Options for implementing custom tools

  • 6 minutes

Microsoft Foundry Agent Service offers various custom tools that enhance the capabilities and efficiency of your AI agents. These tools allow for scalable interoperability with various applications, making it easier to integrate with existing infrastructure or web services.

Custom tool options available in Microsoft Foundry Agent Service

Foundry Agent Service provides several custom tool options, including OpenAPI specified tools, Azure Functions, and function calling. These tools enable seamless integration with external APIs, event-driven applications, and custom functions.

  • Custom function: Function calling allows you to describe the structure of custom functions to an agent and return the functions that need to be called along with their arguments. The agent can dynamically identify appropriate functions based on their definitions. This feature is useful for integrating custom logic and workflows, in a selection of programming languages, into your AI agents.
  • Azure Functions: Azure Functions enable you to create intelligent, event-driven applications with minimal overhead. They support triggers and bindings, which simplify how your AI Agents interact with external systems and services. Triggers determine when a function executes, while bindings facilitate streamlined connections to input or output data sources.
  • OpenAPI specification tools: These tools allow you to connect your Azure AI Agent to an external API using an OpenAPI 3.0 specification. This provides standardized, automated, and scalable API integrations that enhance the capabilities of your agent. OpenAPI specifications describe HTTP APIs, enabling people to understand how an API works, generate client code, create tests, and apply design standards.
  • Azure Logic Apps: This action provides low-code/no-code solutions to add workflows and connects apps, data, and services with the low-code Logic App.

This flexibility to integrate custom functionality in multiple ways enables a wide range of extensibility possibilities for your Foundry Agent Service agents.