Note
Access to this page requires authorization. You can try signing in or changing directories.
Access to this page requires authorization. You can try changing directories.
This article provides a summary of the latest releases and major documentation updates for Azure AI Foundry Agent Service.
June 2025
Deep Research tool
Use the Deep Research tool to utilize a multi-step research process built on top of the Azure OpenAI o3-deep-research
model and uses the Grounding with Bing Search as the knowledge source.
Model Context Protocol (MCP) tool
You can new extend the capabilities of your agents by connecting them to tools hosted on remote Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers by using the MCP tool.
May 2025
Azure AI Foundry Agent Service GA
The Azure AI Foundry Agent Service is now Generally Available (GA). Along with this milestone, the service offers the following feature updates:
AI Foundry Visual Studio Code extension
The AI Foundry Visual Studio Code extension is now available with the ability to perform a variety of AI Foundry actions, such as deploying and configure agents natively.
Connected agents
Connected agents allow you to create task-specific agents that can interact seamlessly with a primary agent. This feature enables you to build multi-agent systems without the need for external orchestrators.
Trace agents
Debug and monitor your agents by tracing agent threads to clearly see the inputs and outputs of each primitive involved in a particular agent run, in the order in which they were invoked.
Trigger agents using Azure Logic Apps
Automatically invoke your AI agent when an event occurs, such as receiving a new email, or getting a new customer ticket so that your AI agent can immediately respond to the new event without manual invocation.
New agent tools
This release brings a number of new tools to extend agents' capabilities:
- Bing Custom Search tool - Determine which websites will be used to ground your agents with.
- Morningstar tool - Leverage Morningstar, a prominent investment research company, as a data source for your agent.
April 2025
Azure monitor integration
You can now see metrics related to Agents in Azure monitor
- The number of files indexed for file search.
- The number of runs in a given timeframe.
See the Azure monitor and metrics reference articles for more information.
BYO thread storage
The Standard Agent Setup now supports Bring Your Own (BYO) thread storage using an Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL account. This feature ensures all thread messages and conversation history are stored in your own resources. See the Quickstart for more information on how to deploy a Standard agent project.
March 2025
Microsoft Fabric tool
The Microsoft Fabric tool is now available for the Azure AI Foundry Agent Service, allowing users to interact with data you have in Microsoft Fabric through chat and uncover data-driven and actionable insights. See the how-to article for more information.
February 2025
Use Azure AI Foundry Agent Service in the Azure AI Foundry portal
You can now use the Azure AI Foundry Agent Service in the Azure AI Foundry. Create, debug and modify agents, view threads, add tools and chat with agents without writing code. See the quickstart for steps on getting started.
December 2024
Azure AI Service public preview
Azure AI Service is now available in preview. The service builds off of the Assistants API in Azure OpenAI, and offers several additional features, such as:
- Several additional tools to enhance your AI agents' functionality, such as the ability to use Bing and as a knowledge source and call functions.
- The ability to use non Azure OpenAI models:
- Llama 3.1-70B-instruct
- Mistral-large-2407
- Cohere command R+
- Enterprise ready security with secure data handling, keyless authentication, and no public egress.
- The ability to either use Microsoft-managed storage, or bring your own.
- SDK support for:
- Debugging support using tracing with Application Insights
Next steps
Use the quickstart article to get started creating a new AI Agent.