

Dataflows have great capabilities to help you add new columns. It has an extensive section in the ribbon that helps you create new columns based on the data of your table. For scenarios in which you wish to have full control over how the new column should be created, you can opt for the Custom … Continue reading “New Copilot experience in Dataflow Gen2: Natural language to custom column”  ( 6 min )

The integration of Azure Storage with Fabric Eventhouse for continuous ingestion represents a significant simplification of data ingestion process from Azure Storage to Eventhouse in Fabric Real-Time Intelligence. It automates extraction and loading from Azure storage and facilitates near real-time updates to Eventhouse KQL DB tables. With this feature, it is now easier for organizations … Continue reading “Continuous Ingestion from Azure Storage to Eventhouse (Preview)”  ( 9 min )

Co-author: Joanne Wong We’re excited to announce the upcoming integration of Fabric data agent with Copilot in Power BI, enhancing your ability to extract insights seamlessly. What’s new? A new chat with your data experience is launching soon in Power BI– a full-screen Copilot for users to ask natural language questions and receive accurate, relevant … Continue reading “Extracting deeper insights with Fabric Data Agents in Copilot in Power BI”  ( 7 min )

In this blog post we’ll cover the process of integrating Key Vault in the Java Spring Boot app that runs on App Service Linux.  ( 6 min )

Spring AI 1.0 is now generally available, and it is ready to help Java developers bring the power of AI into their Spring Boot applications. This release is the result of open collaboration and contributions across the Spring and Microsoft Azure engineering teams. Together, they have made it simple for Java developers to integrate LLMs, vector search, memory, and agentic workflows using the patterns they already know. Why This Matters for Java Developers? Spring AI 1.0, built and maintained by the Spring team at Broadcom with active contributions from Microsoft Azure, delivers an intuitive and powerful foundation for building intelligent apps. You can plug AI into existing Spring Boot apps with minimal friction, using starters and conventions familiar to every Spring developer. Whether you…  ( 32 min )

Spring AI 1.0 is now generally available, and it is ready to help Java developers bring the power of AI into their Spring Boot applications. This release is the result of open collaboration and contributions across the Spring and Microsoft Azure engineering teams. Together, they have made it simple for Java developers to integrate LLMs, vector search, memory, and agentic workflows using the patterns they already know. Why This Matters for Java Developers? Spring AI 1.0, built and maintained by the Spring team at Broadcom with active contributions from Microsoft Azure, delivers an intuitive and powerful foundation for building intelligent apps. You can plug AI into existing Spring Boot apps with minimal friction, using starters and conventions familiar to every Spring developer. Whether you…

Today we're excited to announce the public preview of Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization on Azure Red Hat OpenShift (ARO). This new capability brings you:  The best of both worlds - Run your virtual machines and containers on a single platform with unified management  Modernization at your pace - Keep critical VMs running while gradually moving components to containers when you're ready  Maximum value from Azure - Leverage your existing Azure benefits and commitments while optimizing resource usage across all workloads  This collaboration between Microsoft and Red Hat helps you simplify operations, reduce costs, and accelerate your cloud journey - all while preserving your existing VM investments.  Why Organizations Need a Unified VM and Container Platform  Organizations today face sig…  ( 39 min )

Today we're excited to announce the public preview of Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization on Azure Red Hat OpenShift (ARO). This new capability brings you:  The best of both worlds - Run your virtual machines and containers on a single platform with unified management  Modernization at your pace - Keep critical VMs running while gradually moving components to containers when you're ready  Maximum value from Azure - Leverage your existing Azure benefits and commitments while optimizing resource usage across all workloads  This collaboration between Microsoft and Red Hat helps you simplify operations, reduce costs, and accelerate your cloud journey - all while preserving your existing VM investments.  Why Organizations Need a Unified VM and Container Platform  Organizations today face sig…

Overview This blog post shows you how to enable SmallRye Health in Quarkus applications with health probes in Azure Container Apps. The techniques shown in this blog post show you how to effectively monitor the health and status of your Quarkus instances. The application is a "to do list" with a JavaScript front end and a REST endpoint. Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server provides the persistence layer for the app. The app uses SmallRye Health to expose application health to Azure Container Apps.   The Quarkus SmallRye Health extension provides the following REST endpoints:   /q/health/live:  Indicates that the application is up and running.   /q/health/ready:  Indicates that the application is ready to accept requests.   /q/health/started:  Indicates that the application starts…  ( 49 min )

Overview This blog post shows you how to enable SmallRye Health in Quarkus applications with health probes in Azure Container Apps. The techniques shown in this blog post show you how to effectively monitor the health and status of your Quarkus instances. The application is a "to do list" with a JavaScript front end and a REST endpoint. Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server provides the persistence layer for the app. The app uses SmallRye Health to expose application health to Azure Container Apps.   The Quarkus SmallRye Health extension provides the following REST endpoints:   /q/health/live:  Indicates that the application is up and running.   /q/health/ready:  Indicates that the application is ready to accept requests.   /q/health/started:  Indicates that the application starts…

This blog post provides a step-to-step guidance for how to debug the Azure WebJobs Extension SDK both locally and remotely on the function app.   As you all know, Azure Function Apps are built on top of the Azure WebJobs SDK, which is an open-source framework that simplifies the task of writing background processing code that runs in Azure. The Azure WebJobs SDK includes a declarative binding and trigger system, commonly referred to as Azure WebJobs Extensions. These extensions allow developers to easily integrate with various Azure services and define how their background tasks respond to events.   If you encounter any issues while using the Azure WebJobs Extensions SDK, the best way to report them is via GitHub Issues. You can report bugs, request features, or ask questions there. When r…  ( 26 min )

This blog post provides a step-to-step guidance for how to debug the Azure WebJobs Extension SDK both locally and remotely on the function app.   As you all know, Azure Function Apps are built on top of the Azure WebJobs SDK, which is an open-source framework that simplifies the task of writing background processing code that runs in Azure. The Azure WebJobs SDK includes a declarative binding and trigger system, commonly referred to as Azure WebJobs Extensions. These extensions allow developers to easily integrate with various Azure services and define how their background tasks respond to events.   If you encounter any issues while using the Azure WebJobs Extensions SDK, the best way to report them is via GitHub Issues. You can report bugs, request features, or ask questions there. When r…

Modernizing Java applications and migrating to the cloud is typically a complex, labor-intensive, and fragmented process. GitHub Copilot App Modernization for Java is a powerful solution designed to simplify and accelerate your journey to the cloud. App Modernization and upgrade for Java offers an intelligent, guided approach that automates Java version upgrade and repetitive tasks and improves consistency — saving time, reducing risks, and accelerating time-to-cloud. GitHub Copilot App Modernization and upgrade for Java is in public preview and offered in a single extension pack, available in the VS Code marketplace. https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vscjava.vscode-app-mod-pack   The GitHub Copilot App Modernization for Java provides six distinct value pillars, each spe…  ( 27 min )

Modernizing Java applications and migrating to the cloud is typically a complex, labor-intensive, and fragmented process. GitHub Copilot App Modernization for Java [and upgrade for Java] is a powerful solution designed to simplify and accelerate your journey to the cloud. App Modernization and upgrade for Java offers an intelligent, guided approach that automates Java version upgrade and repetitive tasks and improves consistency — saving time, reducing risks, and accelerating time-to-cloud. GitHub Copilot App Modernization and upgrade for Java is in public preview and offered in a single extension pack, available in the VS Code marketplace. https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vscjava.vscode-app-mod-pack   The GitHub Copilot App Modernization for Java provides six distinct …

Generative AI is already transforming how businesses operate, with organizations seeing an average return of 3.7x for every $1 of investment [The Business Opportunity of AI, IDC study commissioned by Microsoft]. Developers sit at the center of this transformation, and their need for speed, flexibility, and familiarity with existing tools is driving the demand for application platforms that integrate AI seamlessly into their current development workflows. To fully realize the potential of generative AI in applications, organizations must provide developers with frictionless access to AI models, frameworks, and environments that enable them to scale AI applications. We see this in action at organizations like Accenture, Assembly Software, Carvana, Coldplay (Pixel Lab), Global Travel Collecti…  ( 38 min )

Generative AI is already transforming how businesses operate, with organizations seeing an average return of 3.7x for every $1 of investment [The Business Opportunity of AI, IDC study commissioned by Microsoft]. Developers sit at the center of this transformation, and their need for speed, flexibility, and familiarity with existing tools is driving the demand for application platforms that integrate AI seamlessly into their current development workflows. To fully realize the potential of generative AI in applications, organizations must provide developers with frictionless access to AI models, frameworks, and environments that enable them to scale AI applications. We see this in action at organizations like Accenture, Assembly Software, Carvana, Coldplay (Pixel Lab), Global Travel Collecti…

Azure Container Apps gives you a strong foundation for monitoring and debugging, with built-in features that give you a holistic view of your container app’s health throughout its application lifecycle. As applications grow, developers need even deeper visibility and faster ways to troubleshoot issues. That’s why we’re excited to announce new observability and debugging features. These features will help you further monitor your environment and identify root causes faster. Generally Available: OpenTelemetry agent in Azure Container Apps OpenTelemetry agent in Azure Container Apps is now generally available. This feature enables you to use open-source standards to send your app’s data without setting up the OpenTelemetry collector yourself. You can use the managed agent to choose where to s…  ( 28 min )

Azure Container Apps gives you a strong foundation for monitoring and debugging, with built-in features that give you a holistic view of your container app’s health throughout its application lifecycle. As applications grow, developers need even deeper visibility and faster ways to troubleshoot issues. That’s why we’re excited to announce new observability and debugging features. These features will help you further monitor your environment and identify root causes faster. Generally Available: OpenTelemetry agent in Azure Container Apps OpenTelemetry agent in Azure Container Apps is now generally available. This feature enables you to use open-source standards to send your app’s data without setting up the OpenTelemetry collector yourself. You can use the managed agent to choose where to s…

New App Service Premium v4 plan  The new App Service Premium v4 (Pv4) plan has entered public preview at Microsoft Build 2025 for both Windows and Linux!  This new plan is designed to support today's highly demanding application performance, scale, and budgets. Built on the latest "v6" general-purpose virtual machines and memory-optimized x64 Azure hardware with faster processors and NVMe temporary storage, it provides a noticeable performance uplift over prior generations of App Service Premium plans (over 25% in early testing). The Premium v4 offering includes nine new sizes ranging from P0v4 with a single virtual CPU and 4GB RAM all the way up through P5mv4, with 32 virtual CPUs and 256GB RAM, providing CPU and memory options to meet any business need. App Service Premium v4 plans provi…  ( 57 min )

New App Service Premium v4 plan  The new App Service Premium v4 (Pv4) plan has entered public preview at Microsoft Build 2025 for both Windows and Linux!  This new plan is designed to support today's highly demanding application performance, scale, and budgets. Built on the latest "v6" general-purpose virtual machines and memory-optimized x64 Azure hardware with faster processors and NVMe temporary storage, it provides a noticeable performance uplift over prior generations of App Service Premium plans (over 25% in early testing). The Premium v4 offering includes nine new sizes ranging from P0v4 with a single virtual CPU and 4GB RAM all the way up through P5mv4, with 32 virtual CPUs and 256GB RAM, providing CPU and memory options to meet any business need. App Service Premium v4 plans provi…

The rapid rise of AI has unlocked powerful new scenarios—from AI-powered chatbots and image generation to advanced agents. However, deploying AI models at scale presents real challenges including managing compute-intensive workloads, complexities with model deployment, and executing untrusted AI-generated code safely. Azure Container Apps addresses these challenges by offering a fully managed, flexible, serverless container platform designed for modern, cloud-native applications – now with GA of Dedicated GPUs, improved integrations for deploying Foundry models to Azure Container Apps, and the private preview of GPU powered dynamic sessions. Foundry Model Integration Azure AI Foundry Models support a wide collection of ready-to-deploy models. Traditionally, these models can be deployed wi…  ( 26 min )

The rapid rise of AI has unlocked powerful new scenarios—from AI-powered chatbots and image generation to advanced agents. However, deploying AI models at scale presents real challenges including managing compute-intensive workloads, complexities with model deployment, and executing untrusted AI-generated code safely. Azure Container Apps addresses these challenges by offering a fully managed, flexible, serverless container platform designed for modern, cloud-native applications – now with GA of Dedicated GPUs, improved integrations for deploying Foundry models to Azure Container Apps, and the private preview of GPU powered dynamic sessions. Foundry Model Integration Azure AI Foundry Models support a wide collection of ready-to-deploy models. Traditionally, these models can be deployed wi…

Azure App Service Premium v4 plan is the latest offering in the Azure App Service family, designed to deliver enhanced performance, scalability, and cost efficiency. We are excited to announce the public preview of this major upgrade to one of our most popular services. Key benefits: Fully managed platform-as-a-service (PaaS) to run your favorite web stack, on both Windows and Linux. Built using next-gen Azure hardware for higher performance and reliability. Lower total cost of ownership with new pricing tailored for large-scale app modernization projects. and more to come! Fully managed platform-as-a-service (PaaS) As the next generation of one of the leading PaaS solutions, Premium v4 abstracts infrastructure management, allowing businesses to focus on application development rather th…  ( 26 min )

Azure App Service Premium v4 plan is the latest offering in the Azure App Service family, designed to deliver enhanced performance, scalability, and cost efficiency. We are excited to announce the public preview of this major upgrade to one of our most popular services. Key benefits: Fully managed platform-as-a-service (PaaS) to run your favorite web stack, on both Windows and Linux. Built using next-gen Azure hardware for higher performance and reliability. Lower total cost of ownership with new pricing tailored for large-scale app modernization projects. and more to come! Fully managed platform-as-a-service (PaaS) As the next generation of one of the leading PaaS solutions, Premium v4 abstracts infrastructure management, allowing businesses to focus on application development rather th…

Azure Functions – Build 2025 update With Microsoft Build underway, the team is excited to provide an update on the latest releases in Azure Functions this year. Customers are leveraging Azure Functions to build AI solutions, thanks to its serverless capabilities that scale on demand and its native integration for processing real-time data. The newly launched capabilities enable the creation of AI and agentic applications with enhanced offerings, built-in security, and a pay-as-you-go model. Real-time retrieval augmented generation, making organizational data accessible through semantic search Native event driven tool function calling with the AI Foundry Agent service Hosted Model Context Protocol servers. Support for Flex consumption plans, including zone redundancy, increased regions, an…  ( 51 min )

Azure Functions – Build 2025 update With Microsoft Build underway, the team is excited to provide an update on the latest releases in Azure Functions this year. Customers are leveraging Azure Functions to build AI solutions, thanks to its serverless capabilities that scale on demand and its native integration for processing real-time data. The newly launched capabilities enable the creation of AI and agentic applications with enhanced offerings, built-in security, and a pay-as-you-go model. Real-time retrieval augmented generation, making organizational data accessible through semantic search Native event driven tool function calling with the AI Foundry Agent service Hosted Model Context Protocol servers. Support for Flex consumption plans, including zone redundancy, increased regions, an…

Building AI applications has never been more accessible. With advancements in tools and platforms, developers can now create sophisticated AI solutions that drive innovation and efficiency across various industries. For many, Kubernetes stands out as natural choice for running AI applications and agents due to its robust orchestration capabilities, scalability, and flexibility.  In this blog, we will explore the latest advancements in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) we are announcing at Microsoft Build 2025, designed to enhance flexibility, bolster security, and seamlessly integrate AI capabilities into your Kubernetes environments. These updates will empower developers to create sophisticated AI solutions, improve operational efficiency, and drive innovation across various industries. Let'…  ( 38 min )

Building AI applications has never been more accessible. With advancements in tools and platforms, developers can now create sophisticated AI solutions that drive innovation and efficiency across various industries. For many, Kubernetes stands out as natural choice for running AI applications and agents due to its robust orchestration capabilities, scalability, and flexibility.  In this blog, we will explore the latest advancements in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) we are announcing at Microsoft Build 2025, designed to enhance flexibility, bolster security, and seamlessly integrate AI capabilities into your Kubernetes environments. These updates will empower developers to create sophisticated AI solutions, improve operational efficiency, and drive innovation across various industries. Let'…

We are thrilled to announce the durable workflow capabilities in Azure Container Apps with the Durable task scheduler (preview). This new feature brings powerful workflow capabilities to Azure Container Apps, enabling developers to build and manage complex, durable workflows as code with ease. What is Workflow and the Durable task scheduler? If you’ve missed the initial announcement of the durable task scheduler, please see these existing blog posts: https://aka.ms/dts-early-access https://aka.ms/dts-public-preview In summary, the Durable task scheduler is a fully managed backend for durable execution. Durable Execution is a fault-tolerant approach to running code, designed to handle failures gracefully through automatic retries and state persistence. It is built on three core principle…  ( 26 min )

Azure Container Apps is a fully managed serverless container service that runs microservices and containerized applications on Azure. It provides built-in autoscaling, including scale to zero, and offers simplified developer experience with support for multiple programming languages and frameworks, including special features built for .NET and Java. Container Apps also provides many advanced networking and monitoring capabilities, offering seamless deployment and management of containerized applications without the need to manage underlying infrastructure. Following the features announced at Ignite’24, we've continued to innovate and enhance Azure Container Apps. We announced the general availability of Serverless GPUs, enabling seamless AI workloads with automatic scaling, optimized cold …  ( 37 min )

Durable Execution Durable Execution is a reliable approach to running code, designed to handle failures smoothly with automatic retries and state persistence. It is built on three core principles: Incremental Execution: Each operation runs independently and in order. State Persistence: The output of each step is durably saved to ensure progress is not lost. Fault Tolerance: If a step fails, the operation is retried from the last successful step, skipping previously completed steps. Durable Execution is particularly beneficial for scenarios requiring stateful chaining of operations, such as order-processing applications, data processing pipelines, ETL (extract, transform, load), and as we'll get into in this post, intelligent applications with AI agents. Durable execution simplifies the i…  ( 32 min )

As a business built by developers, for developers, Microsoft has spent decades making it faster, easier and more exciting to create great software. And developers everywhere have turned everything from BASIC and the .NET Framework, to Azure, VS Code, GitHub and more into the digital world we all live in today. But nothing compares to what’s on the horizon as agentic AI redefines both how we build and the apps we’re building. In fact, the promise of agentic AI is so strong that market forecasts predict we’re on track to reach 1.3 billion AI Agents by 2028. Our own data, from 1,500 organizations around the world, shows agent capabilities have jumped as a driver for AI applications from near last to a top three priority when comparing deployments earlier this year to applications being define…  ( 42 min )

New Networking Capabilities in Azure Container Apps Azure Container Apps is your go-to fully managed serverless container service that enables you to deploy and run containerized applications with per-second billing and autoscaling without having to manage infrastructure.   Today, Azure Container Apps is thrilled to announce several new enterprise capabilities that will take the flexibility, security, and manageability of your containerized applications to the next level. These capabilities include premium ingress, rule-based routing, private endpoints, Azure Arc integration, and planned maintenance. Let’s dive into the advanced networking features that Azure Container Apps has introduced. Public Preview: Premium Ingress in Azure Container Apps Azure Container Apps now supports premium ing…  ( 24 min )

If you’ve ever been to Microsoft Build, you know it’s not just another tech conference, it’s where ideas spark, connections happen, and the future of software takes shape. This year in Seattle, the energy is off the charts. And for those of us passionate about app modernization, it’s a moment we’ve been building toward (pun intended). At Microsoft, we believe modernization is more than just updating old systems—it’s about unlocking new possibilities with AI at the center. And at Build 2025, we’re showing exactly how we’re doing that. AI Is Changing Everything—And We’re Here for It Let’s start with the big picture: AI is transforming the entire software development lifecycle. From how we build apps to how we manage and scale them, AI is the force multiplier, reshaping how we work, build, de…  ( 35 min )

We are thrilled to announce the durable workflow capabilities in Azure Container Apps with the Durable task scheduler (preview). This new feature brings powerful workflow capabilities to Azure Container Apps, enabling developers to build and manage complex, durable workflows as code with ease. What is Workflow and the Durable task scheduler? If you’ve missed the initial announcement of the durable task scheduler, please see these existing blog posts: https://aka.ms/dts-early-access https://aka.ms/dts-public-preview In summary, the Durable task scheduler is a fully managed backend for durable execution. Durable Execution is a fault-tolerant approach to running code, designed to handle failures gracefully through automatic retries and state persistence. It is built on three core principle…

Azure Container Apps is a fully managed serverless container service that runs microservices and containerized applications on Azure. It provides built-in autoscaling, including scale to zero, and offers simplified developer experience with support for multiple programming languages and frameworks, including special features built for .NET and Java. Container Apps also provides many advanced networking and monitoring capabilities, offering seamless deployment and management of containerized applications without the need to manage underlying infrastructure. Following the features announced at Ignite’24, we've continued to innovate and enhance Azure Container Apps. We announced the general availability of Serverless GPUs, enabling seamless AI workloads with automatic scaling, optimized cold …

Durable Execution Durable Execution is a reliable approach to running code, designed to handle failures smoothly with automatic retries and state persistence. It is built on three core principles: Incremental Execution: Each operation runs independently and in order. State Persistence: The output of each step is durably saved to ensure progress is not lost. Fault Tolerance: If a step fails, the operation is retried from the last successful step, skipping previously completed steps. Durable Execution is particularly beneficial for scenarios requiring stateful chaining of operations, such as order-processing applications, data processing pipelines, ETL (extract, transform, load), and as we'll get into in this post, intelligent applications with AI agents. Durable execution simplifies the i…

As a business built by developers, for developers, Microsoft has spent decades making it faster, easier and more exciting to create great software. And developers everywhere have turned everything from BASIC and the .NET Framework, to Azure, VS Code, GitHub and more into the digital world we all live in today. But nothing compares to what’s on the horizon as agentic AI redefines both how we build and the apps we’re building. In fact, the promise of agentic AI is so strong that market forecasts predict we’re on track to reach 1.3 billion AI Agents by 2028. Our own data, from 1,500 organizations around the world, shows agent capabilities have jumped as a driver for AI applications from near last to a top three priority when comparing deployments earlier this year to applications being define…

New Networking Capabilities in Azure Container Apps Azure Container Apps is your go-to fully managed serverless container service that enables you to deploy and run containerized applications with per-second billing and autoscaling without having to manage infrastructure.   Today, Azure Container Apps is thrilled to announce several new enterprise capabilities that will take the flexibility, security, and manageability of your containerized applications to the next level. These capabilities include premium ingress, rule-based routing, private endpoints, Azure Arc integration, and planned maintenance. Let’s dive into the advanced networking features that Azure Container Apps has introduced. Public Preview: Premium Ingress in Azure Container Apps Azure Container Apps now supports premium ing…

If you’ve ever been to Microsoft Build, you know it’s not just another tech conference, it’s where ideas spark, connections happen, and the future of software takes shape. This year in Seattle, the energy is off the charts. And for those of us passionate about app modernization, it’s a moment we’ve been building toward (pun intended). At Microsoft, we believe modernization is more than just updating old systems—it’s about unlocking new possibilities with AI at the center. And at Build 2025, we’re showing exactly how we’re doing that. AI Is Changing Everything—And We’re Here for It Let’s start with the big picture: AI is transforming the entire software development lifecycle. From how we build apps to how we manage and scale them, AI is the force multiplier, reshaping how we work, build, de…

Discover powerful new features in Azure Event Grid, enhancing its functionality and user experience. This fully managed event broker now supports multi-protocol interoperability, including MQTT, for scalable messaging. It seamlessly connects Microsoft-native and third-party services, enabling robust event-driven applications. Streamline event management with flexible push-pull communication patterns.   We are thrilled to announce General Availability of the Cross-tenant delivery to Event Hubs, Service Bus, Storage Queues, and dead letter storage using managed identity with federated identity credentials (FIC) from Azure Event Grid topics, domains, system topics, and partner topics. New cross-tenant scenarios, currently in Public Preview enable delivery to Event Hubs, webhooks, and dead let…  ( 23 min )

Discover powerful new features in Azure Event Grid, enhancing its functionality and user experience. This fully managed event broker now supports multi-protocol interoperability, including MQTT, for scalable messaging. It seamlessly connects Microsoft-native and third-party services, enabling robust event-driven applications. Streamline event management with flexible push-pull communication patterns.   We are thrilled to announce General Availability of the Cross-tenant delivery to Event Hubs, Service Bus, Storage Queues, and dead letter storage using managed identity with federated identity credentials (FIC) from Azure Event Grid topics, domains, system topics, and partner topics. New cross-tenant scenarios, currently in Public Preview enable delivery to Event Hubs, webhooks, and dead let…

At Build 2025, we are excited to announce new features in Azure Monitor designed to enhance observability for developers and SREs, making it easier for you to streamline troubleshooting, improve monitoring efficiency, and gain deeper insights into application performance. With our new AI-powered tools, customizable alerts, and advanced visualization capabilities, we’re empowering developers to deliver high-quality, resilient applications with greater operational efficiency. AI-Powered Troubleshooting Capabilities We are excited to disclose two new AI-powered features, as well as share an update to a GA feature, which enhance troubleshooting and monitoring: AI-powered investigations (Public Preview): Identifies possible explanations for service degradations via automated analyses, consolid…  ( 29 min )

At Build 2025, we are excited to announce new features in Azure Monitor designed to enhance observability for developers and SREs, making it easier for you to streamline troubleshooting, improve monitoring efficiency, and gain deeper insights into application performance. With our new AI-powered tools, customizable alerts, and advanced visualization capabilities, we’re empowering developers to deliver high-quality, resilient applications with greater operational efficiency. AI-Powered Troubleshooting Capabilities We are excited to disclose two new AI-powered features, as well as share an update to a GA feature, which enhance troubleshooting and monitoring: AI-powered investigations (Public Preview): Identifies possible explanations for service degradations via automated analyses, consolid…

Troubleshooting modern cloud-native workloads has become increasingly complex. As applications scale across distributed services and regions, pinpointing the root cause of performance degradation or outages often requires navigating a maze of disconnected signals, metrics, and alerts. This fragmented experience slows down troubleshooting and burdens engineering teams with manual correlation work.  We address these challenges by introducing a unified, intelligent concept of workload health that’s enriched with application context. Health models streamline how you monitor, assess, and respond to issues affecting your workloads. Built on Azure Service Groups, they provide an out-of-the-box model tailored to your environment, consolidate signals to reduce alert noise, and surface actionable in…  ( 29 min )

Troubleshooting modern cloud-native workloads has become increasingly complex. As applications scale across distributed services and regions, pinpointing the root cause of performance degradation or outages often requires navigating a maze of disconnected signals, metrics, and alerts. This fragmented experience slows down troubleshooting and burdens engineering teams with manual correlation work.  We address these challenges by introducing a unified, intelligent concept of workload health that’s enriched with application context. Health models streamline how you monitor, assess, and respond to issues affecting your workloads. Built on Azure Service Groups, they provide an out-of-the-box model tailored to your environment, consolidate signals to reduce alert noise, and surface actionable in…

In line with our commitment to open-source solutions, we are announcing the public preview of Azure Monitor dashboards with Grafana. This service offers a powerful solution for cloud-native monitoring and visualizing Prometheus metrics. Dashboards with Grafana enable you to create and edit Grafana dashboards directly in the Azure portal without additional cost and less administrative overhead compared to self-hosting Grafana or using managed Grafana services. Start quickly with pre-built and community dashboards Pre-built Grafana dashboards for Azure Kubernetes Services, Azure Monitor, and dozens of other Azure resources are included and enabled by default. Additionally, you can import dashboards from thousands of publicly available Grafana community and open-source dashboards for Prometh…  ( 22 min )

In line with our commitment to open-source solutions, we are announcing the public preview of Azure Monitor dashboards with Grafana. This service offers a powerful solution for cloud-native monitoring and visualizing Prometheus metrics. Dashboards with Grafana enable you to create and edit Grafana dashboards directly in the Azure portal without additional cost and less administrative overhead compared to self-hosting Grafana or using managed Grafana services. Start quickly with pre-built and community dashboards Pre-built Grafana dashboards for Azure Kubernetes Services, Azure Monitor, and dozens of other Azure resources are included and enabled by default. Additionally, you can import dashboards from thousands of publicly available Grafana community and open-source dashboards for Prometh…

Public Preview: Simple Log Alerts in Azure Monitor We are excited to announce the Public Preview of Simple Log Alerts in Azure Monitor, available starting in mid-May. This new feature is designed to provide a simplified and more intuitive experience for monitoring and alerting, enhancing your ability to detect and respond to issues in near real-time. Simple Log Alerts are a new type of Log Search Alerts in Azure Monitor, designed to provide a simpler and faster alternative to Log Search Alerts. Unlike Log Search Alerts that aggregate rows over a defined period, Simple Log Alerts evaluate each row individually. This feature is now available for customers using Basic Logs who want to enable alerting. Previously, when customers opted to configure the traces table in Azure Monitor Application …  ( 21 min )

We’re thrilled to announce the general availability (GA) of Managed Prometheus visualizations in Azure Monitor for AKS, along with an enhanced, unified AKS Monitoring experience. Troubleshooting Kubernetes clusters is often time-consuming and complex whether you're diagnosing failures, scaling issues, or performance bottlenecks. This redesign of the existing Insights experience brings all your key monitoring data into a single, streamlined view reducing the time and effort it takes to diagnose, triage, and resolve problems so you can keep your applications running smoothly with less manual work. By using Managed Prometheus, customers can also realize up to 80% savings on metrics costs and benefit from up to 90% faster blade load performance delivering both a powerful and cost-efficient way…  ( 25 min )

Investigate smarter – click, analyze, and easily mitigate with Azure Monitor investigations! We are excited to introduce the public preview of Azure Monitor issue and investigation.      These new capabilities are designed to enhance your troubleshooting experience and streamline the process of resolving health degradations in your application and infrastructure. What it is  Azure Monitor investigation is an AI-powered, automated analysis designed to scan the telemetry gathered by Azure Monitor to troubleshoot and mitigate potential service health issues. Investigation provides a list of AI-generated findings that include a summary of what happened, potential causes, and steps for further troubleshooting and mitigation. Azure Monitor issue contains all observability related data and proce…  ( 23 min )

We are thrilled to announce the launch of a new feature in Azure Monitor: Customizable Email Subjects for Log Search Alerts V2, available during May. What it is Customizable Email Subjects for Log Search Alerts V2 is a new feature that enables customers to personalize the subject lines of alert emails, making it easier to quickly identify and respond to alerts with more relevant and specific information. How it works This feature allows you to override email subjects with dynamic values by concatenating information from the common schema and custom text. For example, you can customize email subjects to include specific details such as the name of the virtual machine (VM) or patching details, allowing for quick identification without opening the email. Getting Started To get started with Cu…  ( 22 min )

Public Preview: Simple Log Alerts in Azure Monitor We are excited to announce the Public Preview of Simple Log Alerts in Azure Monitor, available starting in mid-May. This new feature is designed to provide a simplified and more intuitive experience for monitoring and alerting, enhancing your ability to detect and respond to issues in near real-time. Simple Log Alerts are a new type of Log Search Alerts in Azure Monitor, designed to provide a simpler and faster alternative to Log Search Alerts. Unlike Log Search Alerts that aggregate rows over a defined period, Simple Log Alerts evaluate each row individually. This feature is now available for customers using Basic Logs who want to enable alerting. Previously, when customers opted to configure the traces table in Azure Monitor Application …

We’re thrilled to announce the general availability (GA) of Managed Prometheus visualizations in Azure Monitor for AKS, along with an enhanced, unified AKS Monitoring experience. Troubleshooting Kubernetes clusters is often time-consuming and complex whether you're diagnosing failures, scaling issues, or performance bottlenecks. This redesign of the existing Insights experience brings all your key monitoring data into a single, streamlined view reducing the time and effort it takes to diagnose, triage, and resolve problems so you can keep your applications running smoothly with less manual work. By using Managed Prometheus, customers can also realize up to 80% savings on metrics costs and benefit from up to 90% faster blade load performance delivering both a powerful and cost-efficient way…

Investigate smarter – click, analyze, and easily mitigate with Azure Monitor investigations! We are excited to introduce the public preview of Azure Monitor issue and investigation.      These new capabilities are designed to enhance your troubleshooting experience and streamline the process of resolving health degradations in your application and infrastructure. What it is  Azure Monitor investigation is an AI-powered, automated analysis designed to scan the telemetry gathered by Azure Monitor to troubleshoot and mitigate potential service health issues. Investigation provides a list of AI-generated findings that include a summary of what happened, potential causes, and steps for further troubleshooting and mitigation. Azure Monitor issue contains all observability related data and proce…

We are thrilled to announce the launch of a new feature in Azure Monitor: Customizable Email Subjects for Log Search Alerts V2, available during May. What it is Customizable Email Subjects for Log Search Alerts V2 is a new feature that enables customers to personalize the subject lines of alert emails, making it easier to quickly identify and respond to alerts with more relevant and specific information. How it works This feature allows you to override email subjects with dynamic values by concatenating information from the common schema and custom text. For example, you can customize email subjects to include specific details such as the name of the virtual machine (VM) or patching details, allowing for quick identification without opening the email. Getting Started To get started with Cu…

AI is reshaping how we build, deploy, and scale software. As more apps become AI-powered, developers need environments that can keep up with speed and demands of innovation. We’ve heard from customers just how critical it is to have a zero-config experience when building AI applications, with streamlined access to compute, prebuilt models, and environment […] The post Supercharge AI development with new AI-powered features in Microsoft Dev Box appeared first on Develop from the cloud.  ( 32 min )

AI agents, model context protocols (MCPs), and emerging AI workflows are fundamentally transforming software development paradigms and broadening the range of applications we can create. Developers are expected to keep up with the pace of innovation, but that’s hard to do when working from traditional development environments or legacy VDI solutions. With Microsoft Dev Box, […] The post Unlock developer potential with Microsoft Dev Box appeared first on Develop from the cloud.  ( 27 min )

Learn how Microsoft 365 Copilot APIs allow you to build solutions grounded in your organization’s content, context, and permissions, without needing to relocate or duplicate data. The post Introducing Microsoft 365 Copilot APIs appeared first on Microsoft 365 Developer Blog.  ( 23 min )

Today we’re thrilled to introduce Azure SRE Agent, an AI-powered tool that makes it easier to sustain production cloud environments. SRE Agent helps respond to incidents quickly and effectively, alleviating the toil of managing production environments. Overall, it results in better service uptime and reduced operational costs. SRE Agent leverages the reasoning capabilities of LLMs to identify the logs and metrics necessary for rapid root cause analysis and issue mitigation. Its advanced AI capabilities transform incident and infrastructure management in Azure, freeing engineers to focus on more meaningful work.  Sign up for the SRE Agent preview click here As more companies move their services online, site reliability engineering (SRE) has become crucial to keeping critical systems reliab…  ( 28 min )

Today we’re thrilled to introduce Azure SRE Agent, an AI-powered tool that makes it easier to sustain production cloud environments. SRE Agent helps respond to incidents quickly and effectively, alleviating the toil of managing production environments. Overall, it results in better service uptime and reduced operational costs. SRE Agent leverages the reasoning capabilities of LLMs to identify the logs and metrics necessary for rapid root cause analysis and issue mitigation. Its advanced AI capabilities transform incident and infrastructure management in Azure, freeing engineers to focus on more meaningful work.  Sign up for the SRE Agent preview click here As more companies move their services online, site reliability engineering (SRE) has become crucial to keeping critical systems reliab…

Modernizing Java applications and migrating to the cloud is often a complex, time-consuming, and fragmented process. GitHub Copilot app modernization for Java [and upgrade for Java] is a powerful solution designed to simplify and accelerate your journey to the cloud. Available now in Public Preview as a single extension pack in the Visual Studio Code Marketplace, […] The post Announcing Public Preview of the GitHub Copilot app modernization for Java appeared first on Microsoft for Java Developers.  ( 24 min )

Introduction  We're thrilled to introduce a new suite of multimodal capabilities in Azure AI Search.     This set of features includes both new additions and incremental improvements that enable Azure AI Search to extract text from pages and inline images, generate image descriptions (verbalization), and create vision/text embeddings. It also facilitates storing cropped images in the knowledge store and returning text and image annotations in RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) applications to end users.  These features can be configured in our new Azure portal wizard with multimodal support or via the REST API 2025-05-01-preview version.  In addition, we're providing a new GitHub repo with sample code for a RAG app. This resource shows how you can use the index created by Azure AI Search…  ( 34 min )

Today we’re announcing agentic retrieval in Azure AI Search, a multiturn query engine that plans and runs its own retrieval strategy for improved answer relevance. Compared to traditional, single-shot RAG, agentic retrieval improves answer relevance to complex questions by up to 40%.  It transforms queries, runs parallel searches, and delivers results tuned for agents, along with references and a query activity log. Now available in public preview. What is agentic retrieval? Agentic retrieval in Azure AI Search uses a new query architecture that incorporates user conversation history and an Azure OpenAI model to plan, retrieve and synthesize queries. Here's how it works: An LLM analyzes the entire chat thread to identify the underlying information need. Instead of a single, catch-all que…  ( 26 min )

By Alec Berntson, Alina Stoica Beck, Amaia Salvador Aguilera, Arnau Quindós Sánchez, Thibault Gisselbrecht and Xianshun Chen   Agentic retrieval in Azure AI Search is a new API built to effectively answer complex queries by extracting the right content needed. The API defines and runs a query plan, incorporating conversation history and an Azure OpenAI model. It transforms complex queries, then performs multiple searches at once, combining the final results and delivering ready-to-use content for answer generation. In this post we detail the operations that take place while the API is called and walk through the numerous experiments and datasets to evaluate its relevance performance. We learned the agentic retrieval API automates optimal retrieval for complex user queries, so you can get m…  ( 74 min )

Introduction  We're thrilled to introduce a new suite of multimodal capabilities in Azure AI Search.     This set of features includes both new additions and incremental improvements that enable Azure AI Search to extract text from pages and inline images, generate image descriptions (verbalization), and create vision/text embeddings. It also facilitates storing cropped images in the knowledge store and returning text and image annotations in RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) applications to end users.  These features can be configured in our new Azure portal wizard with multimodal support or via the REST API 2025-05-01-preview version.  In addition, we're providing a new GitHub repo with sample code for a RAG app. This resource shows how you can use the index created by Azure AI Search…

Today we’re announcing agentic retrieval in Azure AI Search, a multiturn query engine that plans and runs its own retrieval strategy for improved answer relevance. Compared to traditional, single-shot RAG, agentic retrieval improves answer relevance to complex questions by up to 40%.  It transforms queries, runs parallel searches, and delivers results tuned for agents, along with references and a query activity log. Now available in public preview. What is agentic retrieval? Agentic retrieval in Azure AI Search uses a new query architecture that incorporates user conversation history and an Azure OpenAI model to plan, retrieve and synthesize queries. Here's how it works: An LLM analyzes the entire chat thread to identify the underlying information need. Instead of a single, catch-all que…

By Alec Berntson, Alina Stoica Beck, Amaia Salvador Aguilera, Arnau Quindós Sánchez, Thibault Gisselbrecht and Xianshun Chen   Agentic retrieval in Azure AI Search is a new API built to effectively answer complex queries by extracting the right content needed. The API defines and runs a query plan, incorporating conversation history and an Azure OpenAI model. It transforms complex queries, then performs multiple searches at once, combining the final results and delivering ready-to-use content for answer generation. In this post we detail the operations that take place while the API is called and walk through the numerous experiments and datasets to evaluate its relevance performance. We learned the agentic retrieval API automates optimal retrieval for complex user queries, so you can get m…

The Fabric Spark Native Execution Engine (NEE) is now generally available (GA) as part of Fabric Runtime 1.3. This C++-based vectorized engine (built on Apache Gluten and Velox) runs Spark workloads directly on the lakehouse, requiring no code changes or new libraries. It supports Spark 3.5 APIs and both Parquet and Delta Lake formats, so … Continue reading “Microsoft Fabric Spark: Native Execution Engine now generally available”  ( 6 min )

PostgreSQL is a popular relational database in application development, and Azure Database for PostgreSQL provides a fully managed service with enterprise-level security, availability, and scalability. Integrating Azure Database for PostgreSQL with Microsoft Fabric through Mirroring (Preview) enables seamless replication of transactional data for analytics, simplifying data processes and ensuring real-time insights and data consistency. Microsoft … Continue reading “Simplify Your Data Strategy: Mirroring for Azure Database for PostgreSQL in Microsoft Fabric for Effortless Analytics on Transactional Data”  ( 8 min )

Mirroring in Microsoft Fabric allows you to seamlessly reflect your existing data estate from Azure SQL Managed Instance into OneLake. The mirrored data is automatically kept up to date in near real-time, enabling advanced analytics and reporting to generate essential business insights. Since our preview announcement of Mirroring for Azure SQL Managed Instance, we have listened … Continue reading “New features in Mirroring for Azure SQL Managed Instance – private endpoint support and more”  ( 6 min )

At Microsoft Build 2025, we are thrilled to show you the latest innovations that we have delivered with Mirroring in Fabric. Mirroring is a powerful feature that allows you to seamlessly reflect your existing data estate continuously from any database or data warehouse into OneLake in Fabric. Once Mirroring starts the replication process, the mirrored … Continue reading “What’s new with Mirroring in Fabric at Microsoft Build 2025”  ( 9 min )

We’re excited to announce the General Availability of Dataflow Gen2 CI/CD & Git integration support! With this set of features, you can now seamlessly integrate your Dataflow Gen2 items with your existing CI/CD pipelines and version control of your workspace in Fabric. This integration allows for better collaboration, versioning, and automation of your deployment process … Continue reading “Dataflow Gen2 CI/CD, GIT integration and Public APIs (Generally Available)”  ( 7 min )

As organizations advance in their cloud platform journey, ensuring robust data security remains fundamental. Encryption plays a crucial role in defense-in-depth strategies used to safeguard sensitive information by adding a layer of protection against unauthorized access. In addition to strengthening your security posture, encryption helps you adhere to your organization’s internal security, data governance and … Continue reading “Encrypt data at rest in your Fabric workspaces using customer-managed keys (Preview)”  ( 7 min )

Maintaining data consistency during ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) processes has long been a critical challenge for data engineers. Whether it’s a nightly pipeline overwriting key records or a mid-day transformation introducing schema drift, the risk of disrupting downstream analytics is both real and costly. In today’s fast-paced, data-driven world, even brief inconsistencies can break dashboards, … Continue reading “Warehouse Snapshots in Microsoft Fabric (Preview)”  ( 11 min )

A recent study from the Social Science Research Network looked at 5,000 developers using generative AI tools in their day-to-day work and found a 26% average increase in completed tasks. The massive opportunity generative AI presents for developers and data professionals was one of the key driving forces behind the initial development of Microsoft Fabric. … Continue reading “Get to insights faster with SaaS databases and “chat with your data””  ( 14 min )

We are excited to announce Materialized Lake views (MLV) in Microsoft Fabric. Coming soon in preview, MLV is a new feature that allows you to build declarative data pipelines using SQL, complete with built-in data quality rules and automatic monitoring of data transformations. In essence, an MLV is a persisted, continuously updated view of your … Continue reading “Simplifying Medallion Implementation with Materialized Lake Views in Fabric”  ( 9 min )

We’re excited to announce a new shortcut type for Azure Blob Storage in Microsoft Fabric! As a key platform for storing unstructured data — from images and documents to logs and media — Azure Blob Storage plays a vital role in powering AI and advanced analytics solutions. With this new shortcut type, you can easily … Continue reading “New Shortcut Type for Azure Blob Storage in OneLake shortcuts”  ( 6 min )

Announcing preview of Cosmos DB in Microsoft Fabric. Cosmos DB makes it easy to build AI apps, offering a database that scales automatically, deeply integrated with OneLake ad and is secure right out of the box. It’s built on scalability and performance of Azure Cosmos DB.  ( 8 min )

Control who can find, use, and create agents, define permissions, approve or block agent deployments, and configure billing models including pay-as-you-go or prepaid options. Get detailed visibility into how agents are used, which users and groups are driving consumption, and how much they’re costing you. With Microsoft Purview integration, get visibility into sensitive data exposure, track compliance risks, and audit agent activity to stay secure and aligned with your organization’s data policies. Jeremy Chapman, Director of Microsoft 365, shares how to configure, deploy, monitor, and secure AI agents at scale. Define agent access by group or user. Customize permissions with Microsoft 365 admin controls. See how to use the Copilot Control System. Enable pay-as-you-go agent billing with m…  ( 38 min )

Control who can find, use, and create agents, define permissions, approve or block agent deployments, and configure billing models including pay-as-you-go or prepaid options. Get detailed visibility into how agents are used, which users and groups are driving consumption, and how much they’re costing you. With Microsoft Purview integration, get visibility into sensitive data exposure, track compliance risks, and audit agent activity to stay secure and aligned with your organization’s data policies. Jeremy Chapman, Director of Microsoft 365, shares how to configure, deploy, monitor, and secure AI agents at scale. Define agent access by group or user. Customize permissions with Microsoft 365 admin controls. See how to use the Copilot Control System. Enable pay-as-you-go agent billing with m…

Table of Contents Abstract Introduction Enterprise RAG: Challenges and Requirements NVIDIA AI Blueprint for RAG Adapting the Blueprint for Azure Deployment Azure NetApp Files: Powering High-Performance RAG Workloads Why Azure NetApp Files works well for RAG Service Levels for RAG Workloads Dynamic Service Level Adjustments Snapshot Capabilities for ML Versioning Cost Optimization Strategies Azure Reference Architecture for Enterprise RAG End-to-End Workflow Implementation Guide: Building the Pipeline Setup your Bash shell Setup your Azure Account Set environment variables Evaluating Your Enterprise RAG Pipeline Retrieval Accuracy Latency and Throughput GPU Utilization Cost Analysis What’s Coming Next Enterprise Use Cases and Real-World Applications Enterprise Search Customer Support Regula…  ( 81 min )

Table of Contents Abstract Introduction Enterprise RAG: Challenges and Requirements NVIDIA AI Blueprint for RAG Adapting the Blueprint for Azure Deployment Azure NetApp Files: Powering High-Performance RAG Workloads Why Azure NetApp Files works well for RAG Service Levels for RAG Workloads Dynamic Service Level Adjustments Snapshot Capabilities for ML Versioning Cost Optimization Strategies Azure Reference Architecture for Enterprise RAG End-to-End Workflow Implementation Guide: Building the Pipeline Setup your Bash shell Setup your Azure Account Set environment variables Evaluating Your Enterprise RAG Pipeline Retrieval Accuracy Latency and Throughput GPU Utilization Cost Analysis What’s Coming Next Enterprise Use Cases and Real-World Applications Enterprise Search Customer Support Regula…

In the ever-evolving world of Generative AI, the pace of innovation is nothing short of breathtaking. Just a few short months ago, Large Language Models (LLMs) and their smaller counterparts, Small Language Models (SLMs), were the talk of the town. Then came Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), offering a powerful way to ground these models to specific knowledge bases. The emergence of Agents and Agentic AI further opened doors for new possibilities by using the GenAI Model capabilities. Now, as the next step in this exciting journey, we're witnessing the arrival of a new open protocol – one that standardizes how applications provide crucial context to LLMs. This new protocol is MCP. Model Context Protocol: Currently there is a Challenge while integrating LLMs with specific tools (like da…  ( 42 min )

In the ever-evolving world of Generative AI, the pace of innovation is nothing short of breathtaking. Just a few short months ago, Large Language Models (LLMs) and their smaller counterparts, Small Language Models (SLMs), were the talk of the town. Then came Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), offering a powerful way to ground these models to specific knowledge bases. The emergence of Agents and Agentic AI further opened doors for new possibilities by using the GenAI Model capabilities. Now, as the next step in this exciting journey, we're witnessing the arrival of a new open protocol – one that standardizes how applications provide crucial context to LLMs. This new protocol is MCP. Model Context Protocol: Currently there is a Challenge while integrating LLMs with specific tools (like da…

We’re laying the groundwork to bring .NET Aspire to Azure App Service. While this is just the beginning, we wanted to give you an early preview of how to set up a basic Aspire application on App Service.  ( 5 min )

Model Context Protocol is an open standard that acts as a universal connector between AI models and the outside world. Think of MCP as “the USB-C of the AI world,” allowing AI systems to plug into APIs, databases, files, and other tools seamlessly. By adopting MCP, developers can create smarter, more useful AI applications that access up-to-date information and perform actions like a human developer would. To help developers learn this game-changing technology, Microsoft has created the “MCP for Beginners” course a free, open-source curriculum that guides you from the basics of MCP to building real-world AI integrations. Below, we’ll explore what MCP is, who this course is for, and how it empowers both beginners and intermediate developers to get started with MCP. What is MCP and Why Shoul…  ( 43 min )

Model Context Protocol is an open standard that acts as a universal connector between AI models and the outside world. Think of MCP as “the USB-C of the AI world,” allowing AI systems to plug into APIs, databases, files, and other tools seamlessly. By adopting MCP, developers can create smarter, more useful AI applications that access up-to-date information and perform actions like a human developer would. To help developers learn this game-changing technology, Microsoft has created the “MCP for Beginners” course a free, open-source curriculum that guides you from the basics of MCP to building real-world AI integrations. Below, we’ll explore what MCP is, who this course is for, and how it empowers both beginners and intermediate developers to get started with MCP. What is MCP and Why Shoul…

With built-in visibility into how AI apps and agents interact with sensitive data — whether inside Microsoft 365 or across unmanaged consumer tools — you can detect risks early, take decisive action, and enforce the right protections without slowing innovation. See usage trends, investigate prompts and responses, and respond to potential data oversharing or policy violations in real time. From compliance-ready audit logs to adaptive data protection, you’ll have the insights and tools to keep data secure as AI becomes a part of everyday work. Shilpa Ranganathan, Microsoft Purview Principal Group PM, shares how to balance AI innovation with enterprise-grade data governance and security. Move from detection to prevention. Built-in, pre-configured policies you can activate in seconds. Check o…  ( 43 min )

With built-in visibility into how AI apps and agents interact with sensitive data — whether inside Microsoft 365 or across unmanaged consumer tools — you can detect risks early, take decisive action, and enforce the right protections without slowing innovation. See usage trends, investigate prompts and responses, and respond to potential data oversharing or policy violations in real time. From compliance-ready audit logs to adaptive data protection, you’ll have the insights and tools to keep data secure as AI becomes a part of everyday work. Shilpa Ranganathan, Microsoft Purview Principal Group PM, shares how to balance AI innovation with enterprise-grade data governance and security. Move from detection to prevention. Built-in, pre-configured policies you can activate in seconds. Check o…

Unify and secure your data — no matter where it lives — without sacrificing control using OneLake security, part of Microsoft Fabric.  With granular permissions down to the row, column, and table level, you can confidently manage access across engines like Power BI, Spark, and T-SQL, all from one place. Discover, label, and govern your data with clarity using the integrated OneLake catalog that surfaces the right items fast. Aaron Merrill, Microsoft Fabric Principal Program Manager, shows how you can stay in control, from security to discoverability — owning, sharing, and protecting data on your terms. Protect sensitive information at scale. Set precise data access rules — down to individual rows. Check out OneLake security in Microsoft Fabric. No data duplication needed. Hide sensitive…  ( 41 min )

Unify and secure your data — no matter where it lives — without sacrificing control using OneLake security, part of Microsoft Fabric.  With granular permissions down to the row, column, and table level, you can confidently manage access across engines like Power BI, Spark, and T-SQL, all from one place. Discover, label, and govern your data with clarity using the integrated OneLake catalog that surfaces the right items fast. Aaron Merrill, Microsoft Fabric Principal Program Manager, shows how you can stay in control, from security to discoverability — owning, sharing, and protecting data on your terms. Protect sensitive information at scale. Set precise data access rules — down to individual rows. Check out OneLake security in Microsoft Fabric. No data duplication needed. Hide sensitive…

Streamline your day with new, user-focused updates to Microsoft 365 Copilot. Jump into work faster with a redesigned layout that puts Chat, Search, and your agents front and center. New Copilot Search lets you yse natural language to find files, emails, and conversations — even if you don’t remember exact keywords — and get instant summaries and previews without switching apps. Create high-impact visuals, documents, and videos in seconds with the new Copilot Create experience, complete with support for brand templates. Tap into powerful agents like Researcher and Analyst to handle deep tasks or build your own with ease. And if you manage Copilot across your organization, you now have better tools to deploy, monitor, and secure AI use — all from a single view. Describe what you want. Don’…  ( 42 min )

Streamline your day with new, user-focused updates to Microsoft 365 Copilot. Jump into work faster with a redesigned layout that puts Chat, Search, and your agents front and center. New Copilot Search lets you yse natural language to find files, emails, and conversations — even if you don’t remember exact keywords — and get instant summaries and previews without switching apps. Create high-impact visuals, documents, and videos in seconds with the new Copilot Create experience, complete with support for brand templates. Tap into powerful agents like Researcher and Analyst to handle deep tasks or build your own with ease. And if you manage Copilot across your organization, you now have better tools to deploy, monitor, and secure AI use — all from a single view. Describe what you want. Don’…

What are Availability Zones?  Availability Zones, or zone redundancy, refers to the deployment of applications across multiple availability zones within an Azure region. Each availability zone consists of one or more data centers with independent power, cooling, and networking. By leveraging zone redundancy, you can protect your applications and data from data center failures, ensuring uninterrupted service.  Key Updates  The minimum instance requirement for enabling Availability Zones has been reduced from three instances to two, while still maintaining a 99.99% SLA.  Many existing App Service plans with two or more instances will automatically support Availability Zones without additional setup.  The zone redundant setting for App Service plans and App Service Environment v3 is now …  ( 32 min )

What are Availability Zones?  Availability Zones, or zone redundancy, refers to the deployment of applications across multiple availability zones within an Azure region. Each availability zone consists of one or more data centers with independent power, cooling, and networking. By leveraging zone redundancy, you can protect your applications and data from data center failures, ensuring uninterrupted service.  Key Updates  The minimum instance requirement for enabling Availability Zones has been reduced from three instances to two, while still maintaining a 99.99% SLA.  Many existing App Service plans with two or more instances will automatically support Availability Zones without additional setup.  The zone redundant setting for App Service plans and App Service Environment v3 is now …

It’s that time of year again—Microsoft Build 2025 is here! And in the spirit of pushing boundaries with AI, we’re thrilled to introduce a powerful new preview feature in Conversational Diagnostics. 📸 Diagnose with a ScreenshotNo more struggling to describe a tricky issue or typing out long explanations. With this new capability, you can simply paste, upload, or drag a screenshot into the chat. Conversational Diagnostics will analyze the image, identify the context, and surface relevant diagnostics for your selected Azure Resource—all in seconds. Whether you're debugging a web app or triaging a customer issue, this feature helps you move from problem to insight faster than ever. Thank you!  ( 18 min )

It’s that time of year again—Microsoft Build 2025 is here! And in the spirit of pushing boundaries with AI, we’re thrilled to introduce a powerful new preview feature in Conversational Diagnostics. 📸 Diagnose with a ScreenshotNo more struggling to describe a tricky issue or typing out long explanations. With this new capability, you can simply paste, upload, or drag a screenshot into the chat. Conversational Diagnostics will analyze the image, identify the context, and surface relevant diagnostics for your selected Azure Resource—all in seconds. Whether you're debugging a web app or triaging a customer issue, this feature helps you move from problem to insight faster than ever. Thank you!

Cost tracking is a critical aspect of cloud operations—it helps you understand not just how much you're spending, but also where that spend is going and which teams are responsible. When running a Machine Learning capability with multiple consumers across your organisation, it becomes especially challenging to attribute compute costs to the teams building and deploying models. With the extensive compute use in Machine Learning, these costs can add up quickly. In this article, we’ll explore how tools like Kubecost can help bring visibility and accountability to ML workloads. Tracking costs in Azure can mostly be done through Azure Cost Management, however when we are running these ML models as endpoints and deployments in a Kubernetes cluster, things can get a bit trickier. Azure Cost Manag…  ( 41 min )

Cost tracking is a critical aspect of cloud operations—it helps you understand not just how much you're spending, but also where that spend is going and which teams are responsible. When running a Machine Learning capability with multiple consumers across your organisation, it becomes especially challenging to attribute compute costs to the teams building and deploying models. With the extensive compute use in Machine Learning, these costs can add up quickly. In this article, we’ll explore how tools like Kubecost can help bring visibility and accountability to ML workloads. Tracking costs in Azure can mostly be done through Azure Cost Management, however when we are running these ML models as endpoints and deployments in a Kubernetes cluster, things can get a bit trickier. Azure Cost Manag…

A New Way to Host Functions on ACA With the new native hosting model, Azure Functions are now fully integrated into ACA. This means you can deploy and run your functions directly on ACA, taking full advantage of the robust app platform.  Create via Portal: Option to optimize for Azure function If you are using CLI, you can deploy Azure Functions directly onto Azure Container Apps using the Microsoft.App resource provider by setting “kind=functionapp” property on the Container App resource. Create via CLI: Set “kind=functionapp” property Please note, in the new native hosting model, Azure Functions extensions will continue to work as before. Auto-scaling will remain available. Deployments are supported through ARM templates, Bicep, Azure CLI, and the Azure portal. Monitoring using Applicat…  ( 27 min )

A New Way to Host Functions on ACA With the new native hosting model, Azure Functions are now fully integrated into ACA. This means you can deploy and run your functions directly on ACA, taking full advantage of the robust app platform.  Create via Portal: Option to optimize for Azure function If you are using CLI, you can deploy Azure Functions directly onto Azure Container Apps using the Microsoft.App resource provider by setting “kind=functionapp” property on the Container App resource. Create via CLI: Set “kind=functionapp” property Please note, in the new native hosting model, Azure Functions extensions will continue to work as before. Auto-scaling will remain available. Deployments are supported through ARM templates, Bicep, Azure CLI, and the Azure portal. Monitoring using Applicat…

Stay in control with Microsoft Defender. You can identify which AI apps and cloud services are in use across your environment, evaluate their risk levels, and allow or block them as needed — all from one place. Whether it’s a sanctioned tool or a shadow AI app, you’re equipped to set the right policies and respond fast to emerging threats.  Microsoft Defender gives you the visibility to track complex attack paths — linking signals across endpoints, identities, and cloud apps. Investigate real-time alerts, protect sensitive data from misuse in AI tools like Copilot, and enforce controls even for in-house developed apps using system prompts and Azure AI Foundry.  Rob Lefferts, Microsoft Security CVP, joins me in the Mechanics studio to share how you can safeguard your AI-powered environment…  ( 59 min )

Stay in control with Microsoft Defender. You can identify which AI apps and cloud services are in use across your environment, evaluate their risk levels, and allow or block them as needed — all from one place. Whether it’s a sanctioned tool or a shadow AI app, you’re equipped to set the right policies and respond fast to emerging threats.  Microsoft Defender gives you the visibility to track complex attack paths — linking signals across endpoints, identities, and cloud apps. Investigate real-time alerts, protect sensitive data from misuse in AI tools like Copilot, and enforce controls even for in-house developed apps using system prompts and Azure AI Foundry.  Rob Lefferts, Microsoft Security CVP, joins me in the Mechanics studio to share how you can safeguard your AI-powered environment…

Protect your Microsoft 365 data and stay in control with Microsoft 365 Backup — whether managing email, documents, or sites across Exchange, OneDrive, and SharePoint. Define exactly what you want to back up and restore precisely what you need to with speeds reaching 2TB per hour at scale. With flexible policies, dynamic rules, and recovery points up to 365 days back, you can stay resilient and ready.  In this introduction, I'll show you how to minimize disruption and keep your organization moving forward even in the event of a disaster with Microsoft 365 Backup.  Fine-tune what gets backed up.  Back up by user, site, group, or file type — to meet your exact needs. Get started with Microsoft 365 Backup.  Restore data in-place or to a new location.  Compare versions before committing. Tak…  ( 45 min )

Protect your Microsoft 365 data and stay in control with Microsoft 365 Backup — whether managing email, documents, or sites across Exchange, OneDrive, and SharePoint. Define exactly what you want to back up and restore precisely what you need to with speeds reaching 2TB per hour at scale. With flexible policies, dynamic rules, and recovery points up to 365 days back, you can stay resilient and ready.  In this introduction, I'll show you how to minimize disruption and keep your organization moving forward even in the event of a disaster with Microsoft 365 Backup.  Fine-tune what gets backed up.  Back up by user, site, group, or file type — to meet your exact needs. Get started with Microsoft 365 Backup.  Restore data in-place or to a new location.  Compare versions before committing. Tak…

This post will discuss this message that may be seen on Azure Container Apps.  ( 8 min )

Introduction In Kenya's evolving higher education landscape, access to accurate information about funding opportunities remains a critical challenge for students and their families. When the New Funding Model (NFM) was introduced in May 2023, many applicants found themselves navigating unfamiliar processes with limited guidance. This knowledge gap inspired our team to develop a solution that would bridge this divide using cutting-edge AI technology. Our project, RAG-Powered Virtual Assistant for the Higher Education Fund (HEF), emerged as the overall winner at the Microsoft Data + AI Hack Kenya 2025. By leveraging Microsoft Fabric's powerful Eventhouse capabilities alongside Azure OpenAI services, we created an intelligent assistant that provides instant, accurate responses to queries abou…  ( 40 min )

Introduction In Kenya's evolving higher education landscape, access to accurate information about funding opportunities remains a critical challenge for students and their families. When the New Funding Model (NFM) was introduced in May 2023, many applicants found themselves navigating unfamiliar processes with limited guidance. This knowledge gap inspired our team to develop a solution that would bridge this divide using cutting-edge AI technology. Our project, RAG-Powered Virtual Assistant for the Higher Education Fund (HEF), emerged as the overall winner at the Microsoft Data + AI Hack Kenya 2025. By leveraging Microsoft Fabric's powerful Eventhouse capabilities alongside Azure OpenAI services, we created an intelligent assistant that provides instant, accurate responses to queries abou…

Introduction Ever found yourself wishing your web interface could really talk and listen back to you? With a few clicks (and a bit of code), you can turn your plain Open WebUI into a full-on voice assistant. In this post, you’ll see how to spin up an Azure Speech resource, hook it into your frontend, and watch as user speech transforms into text and your app’s responses leap off the screen in a human-like voice. By the end of this guide, you’ll have a voice-enabled web UI that actually converses with users, opening the door to hands-free controls, better accessibility, and a genuinely richer user experience. Ready to make your web app speak? Let’s dive in. Why Azure AI Speech? We use Azure AI Speech service in Open Web UI to enable voice interactions directly within web applications. This …  ( 27 min )

Introduction Ever found yourself wishing your web interface could really talk and listen back to you? With a few clicks (and a bit of code), you can turn your plain Open WebUI into a full-on voice assistant. In this post, you’ll see how to spin up an Azure Speech resource, hook it into your frontend, and watch as user speech transforms into text and your app’s responses leap off the screen in a human-like voice. By the end of this guide, you’ll have a voice-enabled web UI that actually converses with users, opening the door to hands-free controls, better accessibility, and a genuinely richer user experience. Ready to make your web app speak? Let’s dive in. Why Azure AI Speech? We use Azure AI Speech service in Open Web UI to enable voice interactions directly within web applications. This …

Semantic Kernel: Package Previews, Graduations & Deprecations We are excited to share a summary of recent updates and continuous clean-up efforts across the Semantic Kernel .NET codebase. These changes focus on improving maintainability, aligning with the latest APIs, and ensuring a consistent experience for users. Below you’ll find details on package graduations, deprecations, and a […] The post Semantic Kernel: Package previews, Graduations & Deprecations appeared first on Semantic Kernel.  ( 23 min )

Overview Microsoft Fabric API for GraphQL makes it easy to query and mutate data from a Fabric- SQL database and other Fabric data sources such as Data Warehouse and Lakehouse, with strongly typed schemas and a rich query language allowing developers to create an intuitive API without writing custom server code. While you can’t customize … Continue reading “Smart Mutations in Microsoft Fabric API for GraphQL with Stored Procedures”  ( 7 min )

Fabric Copilot Capacities are making changes to be more streamlined and easier to use.  ( 6 min )

We are excited to introduce Copilot Inline Code Completion, an AI-powered feature that helps data scientists and engineers write high-quality Python code faster and with greater ease. Inspired by GitHub Copilot, this feature offers intelligent code suggestions as you type, with no commands needed. By understanding the context of your notebook, Copilot Inline Code Completion … Continue reading “Improving productivity in Fabric Notebooks with Inline Code Completion”  ( 6 min )

If you've been curious about how to build your own AI agents that can talk to APIs, connect with tools like databases, or even follow documentation you're in the right place. Microsoft has created something called MCP, which stands for Model‑Context‑Protocol. And to help you learn it step by step, they’ve made an amazing MCP Resources Hub on GitHub. In this blog, I’ll Walk you through what MCP is, why it matters, and how to use this hub to get started, even if you're new to AI development. What is MCP (Model‑Context‑Protocol)? Think of MCP like a communication bridge between your AI model and the outside world. Normally, when we chat with AI (like ChatGPT), it only knows what’s in its training data. But with MCP, you can give your AI real-time context from: APIs Documents Databases Websit…  ( 29 min )

If you've been curious about how to build your own AI agents that can talk to APIs, connect with tools like databases, or even follow documentation you're in the right place. Microsoft has created something called MCP, which stands for Model‑Context‑Protocol. And to help you learn it step by step, they’ve made an amazing MCP Resources Hub on GitHub. In this blog, I’ll Walk you through what MCP is, why it matters, and how to use this hub to get started, even if you're new to AI development. What is MCP (Model‑Context‑Protocol)? Think of MCP like a communication bridge between your AI model and the outside world. Normally, when we chat with AI (like ChatGPT), it only knows what’s in its training data. But with MCP, you can give your AI real-time context from: APIs Documents Databases Websit…

Choosing the right hosting plan for your WordPress site on Azure App Service can feel overwhelming—but it doesn’t have to be. Whether you're just exploring WordPress or launching a high-traffic production site, we’ve created four tailored hosting plans to help you get started quickly and confidently. Let’s walk through how to pick the right plan for your needs. Which Hosting Plan Should You Choose? We’ve simplified the decision-making process with a clear recommendation based on your use case: Use CaseRecommended Plan Hobby or exploratory siteFree or Basic Small production websiteStandard High-load production websitePremium   💡 Important: Only the Premium plan supports High Availability (HA). This is the only setting that cannot be changed after deployment. If HA is a requirement,…  ( 25 min )

Choosing the right hosting plan for your WordPress site on Azure App Service can feel overwhelming—but it doesn’t have to be. Whether you're just exploring WordPress or launching a high-traffic production site, we’ve created four tailored hosting plans to help you get started quickly and confidently. Let’s walk through how to pick the right plan for your needs. Which Hosting Plan Should You Choose? We’ve simplified the decision-making process with a clear recommendation based on your use case: Use CaseRecommended Plan Hobby or exploratory siteFree or Basic Small production websiteStandard High-load production websitePremium   💡 Important: Only the Premium plan supports High Availability (HA). This is the only setting that cannot be changed after deployment. If HA is a requirement,…

We’re excited to announce that you can now orchestrate Azure Databricks Jobs from your Microsoft Fabric data pipelines! Databrick Jobs allow you to schedule and orchestrate a task or multiple tasks in a workflow in your Databricks workspace. Since any operation in Databricks can be a task, this means you can now run anything in … Continue reading “Orchestrate your Databricks Jobs with Fabric Data pipelines”  ( 6 min )

Stop Translating Docs Manually! Automate Your Global Reach with Co-op Translator v0.8 Series   Is your team or open-source project drowning in the endless cycle of manually translating documentation? Every update to your source content triggers a wave of tedious, error-prone work across multiple languages, slowing down knowledge sharing and hindering your global impact.   This challenge became particularly clear within large-scale Microsoft educational projects like the "For Beginners" series, where manual translation simply couldn't keep pace. A scalable, automated solution was needed to ensure valuable technical knowledge reaches learners and developers worldwide, breaking down language barriers that limit participation and slow innovation.   Co-op Translator, a Microsoft Azure open-sour…  ( 29 min )

Stop Translating Docs Manually! Automate Your Global Reach with Co-op Translator v0.8 Series   Is your team or open-source project drowning in the endless cycle of manually translating documentation? Every update to your source content triggers a wave of tedious, error-prone work across multiple languages, slowing down knowledge sharing and hindering your global impact.   This challenge became particularly clear within large-scale Microsoft educational projects like the "For Beginners" series, where manual translation simply couldn't keep pace. A scalable, automated solution was needed to ensure valuable technical knowledge reaches learners and developers worldwide, breaking down language barriers that limit participation and slow innovation.   Co-op Translator, a Microsoft Azure open-sour…

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…  ( 23 min )

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…

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…  ( 23 min )

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…

Table of Contents Abstract Introduction EDA Cloud-Compute scenarios Scenario 1: Burst to Azure from on-premises Data Center Scenario 2: “24x7 Single Set Workload” Scenario 3: "Data Center Supplement" Summary Abstract Azure NetApp Files (ANF) is transforming Electronic Design Automation (EDA) workflows in the cloud by delivering unparalleled performance, scalability, and efficiency. This blog explores how ANF addresses critical challenges in three cloud compute scenarios: Cloud Bursting, 24x7 All-in-Cloud, and Cloud-based Data Center Supplement. These solutions are tailored to optimize EDA processes, which rely on high-performance NFS file systems to design advanced semiconductor products. With the ability to support clusters exceeding 50,000 cores, ANF enhances productivity, shortens desi…  ( 45 min )

Table of Contents Abstract Introduction EDA Cloud-Compute scenarios Scenario 1: Burst to Azure from on-premises Data Center Scenario 2: “24x7 Single Set Workload” Scenario 3: "Data Center Supplement" Summary Abstract Azure NetApp Files (ANF) is transforming Electronic Design Automation (EDA) workflows in the cloud by delivering unparalleled performance, scalability, and efficiency. This blog explores how ANF addresses critical challenges in three cloud compute scenarios: Cloud Bursting, 24x7 All-in-Cloud, and Cloud-based Data Center Supplement. These solutions are tailored to optimize EDA processes, which rely on high-performance NFS file systems to design advanced semiconductor products. With the ability to support clusters exceeding 50,000 cores, ANF enhances productivity, shortens desi…

In today’s data-driven landscape, the ability to access and interpret information in a human-readable format is increasingly valuable. Being able to interact with and query your database in natural language is the game changer. In this post, we’ll walk through how to build a SQL agent using the Semantic Kernel framework to interact with a PostgreSQL database containing DVD rental data. I’ll explain how to define Semantic Kernel functions through plugins and how to incorporate them into agents. We’ll also look at how to set up these agents and guide them with well-structured instructions. Our example uses a PostgreSQL database that stores detailed information about DVD rentals. This sample database contains 15 tables and can be found here: PostgreSQL Sample Database. With a natural language…  ( 41 min )

In today’s data-driven landscape, the ability to access and interpret information in a human-readable format is increasingly valuable. Being able to interact with and query your database in natural language is the game changer. In this post, we’ll walk through how to build a SQL agent using the Semantic Kernel framework to interact with a PostgreSQL database containing DVD rental data. I’ll explain how to define Semantic Kernel functions through plugins and how to incorporate them into agents. We’ll also look at how to set up these agents and guide them with well-structured instructions. Our example uses a PostgreSQL database that stores detailed information about DVD rentals. This sample database contains 15 tables and can be found here: PostgreSQL Sample Database. With a natural language…

The architecture uses AKS to implement compute clusters of the applications that process high-volume batches of transactions. The applications receive the transactions in messages from Service Bus topics or queues. The topics and queues can be at Azure datacenters in different geographic regions, and multiple AKS clusters can read input from them.   Architecture       Workflow The numbered circles in the diagram correspond to the numbered steps in the following list. The architecture uses Service Bus topics and queues to organize the batch processing input and to pass it downstream for processing. Azure Load Balancer, a Layer 4 (TCP, UDP) load balancer, distributes incoming traffic among healthy instances of services defined in a load-balanced set. Load balancing and management of connec…  ( 59 min )

The architecture uses AKS to implement compute clusters of the applications that process high-volume batches of transactions. The applications receive the transactions in messages from Service Bus topics or queues. The topics and queues can be at Azure datacenters in different geographic regions, and multiple AKS clusters can read input from them.   Architecture       Workflow The numbered circles in the diagram correspond to the numbered steps in the following list. The architecture uses Service Bus topics and queues to organize the batch processing input and to pass it downstream for processing. Azure Load Balancer, a Layer 4 (TCP, UDP) load balancer, distributes incoming traffic among healthy instances of services defined in a load-balanced set. Load balancing and management of connec…

Enterprises today face several challenges in processing and extracting insights from multimodal data, like managing diverse data formats, ensuring data quality, and streamlining workflows efficiently. Ensuring the accuracy and usability of extracted insights often requires advanced AI techniques, while inefficiencies in managing large data volumes increase costs and delay results. Azure AI Content Understanding addresses these pain points by offering a unified solution to transform unstructured data into actionable insights, improve data accuracy with schema extraction and confidence scoring, and integrate seamlessly with Azure’s ecosystem to enhance efficiency and reduce costs. Content Understanding makes it easy to extract custom task-specific output without advanced GenAI skills. It ena…  ( 25 min )

Enterprises today face several challenges in processing and extracting insights from multimodal data, like managing diverse data formats, ensuring data quality, and streamlining workflows efficiently. Ensuring the accuracy and usability of extracted insights often requires advanced AI techniques, while inefficiencies in managing large data volumes increase costs and delay results. Azure AI Content Understanding addresses these pain points by offering a unified solution to transform unstructured data into actionable insights, improve data accuracy with schema extraction and confidence scoring, and integrate seamlessly with Azure’s ecosystem to enhance efficiency and reduce costs. Content Understanding makes it easy to extract custom task-specific output without advanced GenAI skills. It ena…

GraphQL has revolutionized the way developers interact with APIs by offering a more flexible and efficient alternative to REST. Before getting started , Create an API for GraphQL in Fabric and add data to use GraphQL in Fabric. At the heart of GraphQL are two core operations: queries and mutations. While they may look similar on the surface, they serve very different purposes. Let’s explain it in detail.  ( 7 min )

We’re excited to announce that native support for evaluating Data Agents through the Fabric SDK is now available in Preview. You can now run structured evaluations of your agent’s responses using Python — directly from notebooks or your own automation pipelines. Whether you’re validating accuracy before deploying to production, tuning prompts for better performance, or … Continue reading “Evaluate your Fabric Data Agents programmatically with the Python SDK (Preview)”  ( 7 min )

Introduction Have you ever thought about to build a Visual Studio Code extension as your capstone project? That’s what I did: Part 1 - Develop a VS Code Extension for Your Capstone Project. I have created a Visual Studio Code Extension, API Guardian, that identifies API endpoints in a project and checks their functionality before deployment. This solution was developed to help developers save time spent fixing issues caused by breaking or non-breaking changes and to alleviate the difficulties in performing maintenance due to unclear or outdated documentation. Let's build your very own extension! Now, let’s do it step by step.   Step 1 – Install the NPM package for generator-code Ensure Node.js is installed before proceeding. Verify by running node -v, which will display the installed versi…  ( 27 min )

Introduction Have you ever thought about to build a Visual Studio Code extension as your capstone project? That’s what I did: Part 1 - Develop a VS Code Extension for Your Capstone Project. I have created a Visual Studio Code Extension, API Guardian, that identifies API endpoints in a project and checks their functionality before deployment. This solution was developed to help developers save time spent fixing issues caused by breaking or non-breaking changes and to alleviate the difficulties in performing maintenance due to unclear or outdated documentation. Let's build your very own extension! Now, let’s do it step by step.   Step 1 – Install the NPM package for generator-code Ensure Node.js is installed before proceeding. Verify by running node -v, which will display the installed versi…

Introduction: The Era of AI Agents in JavaScript During the AI Agents Hackathon, one of the most anticipated sessions was presented by Wassim Chegham, Senior AI Developer Advocate for JavaScript at Microsoft. The topic? "How to Create Your First AI Agent with JavaScript and Azure AI Agent Service" — a powerful tool designed for modern developers looking to build AI-first applications with security, scalability, and productivity in mind. In this article, we explore the main highlights of the session, focusing on how you can create your own AI agent using JavaScript and Azure AI Agent Service. The video’s goal is clear: walk through the step-by-step process of creating AI agents using JavaScript and TypeScript with Azure AI Foundry, and explain all the key concepts behind this new developmen…  ( 35 min )

Introduction: The Era of AI Agents in JavaScript During the AI Agents Hackathon, one of the most anticipated sessions was presented by Wassim Chegham, Senior AI Developer Advocate for JavaScript at Microsoft. The topic? "How to Create Your First AI Agent with JavaScript and Azure AI Agent Service" — a powerful tool designed for modern developers looking to build AI-first applications with security, scalability, and productivity in mind. In this article, we explore the main highlights of the session, focusing on how you can create your own AI agent using JavaScript and Azure AI Agent Service. The video’s goal is clear: walk through the step-by-step process of creating AI agents using JavaScript and TypeScript with Azure AI Foundry, and explain all the key concepts behind this new developmen…

Shiva Shastri Sr Product Marketing Manager, Azure Migrate—Product & Ecosystem. Cost-effective and sustainable innovation. In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, businesses are constantly seeking ways to stay competitive through innovations while managing costs. By leveraging the power of the cloud, organizations can achieve cost-effectiveness and foster sustainable innovation. By transitioning to Azure, any organization can achieve greater financial flexibility, operational efficiency, and gain access to innovations that provide a competitive edge in the marketplace. Collocating application resources and data is essential for optimal performance and return on investment (ROI). Once in Azure, secure and responsible AI can help you with insights and actions that lead to better outcom…  ( 27 min )

Shiva Shastri Sr Product Marketing Manager, Azure Migrate—Product & Ecosystem. Cost-effective and sustainable innovation. In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, businesses are constantly seeking ways to stay competitive through innovations while managing costs. By leveraging the power of the cloud, organizations can achieve cost-effectiveness and foster sustainable innovation. By transitioning to Azure, any organization can achieve greater financial flexibility, operational efficiency, and gain access to innovations that provide a competitive edge in the marketplace. Collocating application resources and data is essential for optimal performance and return on investment (ROI). Once in Azure, secure and responsible AI can help you with insights and actions that lead to better outcom…

The strategic partnership between Microsoft Azure and Red Hat continues to flourish in 2025, with both companies showcasing their joint innovations at two major tech events: Microsoft Build (May 19-22 in Seattle) and Red Hat Summit 2025. This collaboration represents one of tech's most impactful partnerships, combining Microsoft's cloud expertise with Red Hat's open-source leadership to create solutions that drive digital transformation across industries. Microsoft Build 2025: AI Innovation Meets Open Source Microsoft Build 2025 will take place from May 19-22 at the Seattle Convention Center, bringing together developers, creators, and AI innovators from around the world. This year's event has been extended to four days, offering more opportunities for learning and networking. A key highl…  ( 34 min )

The strategic partnership between Microsoft Azure and Red Hat continues to flourish in 2025, with both companies showcasing their joint innovations at two major tech events: Microsoft Build (May 19-22 in Seattle) and Red Hat Summit 2025. This collaboration represents one of tech's most impactful partnerships, combining Microsoft's cloud expertise with Red Hat's open-source leadership to create solutions that drive digital transformation across industries. Microsoft Build 2025: AI Innovation Meets Open Source Microsoft Build 2025 will take place from May 19-22 at the Seattle Convention Center, bringing together developers, creators, and AI innovators from around the world. This year's event has been extended to four days, offering more opportunities for learning and networking. A key highl…

Software development is changing fast, and Java developers are right in the middle of it – especially when it comes to using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in their apps. This report brings together feedback from 647 Java professionals to show where things stand and what is possible as Java and AI come together. One of the […] The post The State of Coding the Future with Java and AI – May 2025 appeared first on Microsoft for Java Developers.  ( 44 min )

Additional contributors: Venkat Ramakrishnan, Amir Jafari, Wilson Lee, Maraki Ketema As organizations accelerate their hybrid cloud adoption strategies, Oracle Database@Azure has emerged as a critical platform for running Oracle database workloads using Exadata, Autonomous, Exadata Exascale and Base databases for the enterprise. However, deriving real-time, AI-powered insights in hybrid settings has long been challenging due … Continue reading “Accelerate AI on Oracle Databases with Open Mirroring, Fabric Data Agent, and Azure AI Foundry”  ( 9 min )

We’re excited to introduce Copilot for SQL Analytics Endpoint, now in preview – a transformative, AI-powered assistant built to change how you query, explore, and analyze data within Microsoft Fabric’s SQL experience. With Copilot integrated directly into the SQL Analytics Endpoint, users can now express intent in natural language and instantly receive ready-to-run T-SQL. Whether … Continue reading “Announcing Copilot for SQL Analytics Endpoint in Microsoft Fabric (Preview)”  ( 7 min )

Build your first Agent App Agentic AI is changing how we build intelligent apps - enabling software to reason, plan, and act for us. Learning to build AI agents is quickly becoming a must-have skill for anyone working with AI. Self-Guided Workshop Try our self-guided “Build your code-first agent with Azure AI Foundry” workshop to get hands-on with Azure AI Agent Service. You’ll learn to build, deploy, and interact with agents using Azure’s powerful tools. What is Azure AI Agent Service? Azure AI Agent Service lets you create, orchestrate, and manage AI-powered agents that can handle complex tasks, integrate with tools, and deploy securely. What Will You Learn? The basics of agentic AI apps and how they differ from traditional apps How to set up your Azure environment How to build your first agent How to test and interact with your agent Advanced features like tool integration and memory management Who Is This For? Anyone interested in building intelligent, goal-oriented agents — developers, data scientists, students, and AI enthusiasts. No prior experience with Azure AI Agent Service required. How Does the Workshop Work? Tip: Select the self-guided tab in Getting Started for the right instructions. Step-by-step guides at your own pace Code samples and templates Real-world scenarios Get Started See what agentic AI can do for you with the self-guided “Build your code-first agent with Azure AI Foundry” workshop. Build practical skills in one of AI’s most exciting areas. Try the workshop and start building agents that make a difference! Additional Resources Azure AI Foundry Documentation Azure AI Agent Service Overview Questions or feedback Questions or feedback? Visit the issues page. Happy learning and building with Azure AI Agent Service!  ( 21 min )

Build your first Agent App Agentic AI is changing how we build intelligent apps - enabling software to reason, plan, and act for us. Learning to build AI agents is quickly becoming a must-have skill for anyone working with AI. Self-Guided Workshop Try our self-guided “Build your code-first agent with Azure AI Foundry” workshop to get hands-on with Azure AI Agent Service. You’ll learn to build, deploy, and interact with agents using Azure’s powerful tools. What is Azure AI Agent Service? Azure AI Agent Service lets you create, orchestrate, and manage AI-powered agents that can handle complex tasks, integrate with tools, and deploy securely. What Will You Learn? The basics of agentic AI apps and how they differ from traditional apps How to set up your Azure environment How to build your first agent How to test and interact with your agent Advanced features like tool integration and memory management Who Is This For? Anyone interested in building intelligent, goal-oriented agents — developers, data scientists, students, and AI enthusiasts. No prior experience with Azure AI Agent Service required. How Does the Workshop Work? Tip: Select the self-guided tab in Getting Started for the right instructions. Step-by-step guides at your own pace Code samples and templates Real-world scenarios Get Started See what agentic AI can do for you with the self-guided “Build your code-first agent with Azure AI Foundry” workshop. Build practical skills in one of AI’s most exciting areas. Try the workshop and start building agents that make a difference! Additional Resources Azure AI Foundry Documentation Azure AI Agent Service Overview Questions or feedback Questions or feedback? Visit the issues page. Happy learning and building with Azure AI Agent Service!

At the time of this writing, Azure AI Agent Service does not offer turnkey integration with Model Context Protocol (MCP) Servers. Discussed here is a solution that helps to leverage MCP's powerful capabilities while working within the Azure ecosystem. The integration approach piggybacks on the Function integration capability in the Azure AI Agent Service. By utilizing an MCP Client to discover and register tools from an MCP Server as Functions with the Agent Service, we create a seamless integration layer between the two systems. Built using the Microsoft Bot Framework, this application can be published as an AI Assistant across numerous channels like Microsoft Teams, Slack, and others. For development and testing purposes, we've used the Bot Framework Emulator to run and validate the appl…  ( 29 min )

At the time of this writing, Azure AI Agent Service does not offer turnkey integration with Model Context Protocol (MCP) Servers. Discussed here is a solution that helps to leverage MCP's powerful capabilities while working within the Azure ecosystem. The integration approach piggybacks on the Function integration capability in the Azure AI Agent Service. By utilizing an MCP Client to discover and register tools from an MCP Server as Functions with the Agent Service, we create a seamless integration layer between the two systems. Built using the Microsoft Bot Framework, this application can be published as an AI Assistant across numerous channels like Microsoft Teams, Slack, and others. For development and testing purposes, we've used the Bot Framework Emulator to run and validate the appl…

ASC Technologies, a leader in compliance recording and AI-driven data analytics, provides cutting-edge software solutions for capturing and analyzing communication channels. Their innovative technology empowers more than 500 customers worldwide to record communications legally while extracting valuable insights and helping to prevent fraudulent activities. Many of their customers operate in heavily regulated industries where compliance recording is mandatory. These organizations rely on the ability to consolidate and analyze information shared across multiple channels including voice recordings, chat logs, speaker recognition, video analysis, and document and screen activity. As ASC’s customer base expanded, and their clients accumulated millions of calls and vast amounts of conversation m…  ( 25 min )

ASC Technologies, a leader in compliance recording and AI-driven data analytics, provides cutting-edge software solutions for capturing and analyzing communication channels. Their innovative technology empowers more than 500 customers worldwide to record communications legally while extracting valuable insights and helping to prevent fraudulent activities. Many of their customers operate in heavily regulated industries where compliance recording is mandatory. These organizations rely on the ability to consolidate and analyze information shared across multiple channels including voice recordings, chat logs, speaker recognition, video analysis, and document and screen activity. As ASC’s customer base expanded, and their clients accumulated millions of calls and vast amounts of conversation m…

In today’s data-driven world, organizations are increasingly turning to AI for document understanding. Whether it's extracting invoices, contracts, ID cards, or complex forms, Azure Document Intelligence (formerly known as Form Recognizer) provides a robust, AI-powered solution for automated document processing. But what happens when you want to scale, secure, and load balance your document intelligence backend for high availability and enterprise-grade integration? Enter Azure API Management (APIM) — your gateway to efficient, scalable API orchestration. In this blog, we’ll explore how to integrate Azure Document Intelligence with APIM using a load-balanced architecture that works seamlessly with the Document Intelligence SDK — without rewriting your application logic. Azure Doc Intellige…  ( 36 min )

In today’s data-driven world, organizations are increasingly turning to AI for document understanding. Whether it's extracting invoices, contracts, ID cards, or complex forms, Azure Document Intelligence (formerly known as Form Recognizer) provides a robust, AI-powered solution for automated document processing. But what happens when you want to scale, secure, and load balance your document intelligence backend for high availability and enterprise-grade integration? Enter Azure API Management (APIM) — your gateway to efficient, scalable API orchestration. In this blog, we’ll explore how to integrate Azure Document Intelligence with APIM using a load-balanced architecture that works seamlessly with the Document Intelligence SDK — without rewriting your application logic. Azure Doc Intellige…

This post will cover how to remotely connect to the JVM when running on Azure App Service with Java.  ( 3 min )

Introduction Azure Container Apps offers a robust platform for deploying microservices and containerized applications. When integrating with Azure Application Gateway, an internal container app environment can be accessed via public internet. Users often bind custom domains to enhance accessibility and user experience. A common challenge arises when we bind the custom domain on Application Gateway and try to access container app. Container app is acting as a middleware service and needs to forward request to another API server or finish authentication process, users may encountered HTTP 403 forbidden error which is caused by hostname/redirect URL mismatch. What's more, you definitely don't want to expose your backend service default domain. This blog explores these challenges and offers pr…  ( 22 min )

Introduction Azure Container Apps offers a robust platform for deploying microservices and containerized applications. When integrating with Azure Application Gateway, an internal container app environment can be accessed via public internet. Users often bind custom domains to enhance accessibility and user experience. A common challenge arises when we bind the custom domain on Application Gateway and try to access container app. Container app is acting as a middleware service and needs to forward request to another API server or finish authentication process, users may encountered HTTP 403 forbidden error which is caused by hostname/redirect URL mismatch. What's more, you definitely don't want to expose your backend service default domain. This blog explores these challenges and offers pr…

The May 2025 release includes updates in the Python Environments extension, a new color picker added by Pylance, branch coverage support, and more! The post Python in Visual Studio Code – May 2025 Release appeared first on Microsoft for Python Developers Blog.  ( 24 min )

We are less than 18 months away from the retirement of Exchange Web Services. Start planning your migration from EWS to Microsoft Graph. The post Exchange Web Services code analyzer and usage report appeared first on Microsoft 365 Developer Blog.  ( 24 min )

With this practical guide, you now know how to secure your Kubernetes cluster using the structured-authentication feature, offering flexible integration with any JWT-compliant token provider. The post JWT it like it’s hot: A practical guide for Kubernetes Structured Authentication appeared first on Microsoft Open Source Blog.  ( 16 min )

Shortcut cache and on-prem gateway support are now generally available (GA) Shortcut cache Shortcuts in OneLake allow you to quickly and easily source data from external cloud providers and use it across all Fabric workloads such as Power BI reports, SQL, Spark and Kusto.  However, each time these workloads read data from cross-cloud sources, the … Continue reading “Shortcut cache and on-prem gateway support (Generally Available)”  ( 6 min )

Shortcuts in OneLake provide a quick and easy way to make your data available in Fabric without having to copy it.  Simply create a new shortcut and your data is instantly available to all Fabric workloads. When you first create a new shortcut, you also set up a shared cloud connection. These are the same connections … Continue reading “Manage connections for shortcuts”  ( 6 min )

I’ve made this Simple FastAPI AZD template for Azure App Service to help you get to the fun part, and to cut out all the extra infrastructure that you don’t necessarily want or need. This FastAPI template for Azure App Service gives you all the infrastructure as code to deploy a basic “Hello World” FastAPI web app that you can spin up using AZD (Azure Developer SDK) with just three commands. How to do it To get started, you just need to install AZD, a command-line tool you can use right there in VS Code. Then you’re ready to grab the template and deploy. Run these commands and follow the prompts as you go.  Grab our new simple FastAPI template for Azure App Service: azd init --template Azure-Samples/azd-simple-fastapi-appservice It will ask you to give your environment a name. This will b…  ( 33 min )

I’ve made this Simple FastAPI AZD template for Azure App Service to help you get to the fun part, and to cut out all the extra infrastructure that you don’t necessarily want or need. This FastAPI template for Azure App Service gives you all the infrastructure as code to deploy a basic “Hello World” FastAPI web app that you can spin up using AZD (Azure Developer SDK) with just three commands. How to do it To get started, you just need to install AZD, a command-line tool you can use right there in VS Code. Then you’re ready to grab the template and deploy. Run these commands and follow the prompts as you go.  Grab our new simple FastAPI template for Azure App Service: azd init --template Azure-Samples/azd-simple-fastapi-appservice It will ask you to give your environment a name. This will b…

AI distillation is a powerful technique in machine learning that involves transferring knowledge from a large, complex model (often called the "teacher") to a smaller, more efficient "student" model. The goal is to retain the performance and accuracy of the larger model while drastically reducing computational requirements, making AI systems faster, cheaper, and more deployable especially in real-time or resource-constrained environments. In this post, we'll explore what AI distillation is, why it's gaining traction, and how it's being used to bring the power of advanced AI models to everyday applications. Stored completions in Azure OpenAI's AI Foundry provide a structured way to capture and reuse high-quality model responses, streamlining the model distillation process. By logging curate…  ( 38 min )

AI distillation is a powerful technique in machine learning that involves transferring knowledge from a large, complex model (often called the "teacher") to a smaller, more efficient "student" model. The goal is to retain the performance and accuracy of the larger model while drastically reducing computational requirements, making AI systems faster, cheaper, and more deployable especially in real-time or resource-constrained environments. In this post, we'll explore what AI distillation is, why it's gaining traction, and how it's being used to bring the power of advanced AI models to everyday applications. Stored completions in Azure OpenAI's AI Foundry provide a structured way to capture and reuse high-quality model responses, streamlining the model distillation process. By logging curate…

Are you looking to build custom Copilots but unsure about the differences between Copilot Studio and Azure AI Foundry? As a Microsoft Technical Trainer with over a decade of experience, I've spent the last 18 months focusing on Azure AI Solutions and Copilot. Through numerous workshops, I've seen firsthand how customers benefit from AI solutions beyond Microsoft Copilot. Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat offers seamless integration with Generative AI for tasks like document creation, content summarization, and insights from M365 solutions such as Email, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams. It ensures compliance with organizational security, governance, and privacy policies, making it ideal for immediate AI assistance without customization. On the other hand, platforms like Copilot Studio and Azure AI…  ( 37 min )

Are you looking to build custom Copilots but unsure about the differences between Copilot Studio and Azure AI Foundry? As a Microsoft Technical Trainer with over a decade of experience, I've spent the last 18 months focusing on Azure AI Solutions and Copilot. Through numerous workshops, I've seen firsthand how customers benefit from AI solutions beyond Microsoft Copilot. Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat offers seamless integration with Generative AI for tasks like document creation, content summarization, and insights from M365 solutions such as Email, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams. It ensures compliance with organizational security, governance, and privacy policies, making it ideal for immediate AI assistance without customization. On the other hand, platforms like Copilot Studio and Azure AI…

New Models Available!   We’re excited to announce the preview availability of the following Azure OpenAI Service models for use in the Azure AI Agent Service, starting 5/7:  o1  o3-mini  gpt-4.1  gpt-4.1-mini  gpt-4.1-nano    Azure OpenAI o-Series Models  Azure OpenAI o-series models are designed to tackle reasoning and problem-solving tasks with increased focus and capability. These models spend more time processing and understanding the user's request, making them exceptionally strong in areas like science, coding, and math compared to previous iterations.    o1: The most capable model in the o1 series, offering enhanced reasoning abilities.  o3 (coming soon): The most capable reasoning model in the o model series, and the first one to offer full tools support for agentic so…  ( 30 min )

New Models Available!   We’re excited to announce the preview availability of the following Azure OpenAI Service models for use in the Azure AI Agent Service, starting 5/7:  o1  o3-mini  gpt-4.1  gpt-4.1-mini  gpt-4.1-nano    Azure OpenAI o-Series Models  Azure OpenAI o-series models are designed to tackle reasoning and problem-solving tasks with increased focus and capability. These models spend more time processing and understanding the user's request, making them exceptionally strong in areas like science, coding, and math compared to previous iterations.    o1: The most capable model in the o1 series, offering enhanced reasoning abilities.  o3 (coming soon): The most capable reasoning model in the o model series, and the first one to offer full tools support for agentic so…

Starting June 28, 2025, the European Accessibility Act (EAA) takes effect, requiring all digital products and services offered to EU customers to meet comprehensive accessibility standards. If you're developing Office Add-ins, this may impact you. This blog explains what you need to know to ensure your Office Add-ins are compliant. The post Prepare your Office Add-in for the European Accessibility Act (EAA) appeared first on Microsoft 365 Developer Blog.  ( 23 min )

Software development is changing fast, and Java developers are right in the middle of it - especially when it comes to using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in their apps. This report brings together feedback from 647 Java professionals to show where things stand and what is possible as Java and AI come together. One of the biggest takeaways is this: Java developers do not need to be experts in AI, machine learning, or Python. With tools like the Model Context Protocol (MCP) Java SDK, Spring AI, and LangChain4j, they can start adding smart features to their apps using the skills they already have. Whether it is making recommendations, spotting fraud, supporting natural language search or a world of possibilities, AI can be part of everyday Java development. The report walks through real-world…  ( 102 min )

Software development is changing fast, and Java developers are right in the middle of it - especially when it comes to using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in their apps. This report brings together feedback from 647 Java professionals to show where things stand and what is possible as Java and AI come together. One of the biggest takeaways is this: Java developers do not need to be experts in AI, machine learning, or Python. With tools like the Model Context Protocol (MCP) Java SDK, Spring AI, and LangChain4j, they can start adding smart features to their apps using the skills they already have. Whether it is making recommendations, spotting fraud, supporting natural language search or a world of possibilities, AI can be part of everyday Java development. The report walks through real-world…

Starting on June 9, 2025, all Power BI and Fabric capacity SKUs will support XMLA read/write operations by default. This change is intended to assist customers using XMLA-based tools to create, edit, and maintain semantic models, such as DAX Query View in the web, Live Editing in Power BI Desktop, SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), … Continue reading “Enabling broader adoption of XMLA-based tools and scenarios”  ( 5 min )

API Guardian - My Capstone Project As software and APIs evolve, developers encounter significant difficulties in maintaining and updating API endpoints. Breaking changes can lead to system instability, while outdated or unclear documentation makes maintenance less efficient. These challenges are further compounded by the time-consuming nature of updating dependencies and the tendency to prioritize new features over maintenance tasks. The absence of effective tools and processes to tackle these issues reduces overall productivity and developer efficiency. To address this, API Guardian was created as a Visual Studio Code extension that identifies API endpoints in a project and checks their functionality before deployment. This solution was developed to help developers save time spent fixing …  ( 26 min )

API Guardian - My Capstone Project As software and APIs evolve, developers encounter significant difficulties in maintaining and updating API endpoints. Breaking changes can lead to system instability, while outdated or unclear documentation makes maintenance less efficient. These challenges are further compounded by the time-consuming nature of updating dependencies and the tendency to prioritize new features over maintenance tasks. The absence of effective tools and processes to tackle these issues reduces overall productivity and developer efficiency. To address this, API Guardian was created as a Visual Studio Code extension that identifies API endpoints in a project and checks their functionality before deployment. This solution was developed to help developers save time spent fixing …

Scenario: In case of encountering error in API management, request tracing is an invaluable feature that serves as a debugger. It allows for tracking the flow of requests as they pass through various policy logic, providing detailed insights into the complete API Management (APIM) processing. Here is a link if you would like to read more on how to enable request tracing in API management.  However, it is the most common way to debug your API, let's assume a real-life scenario where you encounter a sporadic error or unexpected response while processing the live APIM calls and need to drill down the issue. In such cases, attaching a debugger or running request traces can be challenging, especially when the issue is intermittent or requires checking the specific code logic. This often necessi…  ( 29 min )

Scenario: In case of encountering error in API management, request tracing is an invaluable feature that serves as a debugger. It allows for tracking the flow of requests as they pass through various policy logic, providing detailed insights into the complete API Management (APIM) processing. Here is a link if you would like to read more on how to enable request tracing in API management.  However, it is the most common way to debug your API, let's assume a real-life scenario where you encounter a sporadic error or unexpected response while processing the live APIM calls and need to drill down the issue. In such cases, attaching a debugger or running request traces can be challenging, especially when the issue is intermittent or requires checking the specific code logic. This often necessi…

Get started with Nested App Authentication, a modern protocol for simplifying authentication for Personal Tab Teams apps that run across Microsoft 365. The post Nested App Authentication: Now generally available across Microsoft 365 appeared first on Microsoft 365 Developer Blog.  ( 23 min )

We’re excited to announce the release candidate of the Semantic Kernel for Java Agents API! This marks a major step forward in bringing the power of intelligent agents to Java developers, enabling them to build rich, contextual, and interactive AI experiences using the Semantic Kernel framework. What Are Agents in Semantic Kernel? Agents are intelligent, autonomous […] The post RC1: Semantic Kernel for Java Agents API appeared first on Semantic Kernel.  ( 22 min )

In today's data-driven business environment, audit teams often spend weeks poring over logs and databases to verify spending and billing information. This time-consuming process is ripe for automation. But is there a way to implement AI solutions without getting lost in complex technical frameworks? While tools like LangChain, Semantic Kernel, and AutoGen offer powerful AI agent capabilities, sometimes you need a straightforward solution that just works.  So, what's the answer for teams seeking simplicity without sacrificing effectiveness? This tutorial will show you how to use Azure AI Agent Service to build an AI agent that can directly access your Postgres database to streamline audit workflows. No complex chains or graphs required, just a practical solution to get your audit process au…  ( 43 min )

In today's data-driven business environment, audit teams often spend weeks poring over logs and databases to verify spending and billing information. This time-consuming process is ripe for automation. But is there a way to implement AI solutions without getting lost in complex technical frameworks? While tools like LangChain, Semantic Kernel, and AutoGen offer powerful AI agent capabilities, sometimes you need a straightforward solution that just works.  So, what's the answer for teams seeking simplicity without sacrificing effectiveness? This tutorial will show you how to use Azure AI Agent Service to build an AI agent that can directly access your Postgres database to streamline audit workflows. No complex chains or graphs required, just a practical solution to get your audit process au…

We are pleased to announce that hubs and workspaces is now generally available on Azure machine learning allowing users to use hub for team’s collaboration environment for machine learning applications.  Azure Hubs and Workspaces provide a centralized platform capability for Azure Machine Learning. This feature enables developers to innovate faster by creating project workspaces and accessing shared company resources without needing repeated assistance from IT administrators.  Quick Model Building and Experimentation without IT bottleneck  Hubs and Workspaces in Azure Machine Learning provide a centralized solution for managing machine learning resources. Hubs act as a central resource management construct that oversees security, connectivity, computing resources, and team quotas. Once cre…  ( 26 min )

We are pleased to announce that hubs and workspaces is now generally available on Azure machine learning allowing users to use hub for team’s collaboration environment for machine learning applications.  Azure Hubs and Workspaces provide a centralized platform capability for Azure Machine Learning. This feature enables developers to innovate faster by creating project workspaces and accessing shared company resources without needing repeated assistance from IT administrators.  Quick Model Building and Experimentation without IT bottleneck  Hubs and Workspaces in Azure Machine Learning provide a centralized solution for managing machine learning resources. Hubs act as a central resource management construct that oversees security, connectivity, computing resources, and team quotas. Once cre…

Discover the new and improved Teams AI Library, designed to help developers create even more powerful agents for Microsoft Teams. The post Announcing the updated Teams AI Library and MCP support appeared first on Microsoft 365 Developer Blog.  ( 24 min )

We’re launching a quick survey to gather your feedback on Azure Monitor Log Analytics. Your input directly impacts our product roadmap and helps us prioritize the features and improvements that matter most to you. The survey takes just a few minutes, and your responses will remain confidential. Take the Survey   New to Log Analytics? Start here: Get Started with Azure Monitor Log Analytics Overview of Log Analytics in Azure Monitor - Azure Monitor | Microsoft Learn For questions or additional feedback, feel free to reach out to Noyablanga@microsoft.com.Thank you for being part of this journey!  ( 18 min )

We’re launching a quick survey to gather your feedback on Azure Monitor Log Analytics. Your input directly impacts our product roadmap and helps us prioritize the features and improvements that matter most to you. The survey takes just a few minutes, and your responses will remain confidential. Take the Survey   New to Log Analytics? Start here: Get Started with Azure Monitor Log Analytics Overview of Log Analytics in Azure Monitor - Azure Monitor | Microsoft Learn For questions or additional feedback, feel free to reach out to Noyablanga@microsoft.com.Thank you for being part of this journey!

This post refers to issues where you may see revisions “stuck in ‘Activating’ state” when using Azure Container Apps - and what are some common causes and explainations behind this.  ( 6 min )

We often hear about Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT-4 having billions of parameters and being trained on massive datasets. But have you ever wondered: Where is all that data actually stored? And more fundamentally, how does a computer even store knowledge in the first place? Let’s take a journey from the world of electric charges to the vast neural networks powering today’s AI. Data at the Most Basic Level: 0s and 1s At its core, all digital data is just binary — a series of 0s and 1s. These bits are represented physically using electric charges or magnetic states: In RAM or CPU/GPU memory, bits are stored using transistors and capacitors that are either charged (1) or not charged (0). In SSDs, data is stored using floating-gate transistors that trap electrons to represent binary st…  ( 23 min )

We often hear about Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT-4 having billions of parameters and being trained on massive datasets. But have you ever wondered: Where is all that data actually stored? And more fundamentally, how does a computer even store knowledge in the first place? Let’s take a journey from the world of electric charges to the vast neural networks powering today’s AI. Data at the Most Basic Level: 0s and 1s At its core, all digital data is just binary — a series of 0s and 1s. These bits are represented physically using electric charges or magnetic states: In RAM or CPU/GPU memory, bits are stored using transistors and capacitors that are either charged (1) or not charged (0). In SSDs, data is stored using floating-gate transistors that trap electrons to represent binary st…

With Fabric Events general availability, the role of Activator expands from setting notifications and acting on your data in real time to becoming an orchestration centerpiece. Activator acts as a connecting tissue enabling complex event-driven and data-driven flows. Let’s look at a very common architecture we often see our customers implement: In this architecture we … Continue reading “Activator as an Orchestrator of the Fabric Event Driven flows”  ( 6 min )

Task flows feature is now generally available! Task flows streamline the design of your data solutions and ensure consistency between design and development efforts. It also allows you to navigate items and manage your workspace more easily, even as it becomes more complex over time. Since its preview last May, we have received a great … Continue reading “Task flows in Microsoft Fabric (Generally Available)”  ( 6 min )

Hi everyone, Shivam Goyal here! This marks the final installment in our AI Agents for Beginners series, based on the awesome repository (link to the repo). I hope you've enjoyed this journey into the world of agentic AI! In previous posts ([links to parts 1-9 at the end]), we've covered the fundamentals and key design patterns. Now, let's explore the practical considerations of deploying AI agents to production, focusing on performance, cost management, and evaluation. As an active member of the AI community, I'm excited to share these insights to help you bring your agentic AI projects to life. From Lab to Production: Key Considerations Successfully deploying AI agents requires careful planning and attention to detail. We need to consider: How to plan the deployment of your AI Agent to p…  ( 26 min )

Hi everyone, Shivam Goyal here! This marks the final installment in our AI Agents for Beginners series, based on the awesome repository (link to the repo). I hope you've enjoyed this journey into the world of agentic AI! In previous posts ([links to parts 1-9 at the end]), we've covered the fundamentals and key design patterns. Now, let's explore the practical considerations of deploying AI agents to production, focusing on performance, cost management, and evaluation. As an active member of the AI community, I'm excited to share these insights to help you bring your agentic AI projects to life. From Lab to Production: Key Considerations Successfully deploying AI agents requires careful planning and attention to detail. We need to consider: How to plan the deployment of your AI Agent to p…

When integrating Azure resources like Logic Apps, Function Apps, or Azure VMs with SharePoint Online, you often need secure and granular access control. Rather than handling credentials manually, Managed Identity is the recommended approach to securely authenticate to Microsoft Graph and access SharePoint resources. High-level steps: Step 1: Enable Managed Identity (or App Registration) Step 2: Grant Sites.Selected Permission in Microsoft Entra ID Step 3: Assign SharePoint Site-Level Permission Step 1: Enable Managed Identity (or App Registration) For your Azure resource (e.g., Logic App): Navigate to the Azure portal. Go to the resource (e.g., Logic App). Under Identity, enable System-assigned Managed Identity. Note the Object ID and Client ID (you’ll need the Client ID later). Alternat…  ( 23 min )

When integrating Azure resources like Logic Apps, Function Apps, or Azure VMs with SharePoint Online, you often need secure and granular access control. Rather than handling credentials manually, Managed Identity is the recommended approach to securely authenticate to Microsoft Graph and access SharePoint resources. High-level steps: Step 1: Enable Managed Identity (or App Registration) Step 2: Grant Sites.Selected Permission in Microsoft Entra ID Step 3: Assign SharePoint Site-Level Permission Step 1: Enable Managed Identity (or App Registration) For your Azure resource (e.g., Logic App): Navigate to the Azure portal. Go to the resource (e.g., Logic App). Under Identity, enable System-assigned Managed Identity. Note the Object ID and Client ID (you’ll need the Client ID later). Alternat…

Today we’re excited to welcome Jarre Nejatyab as a guest blog to highlight a technical deep dive on orchestrating AI Agents with Semantic Kernel Plugins. In the rapidly evolving world of Large Language Models (LLMs), orchestrating specialized AI agents has become crucial for building sophisticated cognitive architectures capable of complex reasoning and task execution. While […] The post Guest Blog: Orchestrating AI Agents with Semantic Kernel Plugins: A Technical Deep Dive appeared first on Semantic Kernel.  ( 28 min )

Azure OpenAI has expanded its speech recognition capabilities with two powerful models: GPT-4o-transcribe and GPT-4o-mini-transcribe. These models also leverage WebSocket connections to enable real-time transcription of audio streams, providing developers with cutting-edge tools for speech-to-text applications. In this technical blog, we'll explore how these models work and demonstrate a practical implementation using Python. Understanding OpenAI's Realtime Transcription API Unlike the regular REST API for audio transcription, Azure OpenAI's Realtime API enables continuous streaming of audio data through WebSockets or WebRTC connections. This approach is particularly valuable for applications requiring immediate transcription feedback, such as live captioning, meeting transcription, or voi…  ( 31 min )

Azure OpenAI has expanded its speech recognition capabilities with two powerful models: GPT-4o-transcribe and GPT-4o-mini-transcribe. These models also leverage WebSocket connections to enable real-time transcription of audio streams, providing developers with cutting-edge tools for speech-to-text applications. In this technical blog, we'll explore how these models work and demonstrate a practical implementation using Python. Understanding OpenAI's Realtime Transcription API Unlike the regular REST API for audio transcription, Azure OpenAI's Realtime API enables continuous streaming of audio data through WebSockets or WebRTC connections. This approach is particularly valuable for applications requiring immediate transcription feedback, such as live captioning, meeting transcription, or voi…

We are excited to share that we have released a new Microsoft Fabric pipeline template that helps you easily send the results from Azure AI Content Understanding into a Fabric Lakehouse! This template makes it easier than ever to harvest information from multimodal content and turn it into structured data using Content Understanding and perform further analysis in Microsoft Fabric. Whether you are looking to extract insights from a contract, call transcript, or video footage, this template simplifies the process and gives you fast access to Fabric’s powerful data tools. Why It Matters Azure AI Content Understanding uses powerful large language models (LLMs) to extract key information from documents, videos, audio, and image files. For example, it can identify key phrases in documents, extract tables from invoices, or generate video chapters and summaries. This template lets you seamlessly feed structured JSON outputs from Content Understanding into a Fabric Lakehouse, where you can immediately use Power BI, Dataflows, and other tools to analyze and make sense of the data.   Key Benefits Quick Setup: Move from unstructured content to structured data in no time—no complicated setup required! Seamless Integration: Connect Azure AI and Microsoft Fabric effortlessly. Secure & Scalable: Every component is built on Microsoft’s cloud, ensuring your data is safe and scalable as your needs grow. Try It Now You can find the template and setup instructions on GitHub. We would love to hear how you are using it! Feel free to leave any questions or feedback in the comments below or send us an email.  Resources & Documentation Explore the following resources to learn more about Azure AI Content Understanding and Microsoft Fabric Azure Content Understanding Overview Microsoft Fabric Overview Azure Content Understanding in Azure AI Foundry Azure Content Understanding FAQs  ( 21 min )

We are excited to share that we have released a new Microsoft Fabric pipeline template that helps you easily send the results from Azure AI Content Understanding into a Fabric Lakehouse! This template makes it easier than ever to harvest information from multimodal content and turn it into structured data using Content Understanding and perform further analysis in Microsoft Fabric. Whether you are looking to extract insights from a contract, call transcript, or video footage, this template simplifies the process and gives you fast access to Fabric’s powerful data tools. Why It Matters Azure AI Content Understanding uses powerful large language models (LLMs) to extract key information from documents, videos, audio, and image files. For example, it can identify key phrases in documents, extract tables from invoices, or generate video chapters and summaries. This template lets you seamlessly feed structured JSON outputs from Content Understanding into a Fabric Lakehouse, where you can immediately use Power BI, Dataflows, and other tools to analyze and make sense of the data.   Key Benefits Quick Setup: Move from unstructured content to structured data in no time—no complicated setup required! Seamless Integration: Connect Azure AI and Microsoft Fabric effortlessly. Secure & Scalable: Every component is built on Microsoft’s cloud, ensuring your data is safe and scalable as your needs grow. Try It Now You can find the template and setup instructions on GitHub. We would love to hear how you are using it! Feel free to leave any questions or feedback in the comments below or send us an email.  Resources & Documentation Explore the following resources to learn more about Azure AI Content Understanding and Microsoft Fabric Azure Content Understanding Overview Microsoft Fabric Overview Azure Content Understanding in Azure AI Foundry Azure Content Understanding FAQs

We are excited to share some recent updates that improve the experience of using Workload identity federation (OpenID Connect) with Azure DevOps and Terraform on Microsoft Azure. Many working parts have come together to make this possible and we’ll share those here. We are also very pleased to announce version 5 of the Microsoft DevLabs […] The post Introducing Azure DevOps ID Token Refresh and Terraform Task Version 5 appeared first on Azure DevOps Blog.  ( 25 min )

As described in our official document, the classic communication mode of Batch node will be retired on 31 March 2026. Instead, it’s recommended to use simplified communication mode while creating Batch pool.   But while user changes their Batch pool communication mode from classic to simplified and applies the necessary changes of network security group per documentation, they will find out that the node is still stuck in unusable status.   A very possible cause of this issue is due to the bad networking setting of Batch Account.   This blog will mainly talk about why networking setting can cause node using simplified communication mode stuck in unusable status and how to configure correct networking setting under different user scenarios.   Cause: As described in this document, the differ…  ( 23 min )

As described in our official document, the classic communication mode of Batch node will be retired on 31 March 2026. Instead, it’s recommended to use simplified communication mode while creating Batch pool.   But while user changes their Batch pool communication mode from classic to simplified and applies the necessary changes of network security group per documentation, they will find out that the node is still stuck in unusable status.   A very possible cause of this issue is due to the bad networking setting of Batch Account.   This blog will mainly talk about why networking setting can cause node using simplified communication mode stuck in unusable status and how to configure correct networking setting under different user scenarios.   Cause: As described in this document, the differ…

Microsoft Build is just a few weeks away. To celebrate, we’re highlighting resources that will help you get ready for the big event. Explore some of the exciting sessions you can join in-person or online, learn new skills before jumping into live deep-dive sessions, brush up on best practices, and get up to speed on the latest developer tools so you can hit the event ready to take your knowledge (and your applications) to the next level. Connect, code, and grow at BuildIt’s almost time for Microsoft Build! Can’t join the event live in-person? No problem. You can still experience the event streaming live online for free (May 19-22). Watch the keynote, join live sessions, learn new skills, and watch in-depth demos. Join the .NET & C# teams at Microsoft Build 2025Don’t miss this opportunity t…  ( 28 min )

Microsoft Build is just a few weeks away. To celebrate, we’re highlighting resources that will help you get ready for the big event. Explore some of the exciting sessions you can join in-person or online, learn new skills before jumping into live deep-dive sessions, brush up on best practices, and get up to speed on the latest developer tools so you can hit the event ready to take your knowledge (and your applications) to the next level. Connect, code, and grow at BuildIt’s almost time for Microsoft Build! Can’t join the event live in-person? No problem. You can still experience the event streaming live online for free (May 19-22). Watch the keynote, join live sessions, learn new skills, and watch in-depth demos. Join the .NET & C# teams at Microsoft Build 2025Don’t miss this opportunity t…

As AI reshapes how businesses operate and deliver value, many organizations are seeking ways to modernize their infrastructure — quickly, securely, and at scale. With the right tools and support, cloud adoption becomes an empowering step toward innovation and growth. Azure Innovate & Azure Migrate and Modernize were designed to support your entire cloud journey, providing expert guidance, funding, and comprehensive resources all in one place to help you maximize the value of Azure to boost business growth. We’re continuously evolving these offerings to deliver even more value at scale. That’s why we created Cloud Accelerate Factory, a new benefit of Azure Innovate & Azure Migrate and Modernize, built on the patterns and insights from thousands of customer deployments. The Factory provides …  ( 23 min )

As AI reshapes how businesses operate and deliver value, many organizations are seeking ways to modernize their infrastructure — quickly, securely, and at scale. With the right tools and support, cloud adoption becomes an empowering step toward innovation and growth. Azure Innovate & Azure Migrate and Modernize were designed to support your entire cloud journey, providing expert guidance, funding, and comprehensive resources all in one place to help you maximize the value of Azure to boost business growth. We’re continuously evolving these offerings to deliver even more value at scale. That’s why we created Cloud Accelerate Factory, a new benefit of Azure Innovate & Azure Migrate and Modernize, built on the patterns and insights from thousands of customer deployments. The Factory provides …

Table of Contents Abstract Introduction Prerequisites Workstation setup Repository directory contents Terraform variables file Credentials Azure settings Instaclustr settings VNet settings AKS cluster settings Azure NetApp Files settings PostgreSQL settings OpenSearch settings Authorized networks Infrastructure deployment Application deployment Using OpenMetadata Adding a service Adding an ingestion Cleanup Summary Additional Information Abstract This article contains a step-by-step guide to deploying OpenMetadata on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), using Azure NetApp Files for storage. It also covers the deployment and configuration of PostgreSQL and OpenSearch databases to run externally from the Kubernetes cluster, following OpenMetadata best practices, managed by NetApp® Instaclustr®. T…  ( 61 min )

Table of Contents Abstract Introduction Prerequisites Workstation setup Repository directory contents Terraform variables file Credentials Azure settings Instaclustr settings VNet settings AKS cluster settings Azure NetApp Files settings PostgreSQL settings OpenSearch settings Authorized networks Infrastructure deployment Application deployment Using OpenMetadata Adding a service Adding an ingestion Cleanup Summary Additional Information Abstract This article contains a step-by-step guide to deploying OpenMetadata on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), using Azure NetApp Files for storage. It also covers the deployment and configuration of PostgreSQL and OpenSearch databases to run externally from the Kubernetes cluster, following OpenMetadata best practices, managed by NetApp® Instaclustr®. T…

Azure Key Vault support in Fabric Data connections is now in preview! With this capability, we are introducing a new concept called ‘Azure Key Vault references’ in Microsoft Fabric, using which, users can reuse their existing Azure key vault secrets for authentication to data source connections instead of copy-pasting passwords, slashing credential-management effort and audit risk. … Continue reading “Authenticate to Fabric data connections using Azure Key Vault stored secrets (Preview)”  ( 7 min )

We are excited to announce the winners of the winners of Hack Together: The Microsoft Data + AI Kenya Hack! About the Hackathon The HackTogether was an exciting opportunity to bring bold ideas to life by building Data & AI solutions using Microsoft Fabric and Azure AI Services. Organized exclusively for participants from Kenya, the … Continue reading “Announcing the winners of “Hack Together: The Microsoft Data + AI Kenya Hack””  ( 10 min )

We are excited to announce the release of two powerful AI plugins for Eventhouse: AI Embed Text Plugin and AI Chat Completion Prompt Plugin. These plugins are designed to enhance your data analysis capabilities and augment your workflows with OpenAI models, providing more granular control to power users who seek precision over model output or wish to fine-tune … Continue reading “Introducing new OpenAI Plugins for Eventhouse (Preview)”  ( 7 min )

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming the way we build applications. With the introduction of Microsoft.Extensions.AI, integrating AI services into .NET applications has never been easier. In this blog, we'll explore Microsoft.Extensions.AI, why .NET developers should try it out and how to get started using it to build a simple text generation application. Why Microsoft.Extensions.AI? Microsoft.Extensions.AI provides unified abstractions and middleware for integrating AI services into .NET applications. This means you can work with AI capabilities like chat features, embedding generation, and tool calling without worrying about specific platform implementations. Whether you're using Azure AI, OpenAI, or other AI services, Microsoft.Extensions.AI ensures seamless integration and coll…  ( 36 min )

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming the way we build applications. With the introduction of Microsoft.Extensions.AI, integrating AI services into .NET applications has never been easier. In this blog, we'll explore Microsoft.Extensions.AI, why .NET developers should try it out and how to get started using it to build a simple text generation application. Why Microsoft.Extensions.AI? Microsoft.Extensions.AI provides unified abstractions and middleware for integrating AI services into .NET applications. This means you can work with AI capabilities like chat features, embedding generation, and tool calling without worrying about specific platform implementations. Whether you're using Azure AI, OpenAI, or other AI services, Microsoft.Extensions.AI ensures seamless integration and coll…

If you are using the DefaultAzureCredential class from the Azure Identity SDK while your user account is associated with multiple tenants, you may find yourself frequently running into API authentication errors (such as HTTP 401/Unauthorized). This post is for you! These are your two options for successful authentication from a non-default tenant: Setup your environment precisely to force DefaultAzureCredential to use the desired tenant Use a specific credential class and explicitly pass in the desired tenant ID Option 1: Get DefaultAzureCredential working The DefaultAzureCredential class is a credential chain, which means that it tries a sequence of credential classes until it finds one that can authenticate successfully. The current sequence is: EnvironmentCredential WorkloadIdentityC…  ( 26 min )

If you are using the DefaultAzureCredential class from the Azure Identity SDK while your user account is associated with multiple tenants, you may find yourself frequently running into API authentication errors (such as HTTP 401/Unauthorized). This post is for you! These are your two options for successful authentication from a non-default tenant: Setup your environment precisely to force DefaultAzureCredential to use the desired tenant Use a specific credential class and explicitly pass in the desired tenant ID Option 1: Get DefaultAzureCredential working The DefaultAzureCredential class is a credential chain, which means that it tries a sequence of credential classes until it finds one that can authenticate successfully. The current sequence is: EnvironmentCredential WorkloadIdentityC…

Showcasing Phi-4-Reasoning: A Game-Changer for AI Developers Introduction Phi-4-Reasoning is a state-of-the-art AI model developed by Microsoft Research, designed to excel in complex reasoning tasks. With its advanced capabilities, Phi-4-Reasoning is a powerful tool for AI developers, enabling them to tackle intricate problems with ease and precision.     What is Phi-4-Reasoning? Phi-4-Reasoning is a 14-billion parameter open-weight reasoning model that has been fine-tuned from the Phi-4 model using supervised fine-tuning on a dataset of chain-of-thought traces..  We are also releasing Phi-4-reasoning-plus, a variant enhanced through a short phase of outcome-based reinforcement learning that offers higher performance by generating longer reasoning traces. This model is designed to handle …  ( 34 min )

Showcasing Phi-4-Reasoning: A Game-Changer for AI Developers Introduction Phi-4-Reasoning is a state-of-the-art AI model developed by Microsoft Research, designed to excel in complex reasoning tasks. With its advanced capabilities, Phi-4-Reasoning is a powerful tool for AI developers, enabling them to tackle intricate problems with ease and precision.     What is Phi-4-Reasoning? Phi-4-Reasoning is a 14-billion parameter open-weight reasoning model that has been fine-tuned from the Phi-4 model using supervised fine-tuning on a dataset of chain-of-thought traces..  We are also releasing Phi-4-reasoning-plus, a variant enhanced through a short phase of outcome-based reinforcement learning that offers higher performance by generating longer reasoning traces. This model is designed to handle …

As vector search and Retrieval Augmented Generation(RAG) become mainstream for Generative AI (GenAI) use cases, we’re looking ahead to what’s next. GenAI primarily operates in a one-way direction, generating content based on input data.GenAI must have a secret for production data. Generative Feedback Loops (GFL) are focused on optimizing and improving the AI’s outputs over time through a cycle of feedback and learnings based on the production data. In GFL, results generated from Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT are vectorized, indexed, and saved back into vector storage for better-filtered semantic search operations. This creates a dynamic cycle that adapts LLMs to new and continuously changing data, and user needs. GFL offers personalized, up-to-date summaries and suggestions. A good…  ( 50 min )

As vector search and Retrieval Augmented Generation(RAG) become mainstream for Generative AI (GenAI) use cases, we’re looking ahead to what’s next. GenAI primarily operates in a one-way direction, generating content based on input data.GenAI must have a secret for production data. Generative Feedback Loops (GFL) are focused on optimizing and improving the AI’s outputs over time through a cycle of feedback and learnings based on the production data. In GFL, results generated from Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT are vectorized, indexed, and saved back into vector storage for better-filtered semantic search operations. This creates a dynamic cycle that adapts LLMs to new and continuously changing data, and user needs. GFL offers personalized, up-to-date summaries and suggestions. A good…

Dev Proxy v0.27 is even more developer-friendly, helping you generate API specs faster, improving suggestions while editing, and laying the foundation for more flexible AI integrations. The post Dev Proxy v0.27 with generating TypeSpec files and configuring using natural language appeared first on Microsoft 365 Developer Blog.  ( 25 min )

Last year, we introduced Webjobs on Linux as a preview feature. We are now excited to announce General Avilability for Webjobs on App Service Linux for both code an containers scenarios.  ( 2 min )

Introduction When modernising your enterprise ASP.NET (.NET Framework) or ASP.NET Core applications and moving them from IIS over to Azure App Service, one of the aspects you will have to take into consideration is how you will manage authentication (AuthN) and authorisation (AuthZ). Specifically, for applications that leverage on-premises auth mechanisms such as Integrated Windows Authentication, you will need to start considering more modern auth protocols such as OpenID Connect/OAuth which are more suited to the cloud. Fortunately, App Service includes built-in authentication and authorisation support also known as 'Easy Auth', which requires minimal to zero code changes. This feature is integrated into the platform, includes a built-in token store, and operates as a middleware running …  ( 40 min )

Introduction When modernising your enterprise ASP.NET (.NET Framework) or ASP.NET Core applications and moving them from IIS over to Azure App Service, one of the aspects you will have to take into consideration is how you will manage authentication (AuthN) and authorisation (AuthZ). Specifically, for applications that leverage on-premises auth mechanisms such as Integrated Windows Authentication, you will need to start considering more modern auth protocols such as OpenID Connect/OAuth which are more suited to the cloud. Fortunately, App Service includes built-in authentication and authorisation support also known as 'Easy Auth', which requires minimal to zero code changes. This feature is integrated into the platform, includes a built-in token store, and operates as a middleware running …

Azure Storage is a versatile cloud storage solution that I've used in many projects. In this post, I'll share my experience integrating it into a .NET Aspire project through two perspectives: first, by building a simple demo project to learn the basics, and then by applying those learnings to migrate a real-world application, AzUrlShortener. This post is part of a series about modernizing the AzUrlShortener project: Migrating AzUrlShortener from Azure SWA to Azure Container Apps Converting a Blazor WASM to FluentUI Blazor server Azure Developer CLI (azd) in a real-life scenario How to use Azure Table Storage with .NET Aspire and a Minimal API Part 1: Learning using a simple project For this post we will be using a simpler project instead of the full AzUrlShortener solution to make it eas…  ( 36 min )

Azure Storage is a versatile cloud storage solution that I've used in many projects. In this post, I'll share my experience integrating it into a .NET Aspire project through two perspectives: first, by building a simple demo project to learn the basics, and then by applying those learnings to migrate a real-world application, AzUrlShortener. This post is part of a series about modernizing the AzUrlShortener project: Migrating AzUrlShortener from Azure SWA to Azure Container Apps Converting a Blazor WASM to FluentUI Blazor server Azure Developer CLI (azd) in a real-life scenario How to use Azure Table Storage with .NET Aspire and a Minimal API Part 1: Learning using a simple project For this post we will be using a simpler project instead of the full AzUrlShortener solution to make it eas…

When you support Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) clusters, keeping up with new versions of Kubernetes being released, and ensuring that your clusters are on a supported version can be difficult. If you have one or two clusters it might be OK, but as your estate grows it can be difficult to keep on top of which clusters have which version of Kubernetes and which needs updates. One way of dealing with this could be to implement Azure Kubernetes Fleet Manager (Fleet). Fleet provides a comprehensive solution for monitoring Kubernetes and Node Image versions in your clusters, and rolling out updates across your estate. You can read more details on Fleet for update management here. However, if you're not ready to implement Fleet, or your AKS estate isn't large enough to warrant it, we can build a…  ( 35 min )

When you support Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) clusters, keeping up with new versions of Kubernetes being released, and ensuring that your clusters are on a supported version can be difficult. If you have one or two clusters it might be OK, but as your estate grows it can be difficult to keep on top of which clusters have which version of Kubernetes and which needs updates. One way of dealing with this could be to implement Azure Kubernetes Fleet Manager (Fleet). Fleet provides a comprehensive solution for monitoring Kubernetes and Node Image versions in your clusters, and rolling out updates across your estate. You can read more details on Fleet for update management here. However, if you're not ready to implement Fleet, or your AKS estate isn't large enough to warrant it, we can build a…

This post will go over using networking troubleshooting tools and which scenarios they may be best for  ( 8 min )

Introduction Building a multi-layer, medallion architecture using Fabric Real-Time Intelligence (RTI) requires a different approach compared to traditional data warehousing techniques. But even transactional source systems can be effectively processed in RTI. To demonstrate, we’ll look at how sales orders (created in a relational database) can be continuously ingested and transformed through a RTI bronze, … Continue reading “Medallion Architecture in Fabric Real-Time Intelligence”  ( 9 min )

Welcome to the Fabric April 2025 Feature Summary! This update brings exciting advancements across various workloads, including Low-code AI tools to accelerate productivity in notebooks (Preview), session Scoped distributed #temp table in Fabric Data Warehouse (Generally Available) and the Migration assistant for Fabric Data Warehouse (Preview) to simplify your migration experience. Contents Community & Events … Continue reading “Fabric April 2025 Feature Summary”  ( 16 min )

The final episode of our "AI Sparks" series delved deep into the exciting world of AI Agents and their practical implementation. We also covered a fair part of MCP with Microsoft AI Toolkit extension for VS Code.  We kicked off by charting the evolutionary path of intelligent conversational systems. Starting with the rudimentary rule-based Basic Chatbots, we then explored the advancements brought by Basic Generative AI Chatbots, which offered contextually aware interactions. Then we explored the Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), highlighting its ability to ground generative models in specific knowledge bases, significantly enhancing accuracy and relevance. The limitations were also discussed for the above mentioned techniques. The session was then centralized to the theme – Agents and …  ( 28 min )

The final episode of our "AI Sparks" series delved deep into the exciting world of AI Agents and their practical implementation. We also covered a fair part of MCP with Microsoft AI Toolkit extension for VS Code.  We kicked off by charting the evolutionary path of intelligent conversational systems. Starting with the rudimentary rule-based Basic Chatbots, we then explored the advancements brought by Basic Generative AI Chatbots, which offered contextually aware interactions. Then we explored the Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), highlighting its ability to ground generative models in specific knowledge bases, significantly enhancing accuracy and relevance. The limitations were also discussed for the above mentioned techniques. The session was then centralized to the theme – Agents and …

The world of cloud computing is growing rapidly, and Azure is at the forefront of this innovation. If you're a student developer eager to dive into Azure and learn about Model Context Protocol (MCP), the Azure MCP Server is your perfect starting point. This tool, currently in Public Preview, empowers AI agents to seamlessly interact with Azure services like Azure Storage, Cosmos DB, and more. Let's explore how you can get started! 🎯 Why Use the Azure MCP Server? The Azure MCP Server revolutionizes how AI agents and developers interact with Azure services. Here's a glimpse of what it offers: Exploration Made Easy: List storage accounts, databases, resource groups, tables, and more with natural language commands. Advanced Operations: Manage configurations, query analytics, and execute comp…  ( 24 min )

The world of cloud computing is growing rapidly, and Azure is at the forefront of this innovation. If you're a student developer eager to dive into Azure and learn about Model Context Protocol (MCP), the Azure MCP Server is your perfect starting point. This tool, currently in Public Preview, empowers AI agents to seamlessly interact with Azure services like Azure Storage, Cosmos DB, and more. Let's explore how you can get started! 🎯 Why Use the Azure MCP Server? The Azure MCP Server revolutionizes how AI agents and developers interact with Azure services. Here's a glimpse of what it offers: Exploration Made Easy: List storage accounts, databases, resource groups, tables, and more with natural language commands. Advanced Operations: Manage configurations, query analytics, and execute comp…

Contributors and Reviewers: Jay Sen (C), Anthony Nevico (C), Chris Kahrs (C), Anurag Karuparti (C), John De Havilland (R) Key drivers behind GenAI Evaluation Risk Mitigation and Reliability: Proactively identifying issues to ensure GenAI models perform safely and consistently in critical environments.  Iterative Improvement: Leveraging continuous feedback loops and tests to refine models and maintain alignment with evolving business objectives.  Transparency and Accountability: Establishing clear, shared metrics that build trust between technical teams and business stakeholders, ensuring AI deployments are safe, ethical, and outcome driven.  Speed to market: Evaluation frameworks allow the adoption of GenAI technologies across business processes in a safe, sane and validated manner, allow…  ( 37 min )

Contributors and Reviewers: Jay Sen (C), Anthony Nevico (C), Chris Kahrs (C), Anurag Karuparti (C), John De Havilland (R) Key drivers behind GenAI Evaluation Risk Mitigation and Reliability: Proactively identifying issues to ensure GenAI models perform safely and consistently in critical environments.  Iterative Improvement: Leveraging continuous feedback loops and tests to refine models and maintain alignment with evolving business objectives.  Transparency and Accountability: Establishing clear, shared metrics that build trust between technical teams and business stakeholders, ensuring AI deployments are safe, ethical, and outcome driven.  Speed to market: Evaluation frameworks allow the adoption of GenAI technologies across business processes in a safe, sane and validated manner, allow…

We are thrilled to unveil exciting new enhancements in the My Virtual Machine view within Azure DevTest Labs that will revolutionize your VM management experience. With these updates, managing your virtual machines has never been easier or more efficient. Imagine being able to multi-select VMs to start, stop, restart, or delete them all at once […] The post Elevate Your Virtual Machine Management with Multi-Select, Sorting, Grouping, and Tags in Azure DevTest Labs appeared first on Develop from the cloud.  ( 22 min )

FSI customers such as insurance companies and banks rely on their vast amounts of data to provide sometimes hundreds of individual products to their customers. From assessing product suitability, underwriting, fraud investigations, and claims handling, many employees and applications depend on accessing this data to do their jobs efficiently. Since the capabilities of GenAI have been realised, we have been helping our customers in this market transform their business with unified systems that simplify access to this data and speed up the processing times of these core tasks, while remaining compliant with the numerous regulations that govern the FSI space. Combining the use of Knowledge Mining with Intelligent Document processing provides a powerful solution to reduce the manual effort and…  ( 39 min )

FSI customers such as insurance companies and banks rely on their vast amounts of data to provide sometimes hundreds of individual products to their customers. From assessing product suitability, underwriting, fraud investigations, and claims handling, many employees and applications depend on accessing this data to do their jobs efficiently. Since the capabilities of GenAI have been realised, we have been helping our customers in this market transform their business with unified systems that simplify access to this data and speed up the processing times of these core tasks, while remaining compliant with the numerous regulations that govern the FSI space. Combining the use of Knowledge Mining with Intelligent Document processing provides a powerful solution to reduce the manual effort and…

The WordPress on App Service create flow offers a streamlined process to set up your site along with all the necessary Azure resources. Let's learn more about add-ins that can enhance your WordPress experience and help you decide which ones to opt for. Deploying WordPress on App Service is a breeze thanks to the ARM template approach, which ties together Azure applications to ensure a seamless experience for developers. Whether you're a seasoned pro or new to the create flow, this guide will demystify these additional settings and help you make informed choices. Add-ins tab Managed Identity: Say goodbye to managing credentials! Managed Identities provide secure access to Azure resources without storing sensitive credentials. Enabling this option creates a user-assigned managed identity, c…  ( 25 min )

The WordPress on App Service create flow offers a streamlined process to set up your site along with all the necessary Azure resources. Let's learn more about add-ins that can enhance your WordPress experience and help you decide which ones to opt for. Deploying WordPress on App Service is a breeze thanks to the ARM template approach, which ties together Azure applications to ensure a seamless experience for developers. Whether you're a seasoned pro or new to the create flow, this guide will demystify these additional settings and help you make informed choices. Add-ins tab Managed Identity: Say goodbye to managing credentials! Managed Identities provide secure access to Azure resources without storing sensitive credentials. Enabling this option creates a user-assigned managed identity, c…

Introducing Seamless Connectivity for Enhanced Data Analytics and Reporting. We are thrilled to announce a new SQL database integration with Power BI Desktop! This innovative feature is designed to empower users with streamlined access to their SQL databases, providing greater flexibility and precision for building insightful reports and dashboards. With this integration, users can now … Continue reading “Fabric SQL Database Integration: Unlocking New Possibilities with Power BI desktop”  ( 6 min )

2025 is the year of AI agents! But what exactly is an agent, and how can you build one? Whether you're a seasoned developer or just starting out, this FREE three-week virtual hackathon is your chance to dive deep into AI agent development. On Demand content now available TopicTrack AI Agents Hackathon KickoffAll Build your code-first app with Azure AI Agent ServicePython AI Agents for Java using Azure AI FoundryJava Build your code-first app with Azure AI Agent ServicePython Build and extend agents for Microsoft 365 CopilotCopilots Transforming business processes with multi-agent AI using Semantic KernelPython Build your code-first app with Azure AI Agent Service (.NET)C# Building custom engine agents with Azure AI Foundry and Visual Studio CodeCopilots Your first AI Agent in JS with …  ( 24 min )

2025 is the year of AI agents! But what exactly is an agent, and how can you build one? Whether you're a seasoned developer or just starting out, this FREE three-week virtual hackathon is your chance to dive deep into AI agent development. On Demand content now available TopicTrack AI Agents Hackathon KickoffAll Build your code-first app with Azure AI Agent ServicePython AI Agents for Java using Azure AI FoundryJava Build your code-first app with Azure AI Agent ServicePython Build and extend agents for Microsoft 365 CopilotCopilots Transforming business processes with multi-agent AI using Semantic KernelPython Build your code-first app with Azure AI Agent Service (.NET)C# Building custom engine agents with Azure AI Foundry and Visual Studio CodeCopilots Your first AI Agent in JS with …

As of April 2025, we are happy to announce major improvements to App Service routine maintenance notifications.  ( 3 min )

As organizations increasingly tailor foundation models to meet their domain-specific needs, Azure AI Foundry continues to deliver new capabilities that streamline, scale, and enhance the fine-tuning experience. One such organization, Decagon AI, fine-tuned GPT-4o-mini using Azure OpenAI Service’s supervised fine-tuning for their customer service agents. They were able to improve model accuracy and observed substantially lower latency for inferencing. This is one of my favorite use cases because it combines two cutting edge techniques - agents and fine tuning - for better results! “Fine-tuning GPT-4o-mini on Azure dramatically accelerated our delivery timeline,” said Ashwin Sreenvias, CEO at Decagon AI. “The training performance, simplicity of the pipeline, and integrated tooling gave us a …  ( 26 min )

As organizations increasingly tailor foundation models to meet their domain-specific needs, Azure AI Foundry continues to deliver new capabilities that streamline, scale, and enhance the fine-tuning experience. One such organization, Decagon AI, fine-tuned GPT-4o-mini using Azure OpenAI Service’s supervised fine-tuning for their customer service agents. They were able to improve model accuracy and observed substantially lower latency for inferencing. This is one of my favorite use cases because it combines two cutting edge techniques - agents and fine tuning - for better results! “Fine-tuning GPT-4o-mini on Azure dramatically accelerated our delivery timeline,” said Ashwin Sreenvias, CEO at Decagon AI. “The training performance, simplicity of the pipeline, and integrated tooling gave us a …

Today we’re excited to welcome Jonathan David, as a guest author on the Semantic Kernel blog. We’ll turn it over to Jonathan to dive into Letting AI Help Make the World More Accessible – Analyzing Website Accessibility with Semantic Kernel and OmniParser.   With the European Accessibility Act and Germany’s Barrierefreiheitsstärkungsgesetz (which translates to Barrier […] The post Guest Blog: Letting AI Help Make the World More Accessible – Analyzing Website Accessibility with Semantic Kernel and OmniParser appeared first on Semantic Kernel.  ( 34 min )

Shiva Shastri Sr Product Marketing Manager, Azure Migrate—Product & Ecosystem. Intuitive and cost-effective migrations. In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, businesses are constantly seeking ways to stay competitive through innovations while managing costs. By leveraging the power of the cloud, organizations can achieve unparalleled cost-effectiveness and foster sustainable innovation. By transitioning to Azure, any organization can achieve greater financial flexibility, operational efficiency, and access to secure innovations that provide a competitive edge in the marketplace. Collocating application resources and data is essential for optimal performance and return on investment (ROI). Once in Azure, secure and responsible AI can help provide insights and lead to actions with b…  ( 23 min )

Shiva Shastri Sr Product Marketing Manager, Azure Migrate—Product & Ecosystem. Intuitive and cost-effective migrations. In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, businesses are constantly seeking ways to stay competitive through innovations while managing costs. By leveraging the power of the cloud, organizations can achieve unparalleled cost-effectiveness and foster sustainable innovation. By transitioning to Azure, any organization can achieve greater financial flexibility, operational efficiency, and access to secure innovations that provide a competitive edge in the marketplace. Collocating application resources and data is essential for optimal performance and return on investment (ROI). Once in Azure, secure and responsible AI can help provide insights and lead to actions with b…

Vision Model Architectures At present, Transformer-based vision model architecture is considered the forefront of advanced vision modeling.  These models are exceptionally versatile, capable of handling a wide range of applications, from object detection and image segmentation to contextual classification. Two popular Transformer-based model implementations are often used in real-world applications.  These are: Masked Autoencoders (MAE) and Vision Transformer (ViT) Masked Autoencoders (MAE) Masked Autoencoders (MAE) are a type of Transformer-based vision model architecture. They are designed to handle large-scale vision tasks by leveraging the power of self-supervised learning. The key idea behind MAE is to mask a portion of the input image and then train the model to reconstruct the mis…  ( 42 min )

Vision Model Architectures At present, Transformer-based vision model architecture is considered the forefront of advanced vision modeling.  These models are exceptionally versatile, capable of handling a wide range of applications, from object detection and image segmentation to contextual classification. Two popular Transformer-based model implementations are often used in real-world applications.  These are: Masked Autoencoders (MAE) and Vision Transformer (ViT) Masked Autoencoders (MAE) Masked Autoencoders (MAE) are a type of Transformer-based vision model architecture. They are designed to handle large-scale vision tasks by leveraging the power of self-supervised learning. The key idea behind MAE is to mask a portion of the input image and then train the model to reconstruct the mis…

Using Service Principal and Managed Identity, along with private libraries for Fabric user data functions, makes working with data much easier and more secure. These features let developers customize workflows and use their own code to solve problems, boosting productivity and creativity in teams. As businesses grow and rely more on unique analytics and automation, these tools help simplify data management and improve operations. Check this blog post to learn more  ( 6 min )

Hi everyone, Shivam Goyal here! This blog series, based on Microsoft's AI Agents for Beginners repository, continues with an exciting topic: Metacognition in AI Agents. In previous posts ([links to parts 1-8 at the end]), we've covered fundamental concepts and design patterns. Now, we'll explore how to equip AI agents with the ability to "think about thinking," enabling them to evaluate, adapt, and improve their own cognitive processes. What is Metacognition? Metacognition, often described as "thinking about thinking," refers to higher-order cognitive processes that involve self-awareness and self-regulation of one's cognitive activities. In AI, this means enabling agents to evaluate their actions, identify errors, and adjust strategies based on past experiences. This self-awareness allows…  ( 26 min )

Hi everyone, Shivam Goyal here! This blog series, based on Microsoft's AI Agents for Beginners repository, continues with an exciting topic: Metacognition in AI Agents. In previous posts ([links to parts 1-8 at the end]), we've covered fundamental concepts and design patterns. Now, we'll explore how to equip AI agents with the ability to "think about thinking," enabling them to evaluate, adapt, and improve their own cognitive processes. What is Metacognition? Metacognition, often described as "thinking about thinking," refers to higher-order cognitive processes that involve self-awareness and self-regulation of one's cognitive activities. In AI, this means enabling agents to evaluate their actions, identify errors, and adjust strategies based on past experiences. This self-awareness allows…

Introduction Imagine having an intelligent assistant that can schedule appointments for you over a phone call. The Appointment Booking Assistant is exactly that – a voice-driven AI agent that answers calls, converses naturally with users, and books appointments in a calendar. This solution showcasing how modern cloud services and AI can streamline scheduling tasks. It brings together real-time voice interaction with the power of AI and Microsoft 365 integration, allowing users to simply speak with an assistant to set up meetings or appointments. The result is a faster, more accessible way to manage bookings without needing a human receptionist or manual coordination. Technologies Involved Building this assistant required combining several key technologies, each playing a specific role: Az…  ( 59 min )

Introduction Imagine having an intelligent assistant that can schedule appointments for you over a phone call. The Appointment Booking Assistant is exactly that – a voice-driven AI agent that answers calls, converses naturally with users, and books appointments in a calendar. This solution showcasing how modern cloud services and AI can streamline scheduling tasks. It brings together real-time voice interaction with the power of AI and Microsoft 365 integration, allowing users to simply speak with an assistant to set up meetings or appointments. The result is a faster, more accessible way to manage bookings without needing a human receptionist or manual coordination. Technologies Involved Building this assistant required combining several key technologies, each playing a specific role: Az…

Introduction Azure Kubernetes Fleet Manager (Fleet Manager) simplifies the at-scale management of multiple Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) clusters by treating them as a coordinated “fleet.” One Fleet Manager hub can manage up to 100 AKS clusters in a single Azure AD tenant and region scope, so you can register, organize, and operate a large number of clusters from a single control plane. In this walkthrough, we’ll explore: The key benefits and considerations of using Fleet Manager A real-world e-commerce use case How to deploy a Fleet Manager hub, AKS clusters, and Azure Front Door with Terraform How everything looks and works in the Azure portal Along the way, you’ll see screenshots from my demo environment to illustrate each feature.   Why Use Fleet Manager? Managing dozens or even hun…  ( 31 min )

Introduction Azure Kubernetes Fleet Manager (Fleet Manager) simplifies the at-scale management of multiple Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) clusters by treating them as a coordinated “fleet.” One Fleet Manager hub can manage up to 100 AKS clusters in a single Azure AD tenant and region scope, so you can register, organize, and operate a large number of clusters from a single control plane. In this walkthrough, we’ll explore: The key benefits and considerations of using Fleet Manager A real-world e-commerce use case How to deploy a Fleet Manager hub, AKS clusters, and Azure Front Door with Terraform How everything looks and works in the Azure portal Along the way, you’ll see screenshots from my demo environment to illustrate each feature.   Why Use Fleet Manager? Managing dozens or even hun…

Today we’re excited to welcome Vic Perdana, as a guest author on the Semantic Kernel blog today to cover his work on a SemantiClip: A Practical Guide to Building Your Own AI Agent with Semantic Kernel. We’ll turn it over to Vic to dive in further. Everywhere you look lately, the buzz is about AI agents. But […] The post Guest Blog: SemantiClip: A Practical Guide to Building Your Own AI Agent with Semantic Kernel appeared first on Semantic Kernel.  ( 28 min )

As AI and data science rapidly reshape industries, universities worldwide are rethinking how they deliver hands-on learning. At Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) in China, the School of AI and Advanced Computing embraced Microsoft Dev Box to give students a modern, scalable, and real-world development environment—right from their first year. Here’s how XJTLU transformed their curriculum […] The post How Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University scaled hands-on learning with Microsoft Dev Box appeared first on Develop from the cloud.  ( 23 min )

Azure OpenAI Service allows developers, researchers, and students to integrate powerful AI models like GPT-4, GPT-3.5, and DALL·E into their applications. But with great power comes great responsibility and limits. Before you dive into building your next AI-powered solution, it's crucial to understand how quotas and limits work in the Azure OpenAI ecosystem. This guide is designed to help students and beginners easily understand the concept of quotas, limits, and how to manage them effectively. What Are Quotas and Limits? Think of Azure's quotas as your "AI data pack." It defines how much you can use the service. Meanwhile, limits are hard boundaries set by Azure to ensure fair use and system stability. Quota The maximum number of resources (e.g., tokens, requests) allocated to your Az…  ( 24 min )

Azure OpenAI Service allows developers, researchers, and students to integrate powerful AI models like GPT-4, GPT-3.5, and DALL·E into their applications. But with great power comes great responsibility and limits. Before you dive into building your next AI-powered solution, it's crucial to understand how quotas and limits work in the Azure OpenAI ecosystem. This guide is designed to help students and beginners easily understand the concept of quotas, limits, and how to manage them effectively. What Are Quotas and Limits? Think of Azure's quotas as your "AI data pack." It defines how much you can use the service. Meanwhile, limits are hard boundaries set by Azure to ensure fair use and system stability. Quota The maximum number of resources (e.g., tokens, requests) allocated to your Az…

Accelerating DeepSeek Inference with AMD MI300: A Collaborative Breakthrough  Over the past few months, we’ve been collaborating closely with AMD to deliver a new level of performance for large-scale inference—starting with the DeepSeek-R1 and DeepSeek-V3 models on Azure AI Foundry.  Through day-by-day improvements on inference frameworks and major kernels and shared engineering investment, we’ve significantly accelerated inference on AMD MI300 hardware, reaching competitive performance with traditional NVIDIA alternatives. The result? Faster output, and more flexibility for Models-as-a-Service (MaaS) customers using DeepSeek models.  Why AMD MI300?  While many enterprise workloads are optimized for NVIDIA GPUs, AMD’s MI300 architecture has proven to be a strong contender—especially for la…  ( 31 min )

Accelerating DeepSeek Inference with AMD MI300: A Collaborative Breakthrough  Over the past few months, we’ve been collaborating closely with AMD to deliver a new level of performance for large-scale inference—starting with the DeepSeek-R1 and DeepSeek-V3 models on Azure AI Foundry.  Through day-by-day improvements on inference frameworks and major kernels and shared engineering investment, we’ve significantly accelerated inference on AMD MI300 hardware, reaching competitive performance with traditional NVIDIA alternatives. The result? Faster output, and more flexibility for Models-as-a-Service (MaaS) customers using DeepSeek models.  Why AMD MI300?  While many enterprise workloads are optimized for NVIDIA GPUs, AMD’s MI300 architecture has proven to be a strong contender—especially for la…

Migrating your cloud-based databases to Microsoft Azure can be a transformative journey, offering enhanced performance, scalability, and security. I’ve had the opportunity to dive deep into this process, and I’m excited to share the key points that can make your migration smooth and successful. If you're using the Azure Migration Hub as your starting point, you're already ahead. But when migrating to cloud-based databases, a few key details can make or break your deployment. Some key considerations for migrating are infrastructure and configuration, web application firewall configuration, DNS, hostnames, and session management. Databases you can migrate to Azure PostgreSQL Advanced Security Features: Integration with Azure Key Vault ensures secure storage and management of encryption keys …  ( 30 min )

Migrating your cloud-based databases to Microsoft Azure can be a transformative journey, offering enhanced performance, scalability, and security. I’ve had the opportunity to dive deep into this process, and I’m excited to share the key points that can make your migration smooth and successful. If you're using the Azure Migration Hub as your starting point, you're already ahead. But when migrating to cloud-based databases, a few key details can make or break your deployment. Some key considerations for migrating are infrastructure and configuration, web application firewall configuration, DNS, hostnames, and session management. Databases you can migrate to Azure PostgreSQL Advanced Security Features: Integration with Azure Key Vault ensures secure storage and management of encryption keys …

As organizations expand their services and applications, reliability and high availability are a top priority to ensure they provide a high level of quality to their customers. As the complexity of these services and applications grows, organizations continue to collect more telemetry to ensure higher observability. However, many are facing a common challenge: increasing costs driven by the ever-growing volume of telemetry data.   Over time, as products grow and evolve, not all telemetry remains valuable. In fact, over instrumentation can create unnecessary noise, generating data that contributes to higher costs without delivering actionable insights. In a time where every team is being asked to do more with less, identifying which telemetry streams truly matter has become essential.   To …  ( 23 min )

As organizations expand their services and applications, reliability and high availability are a top priority to ensure they provide a high level of quality to their customers. As the complexity of these services and applications grows, organizations continue to collect more telemetry to ensure higher observability. However, many are facing a common challenge: increasing costs driven by the ever-growing volume of telemetry data.   Over time, as products grow and evolve, not all telemetry remains valuable. In fact, over instrumentation can create unnecessary noise, generating data that contributes to higher costs without delivering actionable insights. In a time where every team is being asked to do more with less, identifying which telemetry streams truly matter has become essential.   To …

Stay Online Reliability. It's one of the 5 pillars of Azure Well-Architect Framework.  When starting to implement and go-to-market any new product witch has any integration with Open AI Service you can face spikes of usage in your workload and, even having everything scaling correctly in your side, if you have an Azure Open AI Services deployed using PTU you can reach the PTU threshold and them start to experience some 429 response code. You also will receive some important information about the when you can retry the request in the header of the response and with this information you can implement in your business logic a solution. Here in this article I will show how to use the API Management Service policy to handle this and also explore the native cache to save some tokens! Architectur…  ( 25 min )

Stay Online Reliability. It's one of the 5 pillars of Azure Well-Architect Framework.  When starting to implement and go-to-market any new product witch has any integration with Open AI Service you can face spikes of usage in your workload and, even having everything scaling correctly in your side, if you have an Azure Open AI Services deployed using PTU you can reach the PTU threshold and them start to experience some 429 response code. You also will receive some important information about the when you can retry the request in the header of the response and with this information you can implement in your business logic a solution. Here in this article I will show how to use the API Management Service policy to handle this and also explore the native cache to save some tokens! Architectur…

Introduction In October 2024 Microsoft replaced a legacy rule‑based chat bot on Microsoft Store with Microsoft Store Assistant, powered by Azure Open AI, Semantic Kernel, and real‑time page context. The transformation changed a scripted, button-driven experience into a conversation that comprehends the entire public Microsoft portfolio, including Surface and Xbox products, Microsoft 365 subscriptions, Azure services, and the Dynamics and Power Platform […] The post Customer Case Study: Microsoft Store Assistant — bringing multi expert intelligence to Microsoft Store chat with Semantic Kernel and Azure AI appeared first on Semantic Kernel.  ( 25 min )

Learn how Microsoft 365 Certification verifies that ISVs have established protocols for managing health information, dealing with emergencies and service disruptions, and complying with key HIPAA regulations. The post Microsoft 365 Certification control spotlight: HIPAA appeared first on Microsoft 365 Developer Blog.  ( 23 min )

We are excited to announce general availability for the SharePoint Framework 1.21. This time focus is primarily on technical platform updates and new UX options in SharePoint and in Viva Connections. The post Announcing SharePoint Framework 1.21 with updates on building enterprise extensibility within Microsoft 365 appeared first on Microsoft 365 Developer Blog.  ( 24 min )

What’s Included in Your Learning Journey? Explore on-demand sessions broken down by week, topic, and track, providing targeted guidance for developers using Python, Java, C#, JavaScript, and more. Here's a peek at what you can expect:Foundational insights into building agents TopicTrack Build your code-first app with Azure AI Agent ServicePython AI Agents for Java using Azure AI FoundryJava Build your code-first app with Azure AI Agent ServicePython Build and extend agents for Microsoft 365 CopilotCopilots Transforming business processes with multi-agent AI using Semantic KernelPython Build your code-first app with Azure AI Agent Service (.NET)C# Build more sophisticated agents and explore advanced capabilities: TopicTrack Building custom engine agents with Azure AI Foundry and Vis…  ( 23 min )

What’s Included in Your Learning Journey? Explore on-demand sessions broken down by week, topic, and track, providing targeted guidance for developers using Python, Java, C#, JavaScript, and more. Here's a peek at what you can expect:Foundational insights into building agents TopicTrack Build your code-first app with Azure AI Agent ServicePython AI Agents for Java using Azure AI FoundryJava Build your code-first app with Azure AI Agent ServicePython Build and extend agents for Microsoft 365 CopilotCopilots Transforming business processes with multi-agent AI using Semantic KernelPython Build your code-first app with Azure AI Agent Service (.NET)C# Build more sophisticated agents and explore advanced capabilities: TopicTrack Building custom engine agents with Azure AI Foundry and Vis…

Readiness and skilling events for Week 3: Microsoft AI Agents Hack Register Now at https://aka.ms/agentshack https://aka.ms/agentshack     2025 is the year of AI agents! But what exactly is an agent, and how can you build one? Whether you're a seasoned developer or just starting out, this FREE three-week virtual hackathon is your chance to dive deep into AI agent development.Register Now: https://aka.ms/agentshack 🔥 Learn from expert-led sessions streamed live on YouTube, covering top frameworks like Semantic Kernel, Autogen, the new Azure AI Agents SDK and the Microsoft 365 Agents SDK. Week 3: April 21st-25th LIVE & ONDEMAND Day/TimeTopicTrack 4/21 12:00 PM PTKnowledge-augmented agents with LlamaIndex.TSJS 4/22 06:00 AM PTBuilding a AI Agent with Prompty and Azure AI FoundryPython 4/22 09:00 AM PTReal-time Multi-Agent LLM solutions with SignalR, gRPC, and HTTP based on Semantic KernelC# 4/22 10:30 AM PTLearn Live: Fundamentals of AI agents on Azure- 4/22 12:00 PM PTDemystifying Agents: Building an AI Agent from Scratch on Your Own Data using Azure SQLC# 4/22 03:00 PM PTVoiceRAG: talk to your dataPython 4/23 09:00 AM PTBuilding Multi-Agent Apps on top of Azure PostgreSQLPython 4/23 12:00 PM PTAgentic RAG with reflectionPython 4/23 03:00 PM PTMulti-source data patterns for modern RAG appsC# 4/24 06:00 AM PTEngineering agents that Think, Act, and Govern themselvesC# 4/24 09:00 AM PTExtending AI Agents with Azure FunctionsPython, C# 4/24 12:00 PM PTBuild real time voice agents with Azure Communication ServicesPython 🌟 Join the Conversation on Azure AI Foundry Discussions! 🌟Have ideas, questions, or insights about AI? Don't keep them to yourself! Share your thoughts, engage with experts, and connect with a community that’s shaping the future of artificial intelligence. 🧠✨👉 Click here to join the discussion!  ( 21 min )

Readiness and skilling events for Week 3: Microsoft AI Agents Hack Register Now at https://aka.ms/agentshack https://aka.ms/agentshack     2025 is the year of AI agents! But what exactly is an agent, and how can you build one? Whether you're a seasoned developer or just starting out, this FREE three-week virtual hackathon is your chance to dive deep into AI agent development.Register Now: https://aka.ms/agentshack 🔥 Learn from expert-led sessions streamed live on YouTube, covering top frameworks like Semantic Kernel, Autogen, the new Azure AI Agents SDK and the Microsoft 365 Agents SDK. Week 3: April 21st-25th LIVE & ONDEMAND Day/TimeTopicTrack 4/21 12:00 PM PTKnowledge-augmented agents with LlamaIndex.TSJS 4/22 06:00 AM PTBuilding a AI Agent with Prompty and Azure AI FoundryPython 4/22 09:00 AM PTReal-time Multi-Agent LLM solutions with SignalR, gRPC, and HTTP based on Semantic KernelC# 4/22 10:30 AM PTLearn Live: Fundamentals of AI agents on Azure- 4/22 12:00 PM PTDemystifying Agents: Building an AI Agent from Scratch on Your Own Data using Azure SQLC# 4/22 03:00 PM PTVoiceRAG: talk to your dataPython 4/23 09:00 AM PTBuilding Multi-Agent Apps on top of Azure PostgreSQLPython 4/23 12:00 PM PTAgentic RAG with reflectionPython 4/23 03:00 PM PTMulti-source data patterns for modern RAG appsC# 4/24 06:00 AM PTEngineering agents that Think, Act, and Govern themselvesC# 4/24 09:00 AM PTExtending AI Agents with Azure FunctionsPython, C# 4/24 12:00 PM PTBuild real time voice agents with Azure Communication ServicesPython 🌟 Join the Conversation on Azure AI Foundry Discussions! 🌟Have ideas, questions, or insights about AI? Don't keep them to yourself! Share your thoughts, engage with experts, and connect with a community that’s shaping the future of artificial intelligence. 🧠✨👉 Click here to join the discussion!

🎙️ Featuring: Olivia McVicker, Cassidy Williams, Burke Holland, Harald Kirschner, Toby Padilla, Rob Lourens, Tim Rogers, James Montemagno, Don Jayamanne, Brigit Murtaugh, Chris Harrison. What is Agent Mode? Agent Mode in VS Code represents a leap beyond traditional AI code completion. Instead of simply suggesting code snippets, Agent Mode empowers the AI to: Write, edit, and iterate on code Run terminal commands autonomously Fix its own mistakes during the workflow Interact with external tools, APIs, and services This creates a more dynamic, "agentic" coding partner that can automate complex tasks, reduce manual intervention, and keep developers in their flow. Agent Mode is accessible directly in VS Code and integrates seamlessly with GitHub Copilot, making advanced AI capabilities avai…  ( 26 min )

🎙️ Featuring: Olivia McVicker, Cassidy Williams, Burke Holland, Harald Kirschner, Toby Padilla, Rob Lourens, Tim Rogers, James Montemagno, Don Jayamanne, Brigit Murtaugh, Chris Harrison. What is Agent Mode? Agent Mode in VS Code represents a leap beyond traditional AI code completion. Instead of simply suggesting code snippets, Agent Mode empowers the AI to: Write, edit, and iterate on code Run terminal commands autonomously Fix its own mistakes during the workflow Interact with external tools, APIs, and services This creates a more dynamic, "agentic" coding partner that can automate complex tasks, reduce manual intervention, and keep developers in their flow. Agent Mode is accessible directly in VS Code and integrates seamlessly with GitHub Copilot, making advanced AI capabilities avai…

Monitoring Azure Storage operations is crucial for ensuring performance, compliance, and security. Azure provides various options to collect and route diagnostic logs. One powerful option is sending logs to Azure Event Hub, which allows real-time streaming and integration with external tools and analytics platforms. In this blog, we’ll walk through setting up diagnostic logging for an Azure Storage account with Event Hub as the destination, and then demonstrate how to analyse incoming logs using Service Bus Explorer.   Prerequisites Before we begin, make sure you have the following set up: 1. Azure Event Hub Configuration An Event Hub namespace and instance set up in your Azure subscription. 2. Service Bus Explorer Tool We'll use Service Bus Explorer to connect to Event Hub and analyse l…  ( 25 min )

Monitoring Azure Storage operations is crucial for ensuring performance, compliance, and security. Azure provides various options to collect and route diagnostic logs. One powerful option is sending logs to Azure Event Hub, which allows real-time streaming and integration with external tools and analytics platforms. In this blog, we’ll walk through setting up diagnostic logging for an Azure Storage account with Event Hub as the destination, and then demonstrate how to analyse incoming logs using Service Bus Explorer.   Prerequisites Before we begin, make sure you have the following set up: 1. Azure Event Hub Configuration An Event Hub namespace and instance set up in your Azure subscription. 2. Service Bus Explorer Tool We'll use Service Bus Explorer to connect to Event Hub and analyse l…

Introduction What are Event Hubs? Azure Event Hub is a big data streaming platform and event ingestion service by Microsoft Azure. It’s designed to ingest, buffer, store, and process millions of events per second in real time.   Feature Comparison The Standard tier of Azure Event Hubs provides features beyond what is available in the Basic tier. The following features are included with Standard:   Feature Basic Tier Standard Tier Capture Feature                         ❌ Not available ✅ Available Virtual Network Integration ❌ Not available ✅ Available Auto-Inflate ❌ Not available ✅ Available Consumer Groups Limited (only 1 group) Up to 20 consumer groups Message Retention Up to 1 day Up to 7 days   Many organizations or users choose to downgrade their Event Hu…  ( 24 min )

Introduction What are Event Hubs? Azure Event Hub is a big data streaming platform and event ingestion service by Microsoft Azure. It’s designed to ingest, buffer, store, and process millions of events per second in real time.   Feature Comparison The Standard tier of Azure Event Hubs provides features beyond what is available in the Basic tier. The following features are included with Standard:   Feature Basic Tier Standard Tier Capture Feature                         ❌ Not available ✅ Available Virtual Network Integration ❌ Not available ✅ Available Auto-Inflate ❌ Not available ✅ Available Consumer Groups Limited (only 1 group) Up to 20 consumer groups Message Retention Up to 1 day Up to 7 days   Many organizations or users choose to downgrade their Event Hu…

Solution Architecture   The solution leverages a comprehensive stack of Azure technologies: **Azure OpenAI Service**: Powers core AI capabilities Responses API: Orchestrates the workflow, by calling the tools below and performing actions automatically.  Computer Using Agent (CUA) model: Enables browser automation. This is called through Function Calling, since there are other steps to be performed between the calls to this model, where the gpt-4o model is used, like reasoning through vision, performing vector search and evaluating business rules for anomalies detection. GPT-4o: Processes invoice images with vision capabilities Vector store: Maintains business rules and documentation Azure Container Apps: Hosts procurement web applications Azure SQL Database: Stores contract and procur…  ( 39 min )

Solution Architecture   The solution leverages a comprehensive stack of Azure technologies: **Azure OpenAI Service**: Powers core AI capabilities Responses API: Orchestrates the workflow, by calling the tools below and performing actions automatically.  Computer Using Agent (CUA) model: Enables browser automation. This is called through Function Calling, since there are other steps to be performed between the calls to this model, where the gpt-4o model is used, like reasoning through vision, performing vector search and evaluating business rules for anomalies detection. GPT-4o: Processes invoice images with vision capabilities Vector store: Maintains business rules and documentation Azure Container Apps: Hosts procurement web applications Azure SQL Database: Stores contract and procur…

Solution Architecture   The solution leverages a comprehensive stack of Azure technologies: **Azure OpenAI Service**: Powers core AI capabilities Responses API: Orchestrates the workflow, by calling the tools below and performing actions automatically.  Computer Using Agent (CUA) model: Enables browser automation. This is called through Function Calling, since there are other steps to be performed between the calls to this model, where the gpt-4o model is used, like reasoning through vision, performing vector search and evaluating business rules for anomalies detection. GPT-4o: Processes invoice images with vision capabilities Vector store: Maintains business rules and documentation Azure Container Apps: Hosts procurement web applications Azure SQL Database: Stores contract and procur…

Model merging is a technique for combining the model parameters of multiple models, specifically finetuned variants of a common base model, into a single unified model. In the context of Small Language Models (SLMs), which are lightweight and efficient, merging allows us to have variants of a domain specialized base model to suit different tenant-specific requirements (like fine-tune the base model on their own data set), and enable transfer of the model parameters to the base model without the need to expose the data used for tenant-specific requirements. Model merging operates at the parameter level, using techniques such as weighted averaging, SLERP (Spherical Linear Interpolation), task arithmetic, or advanced methods like TIES leading to a model that preserves both the general abiliti…  ( 39 min )

Model merging is a technique for combining the model parameters of multiple models, specifically finetuned variants of a common base model, into a single unified model. In the context of Small Language Models (SLMs), which are lightweight and efficient, merging allows us to have variants of a domain specialized base model to suit different tenant-specific requirements (like fine-tune the base model on their own data set), and enable transfer of the model parameters to the base model without the need to expose the data used for tenant-specific requirements. Model merging operates at the parameter level, using techniques such as weighted averaging, SLERP (Spherical Linear Interpolation), task arithmetic, or advanced methods like TIES leading to a model that preserves both the general abiliti…

Many of us have encountered questions about monitoring Semantic Kernel Agents. As developers, we want to understand several aspects: the prompts sent by the Kernel to the AI Service, the behind-the-scenes processes when the Kernel calls the functions we added as plugins, and the token usage during the communication between the AI Service and the Kernel. These are all excellent questions that boil down to how we can observe Semantic Kernel. We can start answering these questions with the use of Azure AI Foundry. So let's dive into it! Adding the Azure AI Inference Connector to the Kernel  The key aspect is to replace the chat completion service that we normally add to the Kernel, by  the Azure AI Inference connector from the Azure Inference Client Library. This connector will automatically…  ( 24 min )

Many of us have encountered questions about monitoring Semantic Kernel Agents. As developers, we want to understand several aspects: the prompts sent by the Kernel to the AI Service, the behind-the-scenes processes when the Kernel calls the functions we added as plugins, and the token usage during the communication between the AI Service and the Kernel. These are all excellent questions that boil down to how we can observe Semantic Kernel. We can start answering these questions with the use of Azure AI Foundry. So let's dive into it! Adding the Azure AI Inference Connector to the Kernel  The key aspect is to replace the chat completion service that we normally add to the Kernel, by  the Azure AI Inference connector from the Azure Inference Client Library. This connector will automatically…

Previously, there were no restrictions on the number of Fabric items that could be created in a workspace, with a limit for Power BI items already being enforced. Even though this allows flexibility for our users, having too many items in workspaces reduces the overall user friendliness and effectiveness of the platform. As of April … Continue reading “Introduction of item limits in a Fabric workspace”  ( 6 min )

Parameters in Dataflow Gen2 enhance flexibility by allowing dynamic adjustments without altering the dataflow itself. They simplify organization, reduce redundancy, and centralize control, making workflows more efficient and adaptable to varying inputs and scenarios. Leveraging query parameters while authoring Dataflows Gen2 has been possible for a long time, however, it was not possible to override … Continue reading “Passing parameter values to refresh a Dataflow Gen2 (Preview)”  ( 7 min )

Mariner Linux 2.0 will reach its End-Of-Life (EOL) in July of 2025 and will be replaced with Azure Linux (version 3.0). To ensure a smooth transition for our customers and partners, the Java Engineering Group (DevDiv JEG) behind the Microsoft Build of OpenJDK has developed a migration aligned with this timeline. This strategy takes effect […] The post Important Updates to Container Images of Microsoft Build of OpenJDK appeared first on Microsoft for Java Developers.  ( 23 min )

ACI provides a fast and simple way to run containers in the cloud. As a serverless solution, ACI eliminates the need to manage underlying infrastructure, automatically scaling to meet application demands. Customers benefit from using ACI because it offers flexible resource allocation, pay-per-use pricing, and rapid deployment, making it easier to focus on development and innovation without worrying about infrastructure management.  Today, we are excited to announce the public preview of larger container sizes on Azure Container Instances (ACI). Customers can now deploy workloads with higher vCPU and memory for standard containers, confidential containers, containers with virtual networks, and containers utilizing virtual nodes to connect to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). ACI now supports …  ( 26 min )

ACI provides a fast and simple way to run containers in the cloud. As a serverless solution, ACI eliminates the need to manage underlying infrastructure, automatically scaling to meet application demands. Customers benefit from using ACI because it offers flexible resource allocation, pay-per-use pricing, and rapid deployment, making it easier to focus on development and innovation without worrying about infrastructure management.  Today, we are excited to announce the public preview of larger container sizes on Azure Container Instances (ACI). Customers can now deploy workloads with higher vCPU and memory for standard containers, confidential containers, containers with virtual networks, and containers utilizing virtual nodes to connect to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). ACI now supports …

Today, we officially closed the doors on any new Azure DevOps OAuth app registrations. As we prepare for the end-of-life for Azure DevOps OAuth apps in 2026, we’ll begin outreach to engage existing app owners and support them through the migration process to use the Microsoft Identity platform instead for future app development with Azure […] The post Spring Cleaning: A CTA for Azure DevOps OAuth Apps with expired or long-living secrets appeared first on Azure DevOps Blog.  ( 22 min )

Introduction The journey to the cloud is an essential step for modern enterprises looking to leverage the benefits of security, innovation (AI), scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency.  To help unlock these benefits migration or modernization to Azure is critical for reasons such as colocation of IT assets. A crucial part of this transformation is understanding the current state of your IT infrastructure, including workloads, applications, and their interdependencies. Often, organizations aim to set their migration goals based on the applications they want to move to the cloud, rather than focusing on individual servers or databases in isolation. In our endeavour to both simplify and enrich your cloud adoption journey. We are introducing new capabilities in Azure Migrate to help you…  ( 28 min )

Introduction The journey to the cloud is an essential step for modern enterprises looking to leverage the benefits of security, innovation (AI), scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency.  To help unlock these benefits migration or modernization to Azure is critical for reasons such as colocation of IT assets. A crucial part of this transformation is understanding the current state of your IT infrastructure, including workloads, applications, and their interdependencies. Often, organizations aim to set their migration goals based on the applications they want to move to the cloud, rather than focusing on individual servers or databases in isolation. In our endeavour to both simplify and enrich your cloud adoption journey. We are introducing new capabilities in Azure Migrate to help you…

Innovation doesn’t always happen in a straight line. From the invention of the World Wide Web, to the introduction of smartphones, technology often makes massive leaps that transform how we interact with the world almost overnight. Now we’re seeing the next great shift: the era of AI. This shift has been decades in the making, … Continue reading “Build data-driven agents with curated data from OneLake”  ( 9 min )

Microsoft Fabric’s GraphQL API offers a powerful way to query data efficiently, but performance optimization is key to ensuring smooth and scalable applications. In this blog, we’ll explore best practices to maximize the efficiency of your Fabric GraphQL API. Whether you’re handling complex queries or optimizing response times, these strategies will help you get the best performance out of your GraphQL implementation  ( 7 min )

In this blog post, we will walk through the process of creating, testing, and deploying a user data function using Visual Studio Code, based on the official Microsoft Fabric documentation. This guide will help you understand the steps involved and provide a practical example to get you started.  ( 7 min )

As a data engineer, it is important to be able to efficiently organize, analyze and derive insights from your data so that you can drive informed and data-driven decisions across your organization. Having a well set up Data Warehouse, you can ensure data integrity, improve your query performance and support advanced analytics. Optimizing a Data … Continue reading “Build a Data Warehouse schema with Copilot for Data Warehouse”  ( 8 min )

Here is the April2025 release of the on-premises data gateway (version 3000.266).  ( 5 min )

We are excited to share a preview of upcoming updates to the Microsoft 365 Developer Program. The post Exciting updates coming to the Microsoft 365 Developer Program appeared first on Microsoft 365 Developer Blog.  ( 23 min )

In the latest video on my YouTube Channel, the Microsoft JavaScript + A.I Advocacy team presents an innovative initiative for developers who want to take their first steps with Artificial Intelligence: the free course Generative AI with JavaScript. Combining technical learning with a gamified experience, the course is an excellent gateway for those who want to explore Generative AI using JavaScript/TypeScript.   Let’s talk a bit more about the course and how it can help you become a more skilled and up-to-date developer with the latest tech trends. About the Course: Generative AI with JavaScript I recorded a video where I explain the main concepts covered in the course, including Generative AI techniques, practical examples, and tips to maximize your learning. If you haven’t watched it ye…  ( 29 min )

In the latest video on my YouTube Channel, the Microsoft JavaScript + A.I Advocacy team presents an innovative initiative for developers who want to take their first steps with Artificial Intelligence: the free course Generative AI with JavaScript. Combining technical learning with a gamified experience, the course is an excellent gateway for those who want to explore Generative AI using JavaScript/TypeScript.   Let’s talk a bit more about the course and how it can help you become a more skilled and up-to-date developer with the latest tech trends. About the Course: Generative AI with JavaScript I recorded a video where I explain the main concepts covered in the course, including Generative AI techniques, practical examples, and tips to maximize your learning. If you haven’t watched it ye…

Think AI has hit a wall? The latest reasoning models will make you reconsider everything. Contributors: Rafal Rutyna, Brady Leavitt, Julia Heseltine, Tierney Morgan, Liam Cavanagh, Riccardo Chiodaroli  There are new models coming out every week. So why should you care about reasoning models?Unlike previous AI offerings, reasoning models such as o1, o3, and o4-mini mark a fundamental shift in enterprise automation. For the first time, organizations can access AI with PhD-level intelligence—capable of automating business processes that require multi-step reasoning, expert-level analysis, and contextual decision making. Tasks that previously relied on human judgment—such as processing complex cases, analyzing fraud, or generating insights from data—can now be handled transparently, accurately…  ( 64 min )

Think AI has hit a wall? The latest reasoning models will make you reconsider everything. Contributors: Rafal Rutyna, Brady Leavitt, Julia Heseltine, Tierney Morgan, Liam Cavanagh, Riccardo Chiodaroli  There are new models coming out every week. So why should you care about reasoning models?Unlike previous AI offerings, reasoning models such as o1, o3, and o4-mini mark a fundamental shift in enterprise automation. For the first time, organizations can access AI with PhD-level intelligence—capable of automating business processes that require multi-step reasoning, expert-level analysis, and contextual decision making. Tasks that previously relied on human judgment—such as processing complex cases, analyzing fraud, or generating insights from data—can now be handled transparently, accurately…

When we think about how humans function daily, memory plays a critical role beyond mere cognition. The brain has two primary types of memory: short-term and long-term. Short-term memory allows us to temporarily hold onto information, such as conversations or names, while long-term memory is where important knowledge and skills—like learning to walk or recalling a conversation from two weeks ago—are stored.   Memory operates by strengthening neural connections between events, facts, or concepts. These connections are reinforced by relevance and frequency of use, making frequently accessed memories easier to recall. Over time, we might forget information we no longer use because the brain prunes unused neural pathways, prioritizing the memories we frequently rely on. This can explain why rec…  ( 35 min )

When we think about how humans function daily, memory plays a critical role beyond mere cognition. The brain has two primary types of memory: short-term and long-term. Short-term memory allows us to temporarily hold onto information, such as conversations or names, while long-term memory is where important knowledge and skills—like learning to walk or recalling a conversation from two weeks ago—are stored.   Memory operates by strengthening neural connections between events, facts, or concepts. These connections are reinforced by relevance and frequency of use, making frequently accessed memories easier to recall. Over time, we might forget information we no longer use because the brain prunes unused neural pathways, prioritizing the memories we frequently rely on. This can explain why rec…

In a world where running large language models typically demands GPUs and hefty cloud bills, Microsoft Research is reshaping the narrative with BitNet — a compact, 1-bit quantized transformer that delivers surprising capabilities even when deployed on modest hardware.  ( 4 min )

Hello Java customers! We are happy to announce the latest April 2025 patch & security update release for the Microsoft Build of OpenJDK. Download and install the binaries today. OpenJDK 21.0.7 OpenJDK 17.0.15 OpenJDK 11.0.27 Check our release notes page for details on fixes and enhancements. The source code of our builds is available now on GitHub for […] The post Java OpenJDK April 2025 Patch & Security Update appeared first on Microsoft for Java Developers.  ( 23 min )

Use Microsoft Purview and Microsoft 365 Copilot together to build a secure, enterprise-ready foundation for generative AI. Apply existing data protection and compliance controls, gain visibility into AI usage, and reduce risk from oversharing or insider threats. Classify, restrict, and monitor sensitive data used in Copilot interactions. Investigate risky behavior, enforce dynamic policies, and block inappropriate use — all from within your Microsoft 365 environment. Erica Toelle, Microsoft Purview Senior Product Manager, shares how to implement these controls and proactively manage data risks in Copilot deployments. Control what content can be referenced in generated responses. Check out Microsoft 365 Copilot security and privacy basics. Uncover risky or sensitive interactions. Use DSP…  ( 41 min )

Use Microsoft Purview and Microsoft 365 Copilot together to build a secure, enterprise-ready foundation for generative AI. Apply existing data protection and compliance controls, gain visibility into AI usage, and reduce risk from oversharing or insider threats. Classify, restrict, and monitor sensitive data used in Copilot interactions. Investigate risky behavior, enforce dynamic policies, and block inappropriate use — all from within your Microsoft 365 environment. Erica Toelle, Microsoft Purview Senior Product Manager, shares how to implement these controls and proactively manage data risks in Copilot deployments. Control what content can be referenced in generated responses. Check out Microsoft 365 Copilot security and privacy basics. Uncover risky or sensitive interactions. Use DSP…

Introducing distributed session-scoped temporary (#temp) tables in Fabric Data Warehouse and Fabric Lakehouse SQL Endpoints. #temp tables have been a feature of Microsoft SQL Server (and other database systems) for many years. In the current implementation of Fabric data warehouse, #temp tables are session scoped or local temp tables. Global temp tables are not included … Continue reading “Session-scoped distributed #temp tables in Fabric Data Warehouse (Generally Available)”  ( 7 min )

In today's digital age, the rise of deepfake technology poses significant threats to credibility, privacy, and security. This article delves into our Deepfake Detection Project, a robust solution designed to combat the misuse of AI-generated content. Our team, comprising Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors - Saksham Kumar and Rhythm Narang both from India embarked on this journey to create a tool that helps users verify the authenticity of digital images. Project Overview The Deepfake Detection Project aims to provide a reliable tool for detecting and classifying images as either real or deepfake. Our primary goal is to reduce the spread of misinformation, protect individuals from identity theft, and prevent the malicious use of AI technologies. By implementing this tool, we hope to safegu…  ( 29 min )

In today's digital age, the rise of deepfake technology poses significant threats to credibility, privacy, and security. This article delves into our Deepfake Detection Project, a robust solution designed to combat the misuse of AI-generated content. Our team, comprising Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors - Saksham Kumar and Rhythm Narang both from India embarked on this journey to create a tool that helps users verify the authenticity of digital images. Project Overview The Deepfake Detection Project aims to provide a reliable tool for detecting and classifying images as either real or deepfake. Our primary goal is to reduce the spread of misinformation, protect individuals from identity theft, and prevent the malicious use of AI technologies. By implementing this tool, we hope to safegu…

Last updated: April 21, 2025 🎯 Introduction Are you an IT admin, platform engineer, or a developer looking to explore a developer-centric, cloud-powered workstation experience? In this post, I’ll show you how to start quickly and try out Microsoft Dev Box using either a Microsoft 365 Business Premium or Microsoft 365 E3 plan — both […] The post How to get started quickly with setting up the Microsoft Dev Box service appeared first on Develop from the cloud.  ( 23 min )

Today we’re excited to feature a returning guest author, Akshay Kokane to share his recent Medium article on Building an AI App That Can Browse the Internet Using Microsoft’s Playwright MCP Server & Semantic Kernel. We’ll turn it over to him to dive in! MCP! It’s the new buzzword in the AI world. So, I thought […] The post Guest Blog: Build an AI App That Can Browse the Internet Using Microsoft’s Playwright MCP Server & Semantic Kernel — in Just 4 Steps appeared first on Semantic Kernel.  ( 23 min )

Learn more about our new journey to give customers more insight and control over how applications access their data through Microsoft Graph. The post Introducing the Microsoft Graph API usage report appeared first on Microsoft 365 Developer Blog.  ( 23 min )

Hi everyone, Shivam Goyal here! This blog series exploring AI agents, based on Microsoft's AI Agents for Beginners repository, continues. In previous posts ([links to parts 1-7 at the end]), we've built a solid foundation, exploring agent fundamentals, frameworks, and design principles. Now, we'll delve into the Multi-Agent Design Pattern, a powerful approach for tackling complex tasks by leveraging the collective intelligence of multiple specialized agents. Introduction to Multi-Agent Systems As you progress in building AI agent applications, you'll inevitably encounter scenarios where a single agent isn't enough. This is where the Multi-Agent Design Pattern comes into play. But how do you know when to transition to a multi-agent system and what are the benefits? When to Use Multi-Agent S…  ( 25 min )

Hi everyone, Shivam Goyal here! This blog series exploring AI agents, based on Microsoft's AI Agents for Beginners repository, continues. In previous posts ([links to parts 1-7 at the end]), we've built a solid foundation, exploring agent fundamentals, frameworks, and design principles. Now, we'll delve into the Multi-Agent Design Pattern, a powerful approach for tackling complex tasks by leveraging the collective intelligence of multiple specialized agents. Introduction to Multi-Agent Systems As you progress in building AI agent applications, you'll inevitably encounter scenarios where a single agent isn't enough. This is where the Multi-Agent Design Pattern comes into play. But how do you know when to transition to a multi-agent system and what are the benefits? When to Use Multi-Agent S…

Gotcha’s Functions are region specific. Functions require a small (ie /28) Do not use “ –  “ if Azure functions, use “ _ “ if you need a spacer. Pay attention to the sections on RBAC and system managed identities.   Build Order   Create or identify the Log Analytics Workspace that will be used for storage diagnostics.   Create a KeyVault and set the RBAC properties to allow creation of secrets.   Create KeyVault secrets to hold the account IDs and account passwords that will be used to authenticate to the vCenter Server, NSX and HCX appliances.   Create/identify a storage account and an empty subnet that will be used by the function.   Create the Function App   Creating the Functions App common variable retrieval code (shared by all functions)   Example 1: Retrieving vCenter…  ( 60 min )

Gotcha’s Functions are region specific. Functions require a small (ie /28) Do not use “ –  “ if Azure functions, use “ _ “ if you need a spacer. Pay attention to the sections on RBAC and system managed identities.   Build Order   Create or identify the Log Analytics Workspace that will be used for storage diagnostics.   Create a KeyVault and set the RBAC properties to allow creation of secrets.   Create KeyVault secrets to hold the account IDs and account passwords that will be used to authenticate to the vCenter Server, NSX and HCX appliances.   Create/identify a storage account and an empty subnet that will be used by the function.   Create the Function App   Creating the Functions App common variable retrieval code (shared by all functions)   Example 1: Retrieving vCenter…

Gotcha’s Functions are region specific. Functions require a small (ie /28) Do not use “ –  “ if Azure functions, use “ _ “ if you need a spacer. Pay attention to the sections on RBAC and system managed identities.   Build Order   Create or identify the Log Analytics Workspace that will be used for storage diagnostics.   Create a KeyVault and set the RBAC properties to allow creation of secrets.   Create KeyVault secrets to hold the account IDs and account passwords that will be used to authenticate to the vCenter, NSX-T and HCX appliances.   Create/identify a storage account and an empty subnet that will be used by the function.   Create the Function App   Creating the Functions App common variable retrieval code (shared by all functions)   Example 1: Retrieving vCenter data…

The Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) is committed to providing safe and efficient transportation services to the residents of Arizona. With a focus on innovation and customer service, ADOT’s Motor Vehicle Division (MVD) continually seeks new ways to enhance its services and improve the overall experience for its residents. The challenge ADOT MVD had a tough challenge to ensure the security and authenticity of transactions, especially those involving sensitive information. Every day, the department needs to verify thousands of customers seeking to use its online services to perform activities like updating customer information including addresses, renewing vehicle registrations, ordering replacement driver licenses, and ordering driver and vehicle records. Traditional methods of …  ( 32 min )

The Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) is committed to providing safe and efficient transportation services to the residents of Arizona. With a focus on innovation and customer service, ADOT’s Motor Vehicle Division (MVD) continually seeks new ways to enhance its services and improve the overall experience for its residents. The challenge ADOT MVD had a tough challenge to ensure the security and authenticity of transactions, especially those involving sensitive information. Every day, the department needs to verify thousands of customers seeking to use its online services to perform activities like updating customer information including addresses, renewing vehicle registrations, ordering replacement driver licenses, and ordering driver and vehicle records. Traditional methods of …

Over the past several months, we’ve delivered a series of improvements to the Azure Boards + GitHub integration. Whether you’re tracking code, managing pull requests, or connecting pipelines, these updates aim to simplify and strengthen the link between your work items and your GitHub activity. Here’s a recap of everything we’ve released (or are just […] The post Azure Boards + GitHub: Recent Updates appeared first on Azure DevOps Blog.  ( 22 min )

Executive Summary Leading RCG enterprises are standardizing on Azure AI—specifically Azure OpenAI Service, Azure Machine Learning, Azure AI Search, and Azure AI Vision—to increase digital‑channel conversion, sharpen demand forecasts, automate store execution, and accelerate product innovation. Documented results include up to 30 percent uplift in search conversion, 10 percent reduction in stock‑outs, and multimillion‑dollar productivity gains. This roadmap consolidates field data from CarMax, Kroger, Coca‑Cola, Estée Lauder, PepsiCo and Microsoft reference architectures to guide board‑level investment and technology planning. 1 Strategic Value of Azure AI Azure AI delivers state‑of‑the‑art language (GPT‑4o, GPT-4.1), reasoning (o1, o3, o4-mini) and multimodal (Phi‑3 Vision) models through …  ( 25 min )

Executive Summary Leading RCG enterprises are standardizing on Azure AI—specifically Azure OpenAI Service, Azure Machine Learning, Azure AI Search, and Azure AI Vision—to increase digital‑channel conversion, sharpen demand forecasts, automate store execution, and accelerate product innovation. Documented results include up to 30 percent uplift in search conversion, 10 percent reduction in stock‑outs, and multimillion‑dollar productivity gains. This roadmap consolidates field data from CarMax, Kroger, Coca‑Cola, Estée Lauder, PepsiCo and Microsoft reference architectures to guide board‑level investment and technology planning. 1 Strategic Value of Azure AI Azure AI delivers state‑of‑the‑art language (GPT‑4o, GPT-4.1), reasoning (o1, o3, o4-mini) and multimodal (Phi‑3 Vision) models through …

Record-Breaking Attendance The Microsoft Fabric Community Conference (FabCon) was a monumental success with over 6,000 attendees, 200+ breakout sessions, 20 workshops, and 70+ sponsors. Day 1 keynotes at the T-Mobile Arena featured a packed auditorium of Fabric enthusiasts ready to discover the future of Microsoft’s unified AI platform. While FabCon was an in-person only event, … Continue reading “FabCon Las Vegas keynote recording now available”  ( 7 min )

Google’s Agent-to-Agent (A2A) protocol is designed to enable seamless interoperability among diverse AI agents. Microsoft’s Semantic Kernel (SK), an open-source platform for orchestrating intelligent agent interactions, is now being integrated into the A2A ecosystem. In this blog, we demonstrate how Semantic Kernel agents can easily function as an A2A Server, efficiently routing agent calls to […] The post Integrating Semantic Kernel Python with Google’s A2A Protocol appeared first on Semantic Kernel.  ( 24 min )

Authors: Samer Hassan, Doran Chakraborty, Qi Zhang ,Yuan Yu Today we’re releasing MAI-DS-R1, a new open weights DeepSeek R1 model variant, via both Azure AI Foundry and HuggingFace. This new model has been post-trained by the Microsoft AI team to improve its responsiveness on blocked topics and its risk profile, while maintaining its reasoning capabilities and competitive performance.  Key results:  MAI-DS-R1 successfully responds to 99.3% of prompts related to blocked topics, outperforming DeepSeek R1 by 2.2x, and matching Perplexity’s R1-1776.   MAI-DS-R1 also delivers higher satisfaction metrics on internal evals, outperforming DeepSeek R1 and R1-1776 by 2.1x and 1.3x, respectively.   MAI-DS-R1 outperforms both DeepSeek’s R1 and R1-1776 in reducing harmful content in both the “thin…  ( 86 min )

Authors: Samer Hassan, Doran Chakraborty, Qi Zhang ,Yuan Yu Today we’re releasing MAI-DS-R1, a new open weights DeepSeek R1 model variant, via both Azure AI Foundry and HuggingFace. This new model has been post-trained by the Microsoft AI team to improve its responsiveness on blocked topics and its risk profile, while maintaining its reasoning capabilities and competitive performance.  Key results:  MAI-DS-R1 successfully responds to 99.3% of prompts related to blocked topics, outperforming DeepSeek R1 by 2.2x, and matching Perplexity’s R1-1776.   MAI-DS-R1 also delivers higher satisfaction metrics on internal evals, outperforming DeepSeek R1 and R1-1776 by 2.1x and 1.3x, respectively.   MAI-DS-R1 outperforms both DeepSeek’s R1 and R1-1776 in reducing harmful content in both the “thin…

Take control of your workday — summarize long emails instantly, turn meeting transcripts into actionable plans, and build strategic documents in seconds using your own data with Microsoft 365 Copilot. Instead of chasing down context, ask natural prompts and get clear, detailed results complete with tone-matched writing, visual recaps, and real-time collaboration. Get up to speed on complex email threads, transform insights from missed meetings into next steps, and pull relevant content from across your calendar, inbox, and docs — all without switching tools or losing momentum. Mary Pasch, Microsoft 365 Principal PM, shows how whether you’re refining a plan in Word, responding in Outlook, or catching up in Teams, Copilot works behind the scenes to help you move faster and focus on what mat…  ( 43 min )

Take control of your workday — summarize long emails instantly, turn meeting transcripts into actionable plans, and build strategic documents in seconds using your own data with Microsoft 365 Copilot. Instead of chasing down context, ask natural prompts and get clear, detailed results complete with tone-matched writing, visual recaps, and real-time collaboration. Get up to speed on complex email threads, transform insights from missed meetings into next steps, and pull relevant content from across your calendar, inbox, and docs — all without switching tools or losing momentum. Mary Pasch, Microsoft 365 Principal PM, shows how whether you’re refining a plan in Word, responding in Outlook, or catching up in Teams, Copilot works behind the scenes to help you move faster and focus on what mat…

Analyze data and research with expertise on demand, and automate workflows with intelligent agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot. Analyst thinks like a data scientist and Researcher like an expert, so you can uncover insights, validate logic, and generate expert-level reports in minutes.  And using Microsoft Copilot Studio, build your own autonomous AI agents to streamline multi-step processes with deep reasoning, like responding to RFPs or synthesizing internal knowledge, incorporating Copilot Flows as automated actions. No need for perfect prompts — just describe what you need, and Copilot will reason through the task, surface key insights, and deliver actionable results faster than ever.  Jeremy Chapman, Microsoft 365 Director, walks you through how to use these AI-driven agents step-by-ste…  ( 41 min )

Analyze data and research with expertise on demand, and automate workflows with intelligent agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot. Analyst thinks like a data scientist and Researcher like an expert, so you can uncover insights, validate logic, and generate expert-level reports in minutes.  And using Microsoft Copilot Studio, build your own autonomous AI agents to streamline multi-step processes with deep reasoning, like responding to RFPs or synthesizing internal knowledge, incorporating Copilot Flows as automated actions. No need for perfect prompts — just describe what you need, and Copilot will reason through the task, surface key insights, and deliver actionable results faster than ever.  Jeremy Chapman, Microsoft 365 Director, walks you through how to use these AI-driven agents step-by-ste…

Protect your organization’s data with Microsoft Purview. Gain complete visibility into potential data leaks, from AI applications to unmanaged cloud services, and take immediate action to prevent unwanted data sharing. Microsoft Purview unifies data security controls across Microsoft 365 apps, the Edge browser, Windows and macOS endpoints, and even network communications over HTTPS — all in one place. Take control of your data security with automated risk insights, real-time policy enforcement, and seamless management across apps and devices. Strengthen compliance, block unauthorized transfers, and streamline policy creation to stay ahead of evolving threats. Roberto Yglesias, Microsoft Purview Principal GPM, goes beyond Data Loss Prevention  Keep sensitive data secure no matter where it …  ( 42 min )

Protect your organization’s data with Microsoft Purview. Gain complete visibility into potential data leaks, from AI applications to unmanaged cloud services, and take immediate action to prevent unwanted data sharing. Microsoft Purview unifies data security controls across Microsoft 365 apps, the Edge browser, Windows and macOS endpoints, and even network communications over HTTPS — all in one place. Take control of your data security with automated risk insights, real-time policy enforcement, and seamless management across apps and devices. Strengthen compliance, block unauthorized transfers, and streamline policy creation to stay ahead of evolving threats. Roberto Yglesias, Microsoft Purview Principal GPM, goes beyond Data Loss Prevention  Keep sensitive data secure no matter where it …

Read how Microsoft 365 Certification helps ISVs validate General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance. The post Microsoft 365 Certification control spotlight: General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) appeared first on Microsoft 365 Developer Blog.  ( 23 min )

We are excited to announce that Semantic Kernel (SK) now has first-class support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP) — a standard created by Anthropic to enable models, tools, and agents to share context and capabilities seamlessly. With this release, SK can act as both an MCP host (client) and an MCP server, and you […] The post Semantic Kernel adds Model Context Protocol (MCP) support for Python appeared first on Semantic Kernel.  ( 25 min )

TLDR: Key learnings from our compression technique evaluation Cost savings: Up to 92.5% reduction in monthly costs Storage efficiency: Vector index size reduced by up to 99% Speed improvement: Query response times up to 33% faster with compressed vectors Quality maintained: Many compression configurations maintain 99-100% of baseline relevance quality At scale, the cost of storing and querying large, high-dimensional vector indexes can balloon. The common trade-off? Either pay a premium to maintain top-tier search quality or sacrifice user experience to limit expenses. With Azure AI Search, you no longer have to choose. Through testing, we have identified ways to reduce system costs without compromising retrieval performance quality.   Our experiments show: 92.5% reduction in cost when…  ( 52 min )

TLDR: Key learnings from our compression technique evaluation Cost savings: Up to 92.5% reduction in monthly costs Storage efficiency: Vector index size reduced by up to 99% Speed improvement: Query response times up to 33% faster with compressed vectors Quality maintained: Many compression configurations maintain 99-100% of baseline relevance quality At scale, the cost of storing and querying large, high-dimensional vector indexes can balloon. The common trade-off? Either pay a premium to maintain top-tier search quality or sacrifice user experience to limit expenses. With Azure AI Search, you no longer have to choose. Through testing, we have identified ways to reduce system costs without compromising retrieval performance quality.   Our experiments show: 92.5% reduction in cost when…

By Khye Wei (Azure AI Search) & Amna Mubashar (Haystack)   We’re excited to announce the integration of Haystack with Azure AI Search! To demonstrate its capabilities, we’ll walk you through building an interactive review agent to efficiently retrieve and analyze customer reviews. By combining Azure AI Search’s hybrid retrieval with Haystack’s flexible pipeline architecture, this agent provides deeper insights through sentiment analysis and intelligent summarization tools. Why Use Azure AI Search with Haystack? Azure AI Search offers an enterprise-grade retrieval system with battle-tested AI search technology, built for high performance GenAI applications at any scale: Hybrid Search: Combining keyword-based BM25 and vector-based searches with reciprocal rank fusion (RRF). Semantic Ranking…  ( 39 min )

We’re excited to announce the integration of Haystack with Azure AI Search! To demonstrate its capabilities, we’ll walk you through building an interactive review agent to efficiently retrieve and analyze customer reviews. By combining Azure AI Search’s hybrid retrieval with Haystack’s flexible pipeline architecture, this agent provides deeper insights through sentiment analysis and intelligent summarization tools. Why Use Azure AI Search with Haystack? Azure AI Search offers an enterprise-grade retrieval system with battle-tested AI search technology, built for high performance GenAI applications at any scale: Hybrid Search: Combining keyword-based BM25 and vector-based searches with reciprocal rank fusion (RRF). Semantic Ranking: Enhancing retrieval results using deep learning models. S…

This is a bonus post for RAG Time, a 6-part educational series on retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). In this series, we explored topics such as indexing and retrieval techniques for RAG, data ingestion, and storage optimization. The final topic for this series covers agentic RAG, and how to use semi-autonomous agents to make a dynamic and self-refining retrieval system. What we'll cover: Overview and definition of agentic RAG Example of a single-shot RAG flow Two examples of agentic RAG: single-step and multi-step reflection What is agentic RAG? An agent is a component of an AI application that leverages generative models to make decisions and execute actions autonomously. Agentic RAG improves the traditional RAG flow by actively interacting with its environment using tools, memory, a…  ( 37 min )

This is a bonus post for RAG Time, a 6-part educational series on retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). In this series, we explored topics such as indexing and retrieval techniques for RAG, data ingestion, and storage optimization. The final topic for this series covers agentic RAG, and how to use semi-autonomous agents to make a dynamic and self-refining retrieval system. What we'll cover: Overview and definition of agentic RAG Example of a single-shot RAG flow Two examples of agentic RAG: single-step and multi-step reflection What is agentic RAG? An agent is a component of an AI application that leverages generative models to make decisions and execute actions autonomously. Agentic RAG improves the traditional RAG flow by actively interacting with its environment using tools, memory, a…

In today’s ever-changing analytics landscape it can be difficult to plan out your next project or your enterprise analytics roadmap. Designed to optimize data infrastructure planning, the Microsoft Fabric SKU Estimator helps customers and partners to accurately estimate capacity requirements and select the most suitable SKU for their workloads, protecting users from under-provisioning and overcommitment. … Continue reading “Mastering SKU Estimations with the Microsoft Fabric SKU Estimator”  ( 9 min )

The BULK INSERT statement is generally available in Fabric Data Warehouse. The BULK INSERT statement enables you to ingest parquet or csv data into a table from the specified file stored in Azure Data Lake or Azure Blob storage: The BULK INSERT statement is very similar to the COPY INTO statement and enables you to … Continue reading “BULK INSERT statement is generally available!”  ( 7 min )

1. Introduction Contact centers are the front lines of customer interaction, generating vast amounts of valuable data through chat logs, call transcripts, and emails. However, manually sifting through this data to find actionable insights is often a monumental task. Imagine the scenario of a thriving online service, like a food delivery app: as usage climbs, so does the number of customer support chats, making it incredibly difficult to pinpoint recurring problems or gauge overall satisfaction from the sea of text. How can businesses effectively tap into this wealth of information? This post explores a powerful solution: building an automated analytics platform using Azure Communication Services (ACS) combined with the intelligence of Azure OpenAI Service. We'll outline how this integratio…  ( 72 min )

1. Introduction Contact centers are the front lines of customer interaction, generating vast amounts of valuable data through chat logs, call transcripts, and emails. However, manually sifting through this data to find actionable insights is often a monumental task. Imagine the scenario of a thriving online service, like a food delivery app: as usage climbs, so does the number of customer support chats, making it incredibly difficult to pinpoint recurring problems or gauge overall satisfaction from the sea of text. How can businesses effectively tap into this wealth of information? This post explores a powerful solution: building an automated analytics platform using Azure Communication Services (ACS) combined with the intelligence of Azure OpenAI Service. We'll outline how this integratio…

My colleague, Anthony Chu, from Azure Container Apps, recently published an excellent blog post outlining how to get started with MCP servers in Azure Container Apps. I highly recommend reading it, as there are many similarities between hosting MCP servers on Azure Container Apps and Azure App Service. He also provides great background information on remote MCP servers and their future plans. In this article, I will build on that foundation and show you how to run remote MCP servers as web apps in Azure App Service, and how to connect to them with GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio Code. Quick Background on MCP Servers MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers are part of a rapidly evolving technology used for hosting and managing model-based contexts. These servers interact with clients like GitH…  ( 22 min )

My colleague, Anthony Chu, from Azure Container Apps, recently published an excellent blog post outlining how to get started with MCP servers in Azure Container Apps. I highly recommend reading it, as there are many similarities between hosting MCP servers on Azure Container Apps and Azure App Service. He also provides great background information on remote MCP servers and their future plans. In this article, I will build on that foundation and show you how to run remote MCP servers as web apps in Azure App Service, and how to connect to them with GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio Code. Quick Background on MCP Servers MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers are part of a rapidly evolving technology used for hosting and managing model-based contexts. These servers interact with clients like GitH…

This article would create multiple work items (tasks) for any specific User Story in a particular Backlog with a certain TAG value in Azure Devops. This article would also show steps to Export/Import a workflow package.PART 1: Create multiple items for a parent User StoryThis article uses Power Automate to do the same.There are certain Pre-requisites that have to be fulfilled,1. Be a part of an Azure Devops organization, have a project created along with some User Stories.2. Have access to Power Automate to create workflows, and make sure you are able to add connections from Automate to ADO (Not to worry we would check that in the below steps)Now go ahead and Follow the below steps to achieve the purpose.Step1: Open power automate portal and Click on "My Flows" Link: https://make.powerauto…  ( 27 min )

This article would create multiple work items (tasks) for any specific User Story in a particular Backlog with a certain TAG value in Azure Devops. This article would also show steps to Export/Import a workflow package.PART 1: Create multiple items for a parent User StoryThis article uses Power Automate to do the same.There are certain Pre-requisites that have to be fulfilled,1. Be a part of an Azure Devops organization, have a project created along with some User Stories.2. Have access to Power Automate to create workflows, and make sure you are able to add connections from Automate to ADO (Not to worry we would check that in the below steps)Now go ahead and Follow the below steps to achieve the purpose.Step1: Open power automate portal and Click on "My Flows" Link: https://make.powerauto…

Overview  ( 3 min )

Data engineering often presents challenges with data quality or complex data analytics processing that requires custom logic. This is where Fabric User data functions can be used to implement custom logic into your data processes or pipelines. Here are the most common cases where Fabric User Data Functions  ( 8 min )

Hi, I’m Pranjal Mishra, a Student Ambassador from Galgotias University, pursuing B.Tech in Computer Science with a specialization in AI & ML. As someone passionate about cloud computing and DevOps, I often explore how platforms like Azure simplify complex infrastructure challenges—especially when working with containerized applications in Kubernetes. In this article, we’ll dive into resource management in Kubernetes, with a focus on implementing resource quotas and limits using Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). Whether you're optimizing cost, ensuring performance, or avoiding resource contention, this guide is for you. Why Resource Management Matters ? In Kubernetes, resource limits and quotas are your best allies in controlling how much CPU and memory workloads consume. Without these contro…  ( 25 min )

Hi, I’m Pranjal Mishra, a Student Ambassador from Galgotias University, pursuing B.Tech in Computer Science with a specialization in AI & ML. As someone passionate about cloud computing and DevOps, I often explore how platforms like Azure simplify complex infrastructure challenges—especially when working with containerized applications in Kubernetes. In this article, we’ll dive into resource management in Kubernetes, with a focus on implementing resource quotas and limits using Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). Whether you're optimizing cost, ensuring performance, or avoiding resource contention, this guide is for you. Why Resource Management Matters ? In Kubernetes, resource limits and quotas are your best allies in controlling how much CPU and memory workloads consume. Without these contro…

Announcing the Neon Serverless Postgres Connector for Microsoft Semantic Kernel We’re excited to introduce the Neon Serverless Postgres Connector for Microsoft Semantic Kernel, enabling developers to seamlessly integrate Neon’s serverless Postgres capabilities with AI-driven vector search and retrieval workflows. By leveraging the **pgvector** extension in Neon and the existing Postgres Vector Store connector, this integration […] The post Customer Case Study: Announcing the Neon Serverless Postgres Connector for Microsoft Semantic Kernel appeared first on Semantic Kernel.  ( 26 min )

Today we’d like to welcome back a team of internal Microsoft employees for part 2 of their guest blog series focused on Bridging Business and Technology: Transforming Natural Language Queries into SQL with Semantic Kernel. We’ll turn it over to our authors – Samer El Housseini, Riccardo Chiodaroli, Daniel Labbe and Fabrizio Ruocco to dive […] The post Guest Blog: Bridging Business and Technology: Transforming Natural Language Queries into SQL with Semantic Kernel Part 2 appeared first on Semantic Kernel.  ( 31 min )

Key Takeaways (TLDR) Monitor Java and Node applications with zero code changes Fast onboarding: just 2 steps Supports distributed tracing, logs, and metrics Correlates application-level telemetry in Application Insights with infrastructure-level telemetry in Container Insights Available today in public preview Introduction Monitoring your applications is now easier than ever with the public preview release of Auto-Instrumentation for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). You can now easily monitor your Java and Node deployments without changing your code by leveraging auto-instrumentation that is integrated into the AKS cluster.  This feature is ideal for developers or operators who are... Looking to add monitoring in the easiest way possible, without modifying code and avoiding ongoing SDK u…  ( 31 min )

Monitoring your applications is now easier than ever with the public preview release of Auto-Instrumentation for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). You can now easily monitor your Java and Node deployments without changing your code by leveraging auto-instrumentation that is integrated into the AKS cluster.  This feature is ideal for developers or operators who are... Looking to add monitoring in the easiest way possible, without modifying code and avoiding ongoing SDK update maintenance. Starting out on their monitoring journey and looking to benefit from carefully chosen default configurations with the ability to tweak them over time. Working with someone else’s code and looking to instrument at scale. Or considering monitoring for the first time at the time of deployment. Before the intr…

The first, most obvious thing is the introduction of the Container Tools extension to broaden our focus and open new extensibility opportunities. The existing extension code (and MIT license) will be migrated to the Container Tools extension, and the Docker extension will become an extension pack that includes the Docker DX and Container Tools extensions. For you, this means the ability to customize the tooling to meet your needs - choose your preferred container runtime and only the functionality that you need in the extension settings. This major update marks a significant step forward in enhancing the development experience when working with containers. Please comment here with any questions or feedback and stay tuned to experiment with the new features!   tl;dr  The Docker extension is becoming the Container Tools extension Still free and open source Podman support is coming No action is required  ( 19 min )

The first, most obvious thing is the introduction of the Container Tools extension to broaden our focus and open new extensibility opportunities. The existing extension code (and MIT license) will be migrated to the Container Tools extension, and the Docker extension will become an extension pack that includes the Docker DX and Container Tools extensions. For you, this means the ability to customize the tooling to meet your needs - choose your preferred container runtime and only the functionality that you need in the extension settings. This major update marks a significant step forward in enhancing the development experience when working with containers. Please comment here with any questions or feedback and stay tuned to experiment with the new features!   tl;dr  The Docker extension is becoming the Container Tools extension Still free and open source Podman support is coming No action is required

Great news for .NET developers who would like to become familiar with containers and Azure Container Apps (ACA)! We just released a new Getting Started guide for .NET developers on Azure Container Apps. This guide is designed to help you get started with Azure Container Apps and understand how to build and deploy your applications using this service.   In a series of guided lessons, you will learn: All about container services on Azure - and where ACA fits in How to run a monolith on ACA How to add authentication to an app on ACA How to run microservices on ACA How to implement a CI/CD pipeline for ACA How to monitor and optimize your app for cost on ACA How to monitor the performance of your app on ACA How .NET Aspire helps to orchestrate your app on ACA All the code is available on Git…  ( 23 min )

Great news for .NET developers who would like to become familiar with containers and Azure Container Apps (ACA)! We just released a new Getting Started guide for .NET developers on Azure Container Apps. This guide is designed to help you get started with Azure Container Apps and understand how to build and deploy your applications using this service.   In a series of guided lessons, you will learn: All about container services on Azure - and where ACA fits in How to run a monolith on ACA How to add authentication to an app on ACA How to run microservices on ACA How to implement a CI/CD pipeline for ACA How to monitor and optimize your app for cost on ACA How to monitor the performance of your app on ACA How .NET Aspire helps to orchestrate your app on ACA All the code is available on Git…

Today we are pleased to announce that Azure VMware Solution in Microsoft Azure Government was approved and added as a service within the DISA Provisional Authorization of Azure Government at Impact Level 5. Azure VMware Solution (AVS) is a fully managed service in Azure that customers can use to extend their on-premises VMware vSphere workloads more seamlessly to the cloud, while maintaining their existing skills and operational processes. Learn more about how you can streamline your migration efforts with Azure VMware Solution in Azure Government. Azure VMware Solution was already approved at DoD Impact Level 4 in Azure Government. With this latest approval, DoD customers and their partners who require the higher impact level can now meet those requirements. Customers and their partners who require DoD Impact Level 2 can use Azure VMware Solution in Azure Commercial or Azure Government. For details about availability and pricing, please reach out to your Microsoft account team, and to learn more about getting started on Azure VMware Solution you can visit the documentation page. To learn more about DoD Impact Level scope for Azure Commercial and Azure Government, you can visit the Azure compliance documentation.  ( 19 min )

Today we are pleased to announce that Azure VMware Solution in Microsoft Azure Government was approved and added as a service within the DISA Provisional Authorization of Azure Government at Impact Level 5. Azure VMware Solution (AVS) is a fully managed service in Azure that customers can use to extend their on-premises VMware vSphere workloads more seamlessly to the cloud, while maintaining their existing skills and operational processes. Learn more about how you can streamline your migration efforts with Azure VMware Solution in Azure Government. Azure VMware Solution was already approved at DoD Impact Level 4 in Azure Government. With this latest approval, DoD customers and their partners who require the higher impact level can now meet those requirements. Customers and their partners who require DoD Impact Level 2 can use Azure VMware Solution in Azure Commercial or Azure Government. For details about availability and pricing, please reach out to your Microsoft account team, and to learn more about getting started on Azure VMware Solution you can visit the documentation page. To learn more about DoD Impact Level scope for Azure Commercial and Azure Government, you can visit the Azure compliance documentation.

Today we are pleased to announce that Azure VMware Solution in Microsoft Azure Government was approved and added as a service within the DISA Provisional Authorization of Azure Government at Impact Level 5. Azure VMware Solution (AVS) is a fully managed service in Azure that customers can use to extend their on-premises VMware workloads more seamlessly to the cloud, while maintaining their existing skills and operational processes. Learn more about how you can streamline your migration efforts with Azure VMware Solution in Azure Government. AVS was already approved at DoD Impact Level 4 in Azure Government. With this latest approval, DoD customers and their partners who require the higher impact level can now meet those requirements. Customers and their partners who require DoD Impact Level 2 can use AVS in Azure Commercial or Azure Government. For details about availability and pricing, please reach out to your Microsoft account team, and to learn more about getting started on Azure VMware Solution you can visit the documentation page. To learn more about DoD Impact Level scope for Azure Commercial and Azure Government, you can visit the Azure compliance documentation.

Today we're announcing the availability of the Azure VMware Solution AV48 SKU in Japan East.  This SKU modernizes the CPU to the Intel Sapphire Rapids architecture and increases the deployed cores and memory per server to better accommodate today’s workloads. Key features of the new AV48 in Japan East: Dual Intel Xeon Gold 6442Y CPUs (Sapphire Rapids microarchitecture) with 24 cores/CPU @ 2.6 GHz / 3.3Ghz All Core Turbo / 4.0 GHz Max Turbo, Total 48 physical cores (96 logical cores with hyperthreading) 1TB of DRAM Memory 19.2TB storage capacity with all NVMe based SSDs 1.5TB of NVMe Cache For pricing reach out to your Microsoft Account Team, or visit the Azure Portal quota request page. Learn More  ( 18 min )

Today we're announcing the availability of the AVS AV48 SKU in Japan East.  This SKU modernizes the CPU to the Intel Sapphire Rapids architecture and increases the deployed cores and memory per server to better accommodate today’s workloads. Key features of the new AV48 in Japan East: Dual Intel Xeon Gold 6442Y CPUs (Sapphire Rapids microarchitecture) with 24 cores/CPU @ 2.6 GHz / 3.3Ghz All Core Turbo / 4.0 GHz Max Turbo, Total 48 physical cores (96 logical cores with hyperthreading) 1TB of DRAM Memory 19.2TB storage capacity with all NVMe based SSDs 1.5TB of NVMe Cache For pricing reach out to your Microsoft Account Team, or visit the Azure Portal quota request page. Learn More

Overview  As enterprises scale their infrastructure in Microsoft Azure using Azure VMware Solution, gaining real-time visibility into the operational health of their private cloud environment becomes increasingly critical. Whether troubleshooting deployment issues, monitoring security events, or performing compliance audits, centralized logging is a must-have.  Azure VMware Solution offers flexible options for exporting syslogs from vCenter Server, ESXi Hosts, and NSX components. While many customers already use Log Analytics or third-party log platforms for visibility, some have unique operational or compliance requirements that necessitate forwarding logs to specific destinations outside the Microsoft ecosystem.  With the advent of VMware Cloud Foundation on Azure VMware Solution, custom…  ( 30 min )

Overview  As enterprises scale their infrastructure in Microsoft Azure using Azure VMware Solution, gaining real-time visibility into the operational health of their private cloud environment becomes increasingly critical. Whether troubleshooting deployment issues, monitoring security events, or performing compliance audits, centralized logging is a must-have.  Azure VMware Solution offers flexible options for exporting syslogs from vCenter Server, ESXi Hosts, and NSX components. While many customers already use Log Analytics or third-party log platforms for visibility, some have unique operational or compliance requirements that necessitate forwarding logs to specific destinations outside the Microsoft ecosystem.  With the advent of VMware Cloud Foundation on Azure VMware Solution, custom…

If you're using the Azure Migration Hub as your starting point, you're already ahead. But when it comes to migrating Kubernetes workloads from EKS to AKS, there are still a few key details that can make or break your deployment. We recently walked through a real-world migration of a typical web app from AWS EKS to Azure AKS, and while the core containers came over cleanly, the supporting architecture required some careful rework. Here’s what stood out during the process—no fluff, just what matters when you're doing the work. Mind the Infrastructure, Not Just the App The app itself (a voting tool using Redis and Postgres) migrated easily. But things got more complex when we looked at the surrounding infrastructure: Ingress and Load Balancing: AWS ALB maps loosely to Azure Application Gatew…  ( 23 min )

If you're using the Azure Migration Hub as your starting point, you're already ahead. But when it comes to migrating Kubernetes workloads from EKS to AKS, there are still a few key details that can make or break your deployment. We recently walked through a real-world migration of a typical web app from AWS EKS to Azure AKS, and while the core containers came over cleanly, the supporting architecture required some careful rework. Here’s what stood out during the process—no fluff, just what matters when you're doing the work. Mind the Infrastructure, Not Just the App The app itself (a voting tool using Redis and Postgres) migrated easily. But things got more complex when we looked at the surrounding infrastructure: Ingress and Load Balancing: AWS ALB maps loosely to Azure Application Gatew…

Fabric Espresso – Episodes About Performance Optimization & Compute Management in Microsoft Fabric  ( 6 min )

Enterprise Kubernetes shouldn't be complicated or insecure. That's why our April 2025 update brings powerful new features to make your Azure Red Hat OpenShift experience even better. Here's what's new, with links to get you started right away!  🔐 Security Enhancements  Managed Identity & Workload Identity → Replace long-lived credentials with short-term tokens for enhanced security. Now in public preview! Only available for new cluster creation on ARO 4.13 and newer. Get implementation details and read the Red Hat blog.  Managed identity workload identity on Azure Red Hat OpenShift value proposition Cluster-Wide Proxy → Enable connectivity from ARO cluster components to external endpoints via corporate proxies. This feature is only for cluster components, not for customer workloads. Pe…  ( 23 min )

Enterprise Kubernetes shouldn't be complicated or insecure. That's why our April 2025 update brings powerful new features to make your Azure Red Hat OpenShift experience even better. Here's what's new, with links to get you started right away!  🔐 Security Enhancements  Managed Identity & Workload Identity → Replace long-lived credentials with short-term tokens for enhanced security. Now in public preview! Only available for new cluster creation on ARO 4.13 and newer. Get implementation details and read the Red Hat blog.  Managed identity workload identity on Azure Red Hat OpenShift value proposition Cluster-Wide Proxy → Enable connectivity from ARO cluster components to external endpoints via corporate proxies. This feature is only for cluster components, not for customer workloads. Pe…

In my recent blog series Private Link reality bites I briefly mentioned the possibility of inspecting Service Endpoints with Azure Firewall, and many have asked for more details on that configuration. Here we go! First things first: what the heck am I talking about? Most Azure services such as Azure Storage, Azure SQL and many others can be accessed directly over the public Internet. However, there are two alternatives to access those services over Microsoft's backbone: Private Link and VNet Service Endpoints. Microsoft's overall recommendation is using private link, but some organizations prefer leveraging service endpoints. Feel free to read this post on a comparison of the two. You might want to inspect traffic to Azure services with network firewalls, even if that traffic is leveraging…  ( 27 min )

In my recent blog series Private Link reality bites I briefly mentioned the possibility of inspecting Service Endpoints with Azure Firewall, and many have asked for more details on that configuration. Here we go! First things first: what the heck am I talking about? Most Azure services such as Azure Storage, Azure SQL and many others can be accessed directly over the public Internet. However, there are two alternatives to access those services over Microsoft's backbone: Private Link and VNet Service Endpoints. Microsoft's overall recommendation is using private link, but some organizations prefer leveraging service endpoints. Feel free to read this post on a comparison of the two. You might want to inspect traffic to Azure services with network firewalls, even if that traffic is leveraging…

Hi everyone, Shivam Goyal here! This blog series, based on Microsoft's AI Agents for Beginners repository, continues with a focus on the Planning Design Pattern. In previous posts (links at the end!), we've built a strong foundation in AI agent concepts. Now, we'll explore how to design agents that can effectively plan and orchestrate complex tasks, breaking them down into manageable subtasks and coordinating their execution. Introduction to Planning Design The Planning Design Pattern helps AI agents tackle complex goals by providing a structured approach to task decomposition and execution. This involves: Defining a clear overall goal. Breaking down the task into smaller, manageable subtasks. Leveraging structured output for easier processing. Using an event-driven approach for dynamic a…  ( 24 min )

Hi everyone, Shivam Goyal here! This blog series, based on Microsoft's AI Agents for Beginners repository, continues with a focus on the Planning Design Pattern. In previous posts (links at the end!), we've built a strong foundation in AI agent concepts. Now, we'll explore how to design agents that can effectively plan and orchestrate complex tasks, breaking them down into manageable subtasks and coordinating their execution. Introduction to Planning Design The Planning Design Pattern helps AI agents tackle complex goals by providing a structured approach to task decomposition and execution. This involves: Defining a clear overall goal. Breaking down the task into smaller, manageable subtasks. Leveraging structured output for easier processing. Using an event-driven approach for dynamic a…

We’re excited to unveil the Microsoft Fabric SKU estimator, now available in preview—an enhanced version of the previously introduced Microsoft Fabric Capacity Calculator. This advanced tool has been refined based on extensive user feedback to provide tailored capacity estimations for businesses. Designed to optimize data infrastructure planning, the Microsoft Fabric SKU Estimator helps customers and … Continue reading “Empowering businesses with smart capacity planning: Introducing the Microsoft Fabric SKU estimator (Preview)”  ( 6 min )

In today’s fast-paced data-driven world, enterprises are building more sophisticated data platforms to gain insights and drive innovation. Microsoft Fabric Lakehouses combine the scale of a data lake with the management finesse of a data warehouse – delivering unified analytics in an ever-evolving business landscape. But with great data comes great responsibility. Protecting sensitive information … Continue reading “Purview DLP Policies with Restrict Access for Fabric Lakehouses (Preview)”  ( 6 min )

Microsoft Purview’s Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies for Fabric now supports Fabric KQL and Mirrored DBs! Purview DLP policies help organizations to improve their data security posture and comply with governmental and industry regulations. Security teams use DLP policies to automatically detect upload of sensitive information to Microsoft 365 applications like SharePoint and Exchange, and … Continue reading “Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention policies for Fabric have been extended to KQL and Mirrored Databases (Preview)”  ( 6 min )

In this post, we explore the latest Agentic metrics introduced in the Azure AI Evaluation library, a Python library designed to assess generative AI systems with both traditional NLP metrics (like BLEU and ROUGE) and AI-assisted evaluators (such as relevance, coherence, and safety). With the rise of agentic systems, the library now includes purpose-built evaluators for complex agent workflows. We’ll focus on three key metrics: Task Adherence, Tool Call Accuracy, and Intent Resolution—each capturing a critical dimension of an agent’s performance. To help illustrate these evaluation strategies, you can find AgenticEvals, a simple public repo that showcases these metrics in action using Semantic Kernel for the agentic/orchestration layer and Azure AI Evaluation library for the evaluation.   W…  ( 28 min )

In this post, we explore the latest Agentic metrics introduced in the Azure AI Evaluation library, a Python library designed to assess generative AI systems with both traditional NLP metrics (like BLEU and ROUGE) and AI-assisted evaluators (such as relevance, coherence, and safety). With the rise of agentic systems, the library now includes purpose-built evaluators for complex agent workflows. We’ll focus on three key metrics: Task Adherence, Tool Call Accuracy, and Intent Resolution—each capturing a critical dimension of an agent’s performance. To help illustrate these evaluation strategies, you can find AgenticEvals, a simple public repo that showcases these metrics in action using Semantic Kernel for the agentic/orchestration layer and Azure AI Evaluation library for the evaluation.   W…

As generative AI tools become more powerful, developers are looking for faster, more flexible ways to experiment, fine-tune, and deploy models. But not every workflow starts—or needs to stay—in the cloud. In this episode of Model Mondays, we explore how the AI Toolkit for Visual Studio Code is transforming the development experience by enabling local AI workflows that give you more control, faster iteration, and seamless integration with your existing tools. Whether you're working in a constrained environment, or just prefer to prototype locally, this toolkit makes it possible to run and refine AI models right from your own machine. Whether you're tinkering with models on a plane, prototyping in a coffee shop, or just want to test your prompts in peace, this toolkit has your back. It's like taking your favorite AI models on a road trip... and they actually behave. What’s in it for you? Each Model Mondays episode is a 30-minute boost to your AI skillset: Stay updated – A 5-min recap of the week’s hottest model drops and Azure AI Foundry news Get hands-on – A 15-min walkthrough focused on how to fine-tune Mistral in Azure Ask the experts – Live Q&A with Microsoft and Mistral  And the conversation doesn’t stop there. Join us every Friday for a Model Mondays Watercooler Chat at 1:30 PM ET / 10:30 AM PT in our Discord community, where we recap, react, and nerd out with the broader AI community. In Case You Missed It Episode 1: GitHub Models – Building better dev experiences Episode 2: Reasoning Models  Episode 3: Search & Retrieval Models Episode 4 : Visual Generative Models Episode 5 : Fine-Tuning Models Be Part of the Movement Watch Live on Microsoft Reactor – RSVP Now Join the AI Community – Discord Fridays Explore the Tech – Model Mondays GitHub So, grab your laptop, launch VS Code, and let’s bring AI development home!!  ( 22 min )

As generative AI tools become more powerful, developers are looking for faster, more flexible ways to experiment, fine-tune, and deploy models. But not every workflow starts—or needs to stay—in the cloud. In this episode of Model Mondays, we explore how the AI Toolkit for Visual Studio Code is transforming the development experience by enabling local AI workflows that give you more control, faster iteration, and seamless integration with your existing tools. Whether you're working in a constrained environment, or just prefer to prototype locally, this toolkit makes it possible to run and refine AI models right from your own machine. Whether you're tinkering with models on a plane, prototyping in a coffee shop, or just want to test your prompts in peace, this toolkit has your back. It's like taking your favorite AI models on a road trip... and they actually behave. What’s in it for you? Each Model Mondays episode is a 30-minute boost to your AI skillset: Stay updated – A 5-min recap of the week’s hottest model drops and Azure AI Foundry news Get hands-on – A 15-min walkthrough focused on how to fine-tune Mistral in Azure Ask the experts – Live Q&A with Microsoft and Mistral  And the conversation doesn’t stop there. Join us every Friday for a Model Mondays Watercooler Chat at 1:30 PM ET / 10:30 AM PT in our Discord community, where we recap, react, and nerd out with the broader AI community. In Case You Missed It Episode 1: GitHub Models – Building better dev experiences Episode 2: Reasoning Models  Episode 3: Search & Retrieval Models Episode 4 : Visual Generative Models Episode 5 : Fine-Tuning Models Be Part of the Movement Watch Live on Microsoft Reactor – RSVP Now Join the AI Community – Discord Fridays Explore the Tech – Model Mondays GitHub So, grab your laptop, launch VS Code, and let’s bring AI development home!!

Whether you're building AI agents or using LLM powered tools like GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio Code, you're probably hearing a lot about MCP (Model Context Protocol) lately; maybe you're already using it. It's quickly becoming the standard interoperability layer between different components of the AI stack. In this article, we'll explore how to run remote MCP servers as serverless containers in Azure Container Apps and use them in GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio Code. MCP servers today MCP follows a client-server architecture. It all starts with a client, such as GitHub Copilot in VS Code or Claude Desktop. A client connects to one or more MCP servers. Servers are the main extensibility points in MCP. Each server provides new tools, skills, and capabilities to the client. For example, a…  ( 32 min )

Whether you're building AI agents or using LLM powered tools like GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio Code, you're probably hearing a lot about MCP (Model Context Protocol) lately; maybe you're already using it. It's quickly becoming the standard interoperability layer between different components of the AI stack. In this article, we'll explore how to run remote MCP servers as serverless containers in Azure Container Apps and use them in GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio Code. MCP servers today MCP follows a client-server architecture. It all starts with a client, such as GitHub Copilot in VS Code or Claude Desktop. A client connects to one or more MCP servers. Servers are the main extensibility points in MCP. Each server provides new tools, skills, and capabilities to the client. For example, a…

Revolutionize Business Automation with AI: A Guide to Microsoft’s Semantic Kernel Process Framework Step-by-Step guide on creating your first process with AI Microsoft’s AI Framework, Semantic Kernel, is an easy-to-use C#, Java, and Python-based AI framework that helps you quickly build AI solutions or integrate AI capabilities into your existing app. Semantic Kernel provides various […] The post Guest Blog: Revolutionize Business Automation with AI: A Guide to Microsoft’s Semantic Kernel Process Framework appeared first on Semantic Kernel.  ( 26 min )

I ❤️ when companies offer free tiers for developer services, since it gives everyone a way to learn new technologies without breaking the bank. Free tiers are especially important for students and people between jobs, when the desire to learn is high but the available cash is low. That's why I'm such a fan of GitHub Models: free, high-quality generative AI models available to anyone with a GitHub account. The available models include the latest OpenAI LLMs (like o3-mini), LLMs from the research community (like Phi and Llama), LLMs from other popular providers (like Mistral and Jamba), multimodal models (like gpt-4o and llama-vision-instruct) and even a few embedding models (from OpenAI and Cohere). With access to such a range of models, you can prototype complex multi-model workflows to im…  ( 32 min )

I ❤️ when companies offer free tiers for developer services, since it gives everyone a way to learn new technologies without breaking the bank. Free tiers are especially important for students and people between jobs, when the desire to learn is high but the available cash is low. That's why I'm such a fan of GitHub Models: free, high-quality generative AI models available to anyone with a GitHub account. The available models include the latest OpenAI LLMs (like o3-mini), LLMs from the research community (like Phi and Llama), LLMs from other popular providers (like Mistral and Jamba), multimodal models (like gpt-4o and llama-vision-instruct) and even a few embedding models (from OpenAI and Cohere). With access to such a range of models, you can prototype complex multi-model workflows to im…

1. Introduction Since Large Language Models (LLMs) have become mainstream, a wide range of models have emerged to serve different types of tasks—from casual chatbot interactions to advanced scientific reasoning. If you're familiar with GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, you'll know that these models set a high standard for general-purpose AI. But as the field evolves, the distinction between model types has become more pronounced. In this blog, we'll explore the differences between two major categories of LLMs: General-Purpose Models – Designed for broad tasks like conversation, content generation, and multimodal input processing. Reasoning Models – Optimized for tasks requiring logic, problem-solving, and step-by-step breakdowns. We'll use specific models available in Azure OpenAI as examples to illust…  ( 40 min )

1. Introduction Since Large Language Models (LLMs) have become mainstream, a wide range of models have emerged to serve different types of tasks—from casual chatbot interactions to advanced scientific reasoning. If you're familiar with GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, you'll know that these models set a high standard for general-purpose AI. But as the field evolves, the distinction between model types has become more pronounced. In this blog, we'll explore the differences between two major categories of LLMs: General-Purpose Models – Designed for broad tasks like conversation, content generation, and multimodal input processing. Reasoning Models – Optimized for tasks requiring logic, problem-solving, and step-by-step breakdowns. We'll use specific models available in Azure OpenAI as examples to illust…

We know how important Azure Automation workflows and appreciate the critical role played by automation runbooks. Some customers have experienced issues with the release of 2.26.1 of the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK, particularly when running PowerShell 7.2 runbooks in Azure Automation. The core challenge is a conflict around .NET 6 where fixing Runbooks would break […] The post Resolving Microsoft Graph PowerShell 2.26+ compatibility issues with Azure Runbooks appeared first on Microsoft 365 Developer Blog.  ( 23 min )

Background: In Azure App Service, developers often need to serve files (images, config files, data files, etc.) that are stored outside the app’s wwwroot folder — such as on an Azure File Share. This is especially useful when: You want to share files across multiple web apps Your files are too large to bundle with the app You need to manage files independently from the app deployment To accomplish this, Azure provides the ability to: Mount external Azure File Shares into your web app's file system Expose those mounted folders via virtual paths Configure directory browsing and MIME types to make files directly accessible over the browser Step-by-Step Configuration: ===Azure Storage Account part=== Create Azure File Share ===Azure App Service part=== 1.Mount Azure File Share Azure Porta…  ( 23 min )

Background: In Azure App Service, developers often need to serve files (images, config files, data files, etc.) that are stored outside the app’s wwwroot folder — such as on an Azure File Share. This is especially useful when: You want to share files across multiple web apps Your files are too large to bundle with the app You need to manage files independently from the app deployment To accomplish this, Azure provides the ability to: Mount external Azure File Shares into your web app's file system Expose those mounted folders via virtual paths Configure directory browsing and MIME types to make files directly accessible over the browser Step-by-Step Configuration: ===Azure Storage Account part=== Create Azure File Share ===Azure App Service part=== 1.Mount Azure File Share Azure Porta…

Key Features and Improvements The new version of HCM introduces several enhancements aimed at improving usability, performance, and security: Cross-Platform Compatibility: The new HCM is now supported on both Windows and Linux clients, allowing for seamless management of hybrid connections across different platforms, providing users with greater flexibility and control. Enhanced User Interface: We have redesigned the GUI to offer a more intuitive and efficient user experience. In addition to a new and more accessible GUI, we have also introduced a CLI that includes all the functionality needed to manage connections, especially for our Linux customers who may solely use a CLI to manage their workloads. Improved Visibility: The new version offers enhanced logging and connection testing, whi…  ( 27 min )

Key Features and Improvements The new version of HCM introduces several enhancements aimed at improving usability, performance, and security: Cross-Platform Compatibility: The new HCM is now supported on both Windows and Linux clients, allowing for seamless management of hybrid connections across different platforms, providing users with greater flexibility and control. Enhanced User Interface: We have redesigned the GUI to offer a more intuitive and efficient user experience. In addition to a new and more accessible GUI, we have also introduced a CLI that includes all the functionality needed to manage connections, especially for our Linux customers who may solely use a CLI to manage their workloads. Improved Visibility: The new version offers enhanced logging and connection testing, whi…

Real-world AI Solutions: Lessons from the Field Overview  This document provides practical guidance for minimizing hallucinations—instances where models produce inaccurate or fabricated content—when building applications with Azure AI services. It targets developers, architects, and MLOps teams working with LLMs in enterprise settings.   Key Outcomes ✅ Reduce hallucinations through retrieval-augmented strategies and prompt engineering✅ Improve model output reliability, grounding, and explainability✅ Enable robust enterprise deployment through layered safety, monitoring, and security   Understanding Hallucinations Hallucinations come in different forms. Here are some realistic examples for each category to help clarify them: Type Description Example Factual Outputs are incorrect or…  ( 31 min )

Real-world AI Solutions: Lessons from the Field Overview  This document provides practical guidance for minimizing hallucinations—instances where models produce inaccurate or fabricated content—when building applications with Azure AI services. It targets developers, architects, and MLOps teams working with LLMs in enterprise settings.   Key Outcomes ✅ Reduce hallucinations through retrieval-augmented strategies and prompt engineering✅ Improve model output reliability, grounding, and explainability✅ Enable robust enterprise deployment through layered safety, monitoring, and security   Understanding Hallucinations Hallucinations come in different forms. Here are some realistic examples for each category to help clarify them: Type Description Example Factual Outputs are incorrect or…

Faceted navigation is a key component of search experiences, helping users intuitively drill down through large sets of search results by refining their queries quickly and efficiently.  We are announcing several improvements to facets in preview: Hierarchical facets enable developers to create multi-level navigation trees, offering a more organized view of search categories Facet filtering provides precision by allowing regular expressions to refine the facet values displayed Facet summing introduces the ability to aggregate numeric data within facet Hierarchical Facets Facets in Azure AI Search were previously limited to a flat, one layer model. Consider the following index which models a product catalog: Product ID Name Category Subcategory Price P001 UltraHD Smart TV Elect…  ( 25 min )

Faceted navigation is a key component of search experiences, helping users intuitively drill down through large sets of search results by refining their queries quickly and efficiently.  We are announcing several improvements to facets in preview: Hierarchical facets enable developers to create multi-level navigation trees, offering a more organized view of search categories Facet filtering provides precision by allowing regular expressions to refine the facet values displayed Facet summing introduces the ability to aggregate numeric data within facet Hierarchical Facets Facets in Azure AI Search were previously limited to a flat, one layer model. Consider the following index which models a product catalog: Product ID Name Category Subcategory Price P001 UltraHD Smart TV Elect…

Overview The Azure Training Maps are a comprehensive visual guide to the Azure ecosystem, integrating all the resources, tools, structures, and connections covered in the course into one inclusive diagram. It enables students to map out and understand the elements they've studied, providing a clear picture of their place within the larger Azure ecosystem. It serves as a 1:1 representation of all the topics officially covered in the instructor-led training. Formats available include PDF, Visio, Excel, and Video.     Links: Each icon in the blueprint has a hyperlink to the pertinent document in the learning path on Learn. Layers: You have the capability to filter layers to concentrate on segments of the course by modules. I.E.: Just day 1 of AZ-104, using filters in Visio and selecting modu…  ( 25 min )

Overview The Azure Training Maps are a comprehensive visual guide to the Azure ecosystem, integrating all the resources, tools, structures, and connections covered in the course into one inclusive diagram. It enables students to map out and understand the elements they've studied, providing a clear picture of their place within the larger Azure ecosystem. It serves as a 1:1 representation of all the topics officially covered in the instructor-led training. Formats available include PDF, Visio, Excel, and Video.     Links: Each icon in the blueprint has a hyperlink to the pertinent document in the learning path on Learn. Layers: You have the capability to filter layers to concentrate on segments of the course by modules. I.E.: Just day 1 of AZ-104, using filters in Visio and selecting modu…

Monitoring the availability and performance of web applications is crucial to ensuring a seamless user experience. Azure Application Insights provides powerful synthetic monitoring capabilities to help detect issues proactively. However, Microsoft has deprecated two key features: (Deprecated) Multi-step web tests: Previously, these allowed developers to record and replay a sequence of web requests to test complex workflows. They were created in Visual Studio Enterprise and uploaded to the portal. (Deprecated) URL ping tests: These tests checked if an endpoint was responding and measured performance. They allowed setting custom success criteria, dependent request parsing, and retries. With these features being phased out, we are left without built-in logic to test application health beyon…  ( 26 min )

Monitoring the availability and performance of web applications is crucial to ensuring a seamless user experience. Azure Application Insights provides powerful synthetic monitoring capabilities to help detect issues proactively. However, Microsoft has deprecated two key features: (Deprecated) Multi-step web tests: Previously, these allowed developers to record and replay a sequence of web requests to test complex workflows. They were created in Visual Studio Enterprise and uploaded to the portal. (Deprecated) URL ping tests: These tests checked if an endpoint was responding and measured performance. They allowed setting custom success criteria, dependent request parsing, and retries. With these features being phased out, we are left without built-in logic to test application health beyon…

Microsoft is thrilled to announce our participation in PyTexas 2025, taking place this year in the vibrant city of Austin, Texas! At this year’s event, Microsoft is proud to contribute to the community’s growth and excitement by hosting a booth and delivering an engaging talk. The post Microsoft at PyTexas 2025: Join Us for a Celebration of Python and Innovation appeared first on Microsoft for Python Developers Blog.  ( 23 min )

Stay productive and connected with AI-powered experiences for frontline workers using Android and iOS devices to quickly sign in, manage tasks, find information, and collaborate with team members. Easily access essential resources, check inventory, and get instant answers from Copilot Chat and AI agents that you can build in SharePoint and Microsoft Copilot Studio. Microsoft 365’s latest device experiences take frontline productivity and customer interactions to the next level — from improving customer interactions to managing worksites.  Avery Salumbides, Microsoft 365 Frontline Product Manager, demonstrates key updates across Microsoft Teams, Copilot, and AI agents on mobile, plus essential admin setup considerations to equip your frontline. Secure, fast sign-in. Less downtime and more…  ( 44 min )

Stay productive and connected with AI-powered experiences for frontline workers using Android and iOS devices to quickly sign in, manage tasks, find information, and collaborate with team members. Easily access essential resources, check inventory, and get instant answers from Copilot Chat and AI agents that you can build in SharePoint and Microsoft Copilot Studio. Microsoft 365’s latest device experiences take frontline productivity and customer interactions to the next level — from improving customer interactions to managing worksites.  Avery Salumbides, Microsoft 365 Frontline Product Manager, demonstrates key updates across Microsoft Teams, Copilot, and AI agents on mobile, plus essential admin setup considerations to equip your frontline. Secure, fast sign-in. Less downtime and more…

Discover how Microsoft 365 Certification ensures ISVs use the latest privacy and personally identifiable information (PII) management controls to protect customer data. The post Microsoft 365 Certification control spotlight: Privacy appeared first on Microsoft 365 Developer Blog.  ( 22 min )

Microsoft Fabric is changing how we handle data engineering and data science. To make things easier, Microsoft added some cool extensions for Visual Studio Code (VS Code) that help you manage Fabric artifacts and build analytical applications. By adding these Microsoft Fabric extensions to VS Code, developers can quickly create Fabric solutions and manage their … Continue reading “Boost your development with Microsoft Fabric extensions for Visual Studio Code”  ( 7 min )

We had such an exciting week for Fabric during the Fabric Conference US, filled with several product announcements and sneak previews of upcoming new features. Thanks to all of you who participated in the conference, either in person or by being part of the many virtual conversations through blogs, Community forums, social media and other … Continue reading “Recap of Data Factory Announcements at Fabric Conference US 2025”  ( 16 min )

You now have the capability with service principals to create shortcuts to Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS) Gen2 storage accounts that have firewall enabled.  Previously, the creation of ADLS Gen2 shortcuts by service principals was restricted when firewall settings were active. However, with the latest changes, service principals will be able to navigate these restrictions … Continue reading “Use Service Principals to create shortcuts to ADLS Gen2 storage accounts with trusted access”  ( 6 min )

When using Azure App Service to host web applications, it is common to mount file shares or blob storage hosted in an Azure Storage Account, a configuration also known as "Bring Your Own Storage (BYOS)". While the setup process is seamless, troubleshooting mount issues can be challenging due to different authentication, networking and other configuration aspects. Whether you are encountering errors during the application startup, or viewing any permission denied messages, this guide will help you by going through a step-by-step checklist, to validate the underlying dependencies and settings required for a successful mount: On Azure portal, open the Web App Configuration menu and select the Path Mappings tab. Confirm that the external storage is not being mounted to the unsupported filesys…  ( 27 min )

When using Azure App Service to host web applications, it is common to mount file shares or blob storage hosted in an Azure Storage Account, a configuration also known as "Bring Your Own Storage (BYOS)". While the setup process is seamless, troubleshooting mount issues can be challenging due to different authentication, networking and other configuration aspects. Whether you are encountering errors during the application startup, or viewing any permission denied messages, this guide will help you by going through a step-by-step checklist, to validate the underlying dependencies and settings required for a successful mount: On Azure portal, open the Web App Configuration menu and select the Path Mappings tab. Confirm that the external storage is not being mounted to the unsupported filesys…

In certain scenarios, you might want to remove the server information from your request header. Therefore, we might consider hiding that information. In Azure App Service for PHP, we are using Nginx, and we can modify configuration files if necessary. First, we need to locate the Nginx configuration file on the Kudu site, which can be found at the path /etc/nginx/nginx.conf. Then, perform cp /etc/nginx/nginx.conf /home/site/nginx.conf. We modify the configuration file under /home to retain our changes. We open the configuration file and uncomment the server_tokens off; directive in the http section of the Nginx configuration. Then you need to configure the startup command using Azure Portal from Configuration -> General Settings as below: cp /home/nginx.conf /etc/nginx/nginx.conf && service nginx reload Checking again, we can see that the Nginx version is hidden. But what if we want to hide all the server information? To do this, follow these steps: (1) Copy the Nginx configuration file to the /home directory as we mentioned earlier. This is necessary because any files outside of /home will not be preserved after a restart. Use the following command: cp /etc/nginx/nginx.conf /home/site/nginx.conf (2) Open the Nginx configuration file located in /home, and add the following line in the http section. more_clear_headers 'server'. After adding it, save the file. (3) Update custom startup command using Azure Portal from Configuration -> General Settings as follows: apt update && apt install -y nginx-extras && cp /home/nginx.conf /etc/nginx/nginx.conf && service nginx reload (4) Once done, and the request header should no longer display the Server information.   Reference: How to set Nginx headers -  ( 21 min )

In certain scenarios, you might want to remove the server information from your request header. Therefore, we might consider hiding that information. In Azure App Service for PHP, we are using Nginx, and we can modify configuration files if necessary. First, we need to locate the Nginx configuration file on the Kudu site, which can be found at the path /etc/nginx/nginx.conf. Then, perform cp /etc/nginx/nginx.conf /home/site/nginx.conf. We modify the configuration file under /home to retain our changes. We open the configuration file and uncomment the server_tokens off; directive in the http section of the Nginx configuration. Then you need to configure the startup command using Azure Portal from Configuration -> General Settings as below: cp /home/nginx.conf /etc/nginx/nginx.conf && service nginx reload Checking again, we can see that the Nginx version is hidden. But what if we want to hide all the server information? To do this, follow these steps: (1) Copy the Nginx configuration file to the /home directory as we mentioned earlier. This is necessary because any files outside of /home will not be preserved after a restart. Use the following command: cp /etc/nginx/nginx.conf /home/site/nginx.conf (2) Open the Nginx configuration file located in /home, and add the following line in the http section. more_clear_headers 'server'. After adding it, save the file. (3) Update custom startup command using Azure Portal from Configuration -> General Settings as follows: apt update && apt install -y nginx-extras && cp /home/nginx.conf /etc/nginx/nginx.conf && service nginx reload (4) Once done, and the request header should no longer display the Server information.   Reference: How to set Nginx headers -

TOC Why we use it Architecture How to use it References   Why we use it This tutorial will introduce how to integrate Microsoft Entra with Azure SQL Server to avoid using fixed usernames and passwords. By utilizing System-assigned managed identities as a programmatic bridge, it becomes easier for Azure-related PaaS services (such as Container Apps) to communicate with the database without storing connection information in plain text.   Architecture I will introduce each service or component and their configurations in subsequent chapters according to the order of A-C: A: The company's account administrator needs to create or designate a user as the database administrator. This role can only be assigned to one person within the database and is responsible for basic configuration and the cr…  ( 33 min )

TOC Why we use it Architecture How to use it References   Why we use it This tutorial will introduce how to integrate Microsoft Entra with Azure SQL Server to avoid using fixed usernames and passwords. By utilizing System-assigned managed identities as a programmatic bridge, it becomes easier for Azure-related PaaS services (such as Container Apps) to communicate with the database without storing connection information in plain text.   Architecture I will introduce each service or component and their configurations in subsequent chapters according to the order of A-C: A: The company's account administrator needs to create or designate a user as the database administrator. This role can only be assigned to one person within the database and is responsible for basic configuration and the cr…

Cut Through the Chaos If you’ve worked on a cloud migration, you already know—it’s not just about moving workloads. It’s about navigating ambiguity. Mapping services. Aligning teams. Untangling legacy architecture. Making decisions that won’t come back to bite you six months down the line. We built the Azure Migration Hub to bring order to that mess. It’s not a campaign or a marketing layer. It’s a guide—built by architects, engineers, and field teams who’ve done this work at scale—designed to help others do it better. The Migration Hub offers a structured path forward, connecting strategy, architecture patterns, and tooling guidance in the sequence real teams actually need. It also incorporates Azure Essentials best practices, which facilitate a smoother and more efficient transition to t…  ( 24 min )

Cut Through the Chaos If you’ve worked on a cloud migration, you already know—it’s not just about moving workloads. It’s about navigating ambiguity. Mapping services. Aligning teams. Untangling legacy architecture. Making decisions that won’t come back to bite you six months down the line. We built the Azure Migration Hub to bring order to that mess. It’s not a campaign or a marketing layer. It’s a guide—built by architects, engineers, and field teams who’ve done this work at scale—designed to help others do it better. The Migration Hub offers a structured path forward, connecting strategy, architecture patterns, and tooling guidance in the sequence real teams actually need. It also incorporates Azure Essentials best practices, which facilitate a smoother and more efficient transition to t…

Windows Server has been a trusted solution for businesses for over 30 years, providing reliability, security, and scalability for critical workloads. With the introduction of Windows Server 2025, Microsoft is enhancing security, performance, and cloud integration to help organizations focus on innovation rather than administrative overhead. Designed for seamless connectivity with Azure, Windows Server 2025 enables your business to leverage cloud-native tools and hybrid management capabilities effortlessly.   In this blog we’ll focus on the value of migrating your on-premises Windows Server workloads to Azure and review official Plans on Microsoft Learn—Migrate and Secure Windows Server Workloads on Azure—that will help your team succeed. We’re also excited to invite you to our upcoming Win…  ( 28 min )

Windows Server has been a trusted solution for businesses for over 30 years, providing reliability, security, and scalability for critical workloads. With the introduction of Windows Server 2025, Microsoft is enhancing security, performance, and cloud integration to help organizations focus on innovation rather than administrative overhead. Designed for seamless connectivity with Azure, Windows Server 2025 enables your business to leverage cloud-native tools and hybrid management capabilities effortlessly.   In this blog we’ll focus on the value of migrating your on-premises Windows Server workloads to Azure and review official Plans on Microsoft Learn—Migrate and Secure Windows Server Workloads on Azure—that will help your team succeed. We’re also excited to invite you to our upcoming Win…

Power your Linux and PostgreSQL innovation with Azure migration skilling and community events  Managing on-prem and hybrid Linux and PostgreSQL workloads presents ongoing challenges, from hardware maintenance and scalability limitations to security risks and operational complexity. As workloads grow, so do costs and administrative burdens of keeping them performant and resilient. Migrating to Azure provides a modern, cloud-based solution that enhances security, scalability, and cost efficiency—freeing teams to focus on innovation rather than infrastructure management.   In this blog, we’ll explore not only the value of migrating Linux and PostgreSQL workloads to Azure, but also some crucial, expert-curated skilling resources we provide to help your team master the process. Plus, we’ll disc…  ( 30 min )

Power your Linux and PostgreSQL innovation with Azure migration skilling and community events  Managing on-prem and hybrid Linux and PostgreSQL workloads presents ongoing challenges, from hardware maintenance and scalability limitations to security risks and operational complexity. As workloads grow, so do costs and administrative burdens of keeping them performant and resilient. Migrating to Azure provides a modern, cloud-based solution that enhances security, scalability, and cost efficiency—freeing teams to focus on innovation rather than infrastructure management.   In this blog, we’ll explore not only the value of migrating Linux and PostgreSQL workloads to Azure, but also some crucial, expert-curated skilling resources we provide to help your team master the process. Plus, we’ll disc…

Introduction Azure AI Search is announcing two new preview features that make it easier to scale your search service to avoid production issues from storage limitations as your needs grow. Available in preview today: Change your pricing tier: Change the tier of your existing Azure AI Search service via the portal or management plane REST API. Self-service upgrade: Upgrade your search service to enable features previously only available in new services, such as the new storage limits released in April 2024. Change your pricing tier to scale up Now you can change your service tier from the Azure portal or management plane API. It's a simple scaling operation like adding partitions or replicas that ensures uninterrupted growth and operational continuity. Before, if you reached the maximum t…  ( 28 min )

Introduction Azure AI Search is announcing two new preview features that make it easier to scale your search service to avoid production issues from storage limitations as your needs grow. Available in preview today: Change your pricing tier: Change the tier of your existing Azure AI Search service via the portal or management plane REST API. Self-service upgrade: Upgrade your search service to enable features previously only available in new services, such as the new storage limits released in April 2024. Change your pricing tier to scale up Now you can change your service tier from the Azure portal or management plane API. It's a simple scaling operation like adding partitions or replicas that ensures uninterrupted growth and operational continuity. Before, if you reached the maximum t…

Today we’re thrilled to announce support for Hybrid search with Semantic Kernel Vector Stores for .NET. What is Hybrid Search? Hybrid search performs two parallel searches on a vector database.  The union of the results of these two searches are then returned to callers with a combined rank, based on the rankings from each of […] The post Announcing Hybrid Search with Semantic Kernel for .NET appeared first on Semantic Kernel.  ( 23 min )

Today we’re excited to welcome Arafat Tehsin, who’s a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for AI. back as a guest author on the Semantic Kernel blog today to cover his work on a Comprehensive Guide to Agentic AI with Semantic Kernel. We’ll turn it over to Arafat to dive in further. The world of AI is evolving […] The post Guest Blog: A Comprehensive Guide to Agentic AI with Semantic Kernel appeared first on Semantic Kernel.  ( 23 min )

Learn how to debug your agents within Microsoft 365 Copilot to streamline your workflow using the agent debugging experience, now generally available. The post Introducing the agent debugging experience in Microsoft 365 Copilot appeared first on Microsoft 365 Developer Blog.  ( 22 min )

The blog explains how lease management in Azure Storage works, covering the management of concurrent access to blobs and containers. It discusses key concepts such as acquiring, renewing, changing, releasing, and breaking leases, ensuring only the lease holder can modify or delete a resource for a specified duration. Additionally, it explores common troubleshooting scenarios in Azure Storage Lease Management. Lease management in Azure Storage allows you to create and manage locks on blobs for write and delete operations. This is particularly useful for ensuring that only one client can write to a blob at a time, preventing conflicts and ensuring data consistency. Key Concepts: Lease States: A blob can be in one of several lease states, such as Available, Leased, Expired, Breaking, and Bro…  ( 33 min )

The blog explains how lease management in Azure Storage works, covering the management of concurrent access to blobs and containers. It discusses key concepts such as acquiring, renewing, changing, releasing, and breaking leases, ensuring only the lease holder can modify or delete a resource for a specified duration. Additionally, it explores common troubleshooting scenarios in Azure Storage Lease Management. Lease management in Azure Storage allows you to create and manage locks on blobs for write and delete operations. This is particularly useful for ensuring that only one client can write to a blob at a time, preventing conflicts and ensuring data consistency. Key Concepts: Lease States: A blob can be in one of several lease states, such as Available, Leased, Expired, Breaking, and Bro…

Introduction Azure Blob Storage now supports the SFTP protocol, making it easier to interact with blobs using standard tools like curl. This blog guides you through performing simple upload, download, delete, and list operations using curl over SFTP with Azure Blob Storage.   Pre-requisites Azure Blob Storage with SFTP enabled (Storage Account must have hierarchical namespace enabled) Enable SFTP Local user created in Azure Storage Account with SSH Key Pair as Authentication method and appropriate container permissions. Private key (.pem file) for SFTP authentication. Curl tool installed (version 7.55.0+ for SFTP support) Please note that the following tests are inclined towards Curl on Windows. The same can be performed with other OS with appropriate format changes.   Authentication Sup…  ( 25 min )

Introduction Azure Blob Storage now supports the SFTP protocol, making it easier to interact with blobs using standard tools like curl. This blog guides you through performing simple upload, download, delete, and list operations using curl over SFTP with Azure Blob Storage.   Pre-requisites Azure Blob Storage with SFTP enabled (Storage Account must have hierarchical namespace enabled) Enable SFTP Local user created in Azure Storage Account with SSH Key Pair as Authentication method and appropriate container permissions. Private key (.pem file) for SFTP authentication. Curl tool installed (version 7.55.0+ for SFTP support) Please note that the following tests are inclined towards Curl on Windows. The same can be performed with other OS with appropriate format changes.   Authentication Sup…

Coauthor: Aazathraj, Chief Data Architect, Apollo Hospitals Real-Time Intelligence in Microsoft Fabric provides multiple database change data capture connectors including SQL database, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Cosmos DB, which allows anyone to easily react and take actions on database changes in real-time. Each of the databases works differently when it comes to enabling CDC, giving permission … Continue reading “Understanding Real-Time Intelligence CDC connector for PostgreSQL database”  ( 9 min )

Introduction Strapi is an open-source, headless CMS that is highly customizable and developer-friendly, making it a popular choice for content management. When it comes to Strapi hosting, deploying Strapi, or self hosting Strapi, Azure App Service stands out as a premier solution. Azure App Service is a fully managed platform for building, deploying, and scaling web apps, offering unparalleled scalability and reliability.  In this quick start guide, you will learn how to create and deploy your first Strapi site on Azure App Service Linux, using Azure Database for MySQL or PostgreSQL, along with other necessary Azure resources. Steps to deploy Strapi on App Service What is Strapi on App Service? App Service is a fully managed platform for building, deploying, and scaling web apps. Deploying…  ( 42 min )

Strapi is a widely used open-source headless CMS platform that empowers developers and content creators worldwide to manage and deliver content efficiently. It is known for its flexibility and robustness, having been continuously developed and improved by the community over the years. In this quick start guide, you will learn how to create and deploy your first Strapi site on Azure App Service Linux, using Azure Database for MySQL or PostgreSQL, along with other necessary Azure resources. This guide utilizes an ARM template to install the required resources for hosting your Strapi application, which will incur costs for your Azure Subscription. For pricing details, please refer to our section on estimating pricing. For more information read our Strapi on App Service overview blog. What is …

Where to host Strapi? How to self-host Strapi? When it comes to Strapi hosting, deploying Strapi, or self-hosting Strapi, Azure App Service stands out as a premier solution. Azure App Service is a fully managed platform for building, deploying, and scaling web apps, offering unparalleled scalability and reliability. Deploy Strapi on Azure App Service to leverage Strapi's flexible content management capabilities with the robust infrastructure of Microsoft's cloud. With greater customization control, global region availability, pre-built integration with other Azure services, Strapi on Azure App Service simplifies infrastructure management while ensuring high availability, security, and performance. Learn more from documentation below, Strapi on App Service - Overview How to deploy Strapi o…  ( 56 min )

How do I enable a custom domain for my Strapi website? Custom domains can be set up with these resources: Using custom domains on Azure App Service Configuring custom domains with Azure Front Door Does Strapi on App Service have email functionality? Yes, email functionality is supported through Azure Communication Services. You can also configure custom email domains.  In order to integrate Strapi application with Azure communication services, we use an Email plugin here. Can I use other databases with Strapi on Azure App Service? Strapi supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB and SQL Lite. Our current ARM template solution supports using PostgreSQL or MySQL as database. To use another supported database, you could either modify the ARM template or even set up database manually and update th…

What is Strapi on App Service? Strapi is an open-source, headless CMS that is highly customizable and developer-friendly, making it a popular choice for content management. When it comes to Strapi hosting, deploying Strapi, or self hosting Strapi, Azure App Service stands out as a premier solution. Azure App Service is a fully managed platform for building, deploying, and scaling web apps, offering unparalleled scalability and reliability. Deploy Strapi on Azure App Service to leverage Strapi's flexible content management capabilities with the robust infrastructure of Microsoft's cloud. Whether you're looking to self-host Strapi or find the best hosting options for Strapi, Azure App Service provides the ideal environment for high availability, security, and performance. This offering integ…  ( 36 min )

What is Strapi on App Service? Strapi is an open-source, headless CMS that is highly customizable and developer-friendly. App Service is a fully managed platform for building, deploying, and scaling web apps. Deploying Strapi on App Service brings together the power of Strapi's flexible content management capabilities with the scalability and reliability of Microsoft's cloud infrastructure. This offering integrates key Azure services such as: Azure App Service: A scalable platform-as-a-service (PaaS) optimized for running Node.js applications such as Strapi. Azure Database for MySQL flexible server – A fully managed database service that offers high availability, automated maintenance, and elastic scaling for MySQL databases. Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server: A fully managed …

WebJobs Intro WebJobs is a feature of Azure App Service that enables you to run a program or script in the same instance as a web app. All app service plans support WebJobs. There's no extra cost to use WebJobs. This sample uses a Triggered (scheduled) WebJob to output the system time once every 15 minutes. Create Web App Before creating our WebJobs, we need to create an App Service webapp. If you already have an App Service Web App, skip to the next step Otherwise, in the portal, select App Services > Create > Web App. After following the create instructions and the Node 20 LTS runtime stack, create your App Service Web App. The stack must be Node, since we plan on writing our WebJob using Node and a bash startup script. For this example, we’ll use Node 20 LTS. Next, we’ll add a basic Web…  ( 25 min )

WebJobs Intro WebJobs is a feature of Azure App Service that enables you to run a program or script in the same instance as a web app. All app service plans support WebJobs. There's no extra cost to use WebJobs. This sample uses a Triggered (scheduled) WebJob to output the system time once every 15 minutes. Create Web App Before creating our WebJobs, we need to create an App Service webapp. If you already have an App Service Web App, skip to the next step Otherwise, in the portal, select App Services > Create > Web App. After following the create instructions and the Node 20 LTS runtime stack, create your App Service Web App. The stack must be Node, since we plan on writing our WebJob using Node and a bash startup script. For this example, we’ll use Node 20 LTS. Next, we’ll add a basic Web…

WebJobs Intro WebJobs is a feature of Azure App Service that enables you to run a program or script in the same instance as a web app. All app service plans support WebJobs. There's no extra cost to use WebJobs. This sample uses a Triggered (scheduled) WebJob to output the system time once every 15 minutes. Create Web App Before creating our WebJobs, we need to create an App Service webapp. If you already have an App Service Web App, skip to the next step Otherwise, in the portal, select App Services > Create > Web App. After following the create instructions and the PHP 8.4 runtime stack, create your App Service Web App. The stack must be PHP, since we plan on writing our WebJob using PHP and a bash startup script. For this example, we’ll use PHP 8.4. Next, we’ll add a basic WebJob to our…  ( 25 min )

WebJobs Intro WebJobs is a feature of Azure App Service that enables you to run a program or script in the same instance as a web app. All app service plans support WebJobs. There's no extra cost to use WebJobs. This sample uses a Triggered (scheduled) WebJob to output the system time once every 15 minutes. Create Web App Before creating our WebJobs, we need to create an App Service webapp. If you already have an App Service Web App, skip to the next step Otherwise, in the portal, select App Services > Create > Web App. After following the create instructions and the PHP 8.4 runtime stack, create your App Service Web App. The stack must be PHP, since we plan on writing our WebJob using PHP and a bash startup script. For this example, we’ll use PHP 8.4. Next, we’ll add a basic WebJob to our…

WebJobs Intro WebJobs is a feature of Azure App Service that enables you to run a program or script in the same instance as a web app. All app service plans support WebJobs. There's no extra cost to use WebJobs. This sample uses a Triggered (scheduled) WebJob to output the system time once every 15 minutes. Create Web App Before creating our WebJobs, we need to create an App Service webapp. If you already have an App Service Web App, skip to the next step Otherwise, in the portal, select App Services > Create > Web App. After following the create instructions and the .NET 9 runtime stack, create your App Service Web App. The stack must be .NET, since we plan on writing our WebJob using .NET and a bash startup script. For this example, we’ll use .NET 9. Next, we’ll add a basic WebJob to our…  ( 26 min )

WebJobs Intro WebJobs is a feature of Azure App Service that enables you to run a program or script in the same instance as a web app. All app service plans support WebJobs. There's no extra cost to use WebJobs. This sample uses a Triggered (scheduled) WebJob to output the system time once every 15 minutes. Create Web App Before creating our WebJobs, we need to create an App Service webapp. If you already have an App Service Web App, skip to the next step Otherwise, in the portal, select App Services > Create > Web App. After following the create instructions and the .NET 9 runtime stack, create your App Service Web App. The stack must be .NET, since we plan on writing our WebJob using .NET and a bash startup script. For this example, we’ll use .NET 9. Next, we’ll add a basic WebJob to our…

This artical is refer to this artical, welcome to read it: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/azurehighperformancecomputingblog/running-deepseek-r1-on-a-single-ndv5-mi300x-vm/4372726   Azure GPU VM Environment PreparationQuickly create a Spot VM, using Spot VM and password-based authentication: az vm create --name --resource-group --location --image microsoft-dsvm:ubuntu-hpc:2204-rocm:22.04.2025030701 --size Standard_ND96isr_MI300X_v5 --security-type Standard --priority Spot --max-price -1 --eviction-policy Deallocate --os-disk-size-gb 256 --os-disk-delete-option Delete --admin-username azureadmin --authentication-type password --admin-password The CLI command I used to create the VM: xinyu [ ~ ]$ az vm create --name mi300x-x…  ( 27 min )

This artical is refer to: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/azurehighperformancecomputingblog/running-deepseek-r1-on-a-single-ndv5-mi300x-vm/4372726   Azure GPU VM Environment PreparationQuickly create a Spot VM, using Spot VM and password-based authentication: az vm create --name --resource-group --location --image microsoft-dsvm:ubuntu-hpc:2204-rocm:22.04.2025030701 --size Standard_ND96isr_MI300X_v5 --security-type Standard --priority Spot --max-price -1 --eviction-policy Deallocate --os-disk-size-gb 256 --os-disk-delete-option Delete --admin-username azureadmin --authentication-type password --admin-password The CLI command I used to create the VM: xinyu [ ~ ]$ az vm create --name mi300x-xinyu --resource-group amdrg --loc…

Thinking of deploying Microsoft Dev Box service but want to understand the licensing and subscription requirements first? Then, you have come to the right place. This blog post breaks it all down—clearly and simply—so you know exactly what you need and why, whether you’re an IT admin, platform engineer, developer, or a decision-maker. Microsoft Dev […] The post Microsoft Dev Box subscriptions and licensing requirements demystified: What You Need and Why appeared first on Develop from the cloud.  ( 24 min )

Today we are releasing patches that impact our self-hosted product, Azure DevOps Server, as well as Team Foundation Server 2018.3.2. We strongly encourage and recommend that all customers use the latest, most secure release of Azure DevOps Server. You can download the latest version of the product, Azure DevOps Server 2022.2 from the Azure DevOps […] The post April Patches for Azure DevOps Server and Team Foundation Server appeared first on Azure DevOps Blog.  ( 23 min )

We are excited to announce a significant update to our Azure Load Testing service, aimed at enhancing the experience of setting up and running load tests from CI/CD systems, including Azure DevOps and GitHub. This update is a direct response to customer feedback and is designed to streamline the process, making it more efficient and user-friendly. Key Features and Improvements: Enhanced CI/CD Integration: Developers and testers can now configure application components and the metrics to monitor directly from a CI/CD pipeline. This integration allows monitoring the application infrastructure during the test run. You can make the following changes to your load test YAML config. appComponents: - resourceId: "/subscriptions/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/resourceGroups/samplerg/provid…  ( 23 min )

We are excited to announce a significant update to our Azure Load Testing service, aimed at enhancing the experience of setting up and running load tests from CI/CD systems, including Azure DevOps and GitHub. This update is a direct response to customer feedback and is designed to streamline the process, making it more efficient and user-friendly. Key Features and Improvements: Enhanced CI/CD Integration: Developers and testers can now configure application components and the metrics to monitor directly from a CI/CD pipeline. This integration allows monitoring the application infrastructure during the test run. You can make the following changes to your load test YAML config. appComponents: - resourceId: "/subscriptions/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/resourceGroups/samplerg/provid…

JDConf 2025 is right around the corner and is set to be a global gathering for Java developers passionate about Cloud, AI, and the future of Java. With 22+ sessions and 10+ hours of live content streaming from April 9 - 10, plus additional on-demand sessions, this year’s event dives into app modernization, intelligent apps, frameworks, and AI-powered development with tools like Copilot and more. We are excited to invite you to join us with our three distinguished hosts: Bruno Borges, Sandra Ahlgrimm, and Rory Preddy. Meet Bruno Borges - Your host for JDConf 2025 Americas Bruno Borges is a seasoned professional with a rich background in the tech industry. Currently serving as Principal Product Manager at Microsoft, he focuses on Java developers' experience on Azure and beyond. With over tw…  ( 25 min )

JDConf 2025 is right around the corner and is set to be a global gathering for Java developers passionate about Cloud, AI, and the future of Java. With 22+ sessions and 10+ hours of live content streaming from April 9 - 10, plus additional on-demand sessions, this year’s event dives into app modernization, intelligent apps, frameworks, and AI-powered development with tools like Copilot and more. We are excited to invite you to join us with our three distinguished hosts: Bruno Borges, Sandra Ahlgrimm, and Rory Preddy. Meet Bruno Borges - Your host for JDConf 2025 Americas Bruno Borges is a seasoned professional with a rich background in the tech industry. Currently serving as Principal Product Manager at Microsoft, he focuses on Java developers' experience on Azure and beyond. With over tw…

Announcing New Vector Stores: Faiss, SQL Server, and Pinecone We are thrilled to announce the availability of three new Vector Stores and Vector Store Record Collections: Faiss, SQL Server, and Pinecone. These new connectors will enable you to store and retrieve vector data efficiently, making it easier to work with your own data and data […] The post Python Vector Store Connectors update: Faiss, Azure SQL Server and Pinecone appeared first on Semantic Kernel.  ( 23 min )

Today on the Semantic Kernel blog we’re excited to welcome a group of guest authors from Microsoft. We’ll turn it over to Riccardo Chiodaroli, Samar El Housseini, Daniel Lavve and Fabrizio Ruocco to dive into their use cases with Semantic Kernel and Copilot Studio. In today’s fast-paced digital economy, intelligent automation is no longer optional—it’s […] The post Guest Blog: Semantic Kernel and Copilot Studio Usage Series – Part 1 appeared first on Semantic Kernel.  ( 25 min )

¡El modo Agente se está lanzando para todos los usuarios de VS Code! El agente actúa como un programador autónomo que realiza tareas de codificación en varias etapas bajo tu comando, como analizar tu base de código, proponer ediciones de archivos y ejecutar comandos en el terminal. Responde a errores de compilación y lint, monitorea la salida del terminal y corrige automáticamente en un bucle hasta que la tarea esté completada. El agente también puede usar herramientas contribuidas, lo que le permite interactuar con servidores MCP externos o extensiones de VS Code para realizar una amplia variedad de tareas.   Disponible para todos los usuarios Abre la vista de Chat, inicia sesión en GitHub, configura chat.agent.enabled en tus ajustes y selecciona Agente en el menú desplegable del modo de…  ( 36 min )

¡El modo Agente se está lanzando para todos los usuarios de VS Code! El agente actúa como un programador autónomo que realiza tareas de codificación en varias etapas bajo tu comando, como analizar tu base de código, proponer ediciones de archivos y ejecutar comandos en el terminal. Responde a errores de compilación y lint, monitorea la salida del terminal y corrige automáticamente en un bucle hasta que la tarea esté completada. El agente también puede usar herramientas contribuidas, lo que le permite interactuar con servidores MCP externos o extensiones de VS Code para realizar una amplia variedad de tareas.   Disponible para todos los usuarios Abre la vista de Chat, inicia sesión en GitHub, configura chat.agent.enabled en tus ajustes y selecciona Agente en el menú desplegable del modo de…

We are excited to announce the latest update to our permission model for OneLake events in the Fabric Real-Time Hub. Previously, users with the ReadAll permission, such as workspace admins, members, and contributors, could subscribe to OneLake events for items like lakehouses, warehouses, SQL databases, mirrored databases, and KQL databases. To provide more granular control, we … Continue reading “Announcing permission model changes for OneLake events in Fabric Real-Time Hub”  ( 6 min )

For nearly three years, Microsoft’s internal Azure Data team has been developing data engineering solutions using Microsoft Fabric. Throughout this journey, we’ve refined our Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) approach by experimenting with various branching models, workspace structures, and parameterization techniques. This article walks you through why we chose our strategy and how to implement it in … Continue reading “Optimizing for CI/CD in Microsoft Fabric”  ( 9 min )