Introduction
Imagine you work for a healthcare organization that needs to automate patient interactions while maintaining high security standards. You need an AI agent that can handle patient inquiries, schedule appointments, and access real-time medical information. Building such a system traditionally requires extensive infrastructure management, significant coding effort, and careful attention to data security. Microsoft Foundry Agent Service offers a solution that simplifies this complexity while maintaining enterprise-grade security.
Microsoft Foundry Agent Service is a fully managed platform that empowers you to build, deploy, and scale AI agents without managing underlying compute and storage resources. Whether you prefer working through the Foundry portal or developing directly in Visual Studio Code, you have flexible options for creating intelligent agents that automate workflows and enhance user experiences.
In this module, you'll learn how to develop AI agents using both the Foundry portal and the Microsoft Foundry extension for Visual Studio Code. You'll discover how to configure agents with custom instructions, extend their capabilities with tools, and integrate them into your applications. By the end, you'll be able to choose the right development approach for your scenarios and deploy production-ready AI agents.
Learning objectives
By the end of this module, you'll be able to:
- Describe the purpose and capabilities of AI agents
- Explain the key features of Microsoft Foundry Agent Service
- Set up and configure the Microsoft Foundry extension in Visual Studio Code
- Build and configure AI agents using multiple development approaches
- Extend agent capabilities with tools and functions
- Test agents using integrated playgrounds
- Deploy and integrate agents into applications
Prerequisites
- Familiarity with Azure and the Azure portal
- An understanding of generative AI (recommended: Fundamentals of Generative AI module)
- Basic familiarity with Visual Studio Code